HumbleBundle Gift Sharing

Spacedeck · 24 Jul 2020 at 10:44

This is just a warning to anyone who uses HumbleBundle and gifts away games. Reports are going around that HB are deactivating accounts that have been sharing games.

I first picked up on this from a post on /r/humblebundles. After getting clarification from HB, they released these changes to the rules of the sub Reddit.

Then in a recent discussion this guy has been one of those who has had his account deactivated.

So if any of you use the gift link feature, think twice. I'd recommend grabbing all the codes and sticking them in an Excel sheet instead. These shouldn't be trackable and hopefully avoid issues like this.

smogsy · 24 Jul 2020 at 10:51

no point getting humble bundle in that case, used to use it but only to give away everything to different friends each month.
lost a sub from me.

Columbo · 24 Jul 2020 at 11:14

Yep have just cancelled, thanks for the heads up.
I gave away around 80-90% of the bundles to fam and friends...for the kids mainly but this is just silly and I dont understand the point.

Its paid for, if I give it away or claim it myself there is no difference in sales terms or am I missing something?

smogsy · 24 Jul 2020 at 11:18

@Columbo probably want it to be locked to the owner so they can advertise to friends rather than giving it to friends.

plus IGN now own humble so not surpised it wnt down hill.

They might aswell close shop nowe its all down hill from here from PR point of view

Columbo · 24 Jul 2020 at 11:23

smogsy said:
@Columbo probably want it to be locked to the owner so they can advertise to friends rather than giving it to friends.

plus IGN now own humble so not surpised it wnt down hill.

They might aswell close shop nowe its all down hill from here from PR point of view

Yeah fair point, well lost a sub from my side anyway. I'd thought about it a couple of months ago but the nieces and nephews got some games they enjoyed the last few months so it was fine by me. Not now though obviously and I didnt actually realise it was against the terms of service as the damn gift link is right there on screen.

ic1male · 24 Jul 2020 at 11:27

Thanks for the info. I rarely do gifting anyway but now it's essentially a no-no.

Spacedeck · 24 Jul 2020 at 11:33

Columbo said:
Yeah fair point, well lost a sub from my side anyway. I'd thought about it a couple of months ago but the nieces and nephews got some games they enjoyed the last few months so it was fine by me. Not now though obviously and I didnt actually realise it was against the terms of service as the damn gift link is right there on screen.

This was the response they received from HB on Twitter: https://twitter.com/humblesupport/status/1286061511702720515
"If the key being gifted was received through our Partner program, then they may give away this key as long as there is no cost to enter the said giveaway. While we welcome gifting keys to well-known friends, we cannot condone gifting away keys on open forums to strangers."

This is why I'd recommend generating the keys and storing them somewhere like Excel. While generally it should be safe to gift to friends / family members, if you use the gift link generated by HB a lot, it could possibly look like something else you are just openly giving them away.

I do find it strange how they say friends, yet they don't know if we have friends that live in a different region.

dan958 · 24 Jul 2020 at 11:57

smogsy said:
no point getting humble bundle in that case, used to use it but only to give away everything to different friends each month.
lost a sub from me.

You can give the keys away to your friends. They just don't want you giving them to randomers on those key trading places, or selling them. (which is silly)

Basically, if a key you give to a friend ends up on a key selling website, you may get your account banned.

Spacedeck · 24 Jul 2020 at 13:34

dan958 said:
You can give the keys away to your friends. They just don't want you giving them to randomers on those key trading places, or selling them. (which is silly)

Basically, if a key you give to a friend ends up on a key selling website, you may get your account banned.

Is it even possible for the receiver to re-gift a game after it's been gifted once? If not they'd only be selling the generated steam code which I'm not sure they can track.

I know most people do generate the steam code and send that but for anyone who doesn't do that, now is a good as time as any to start. I imagine one of the ways you'll be flagged is gifting too many games over a short period, or even to lots of different email addresses. Imagine having a list of 50 games for sale and generating 25 as them as gift links over the period of 24 hours, I think that may raise some flags on the system.

McPhee · 26 Jul 2020 at 07:43

Thanks for the heads-up.

Still going to keep my sub, but I'll be careful about having unredeemed keys in my account going forward.