Thanks for the replies, guys! Cheers!

When Humble (and other folks as well) do giveaways, tons of the claimed keys go un-redeemed, they just float in limbo for eternity. My guess is that they hope to 'recycle' some of those keys or at the very least light a fire under peoples's asses to get those keys redeemed.

Well, the keys never expire, so I don't think they can be "recycled", so I assume they made some deal with the publishers to remove the keys from everyone's account after a certain amount of time. If this results in publishers giving away more keys, I'm all for it. All we have to do is inform everyone to copy and paste the keys into a text file or redeem or donate them right away.

How rotten! I missed out on a few keys myself, not fully understanding Humble's redemption process, and got what you did, the pages saying you missed out, sorry. The fact that those keys actually still exist and are good, yet are simply being denied me for arbirtrary reasons, puts a really bad taste in my mouth for Humble.

I agree with you to some extent, but I'm also reminded of the old adage about not looking a gift horse in the mouth. In any case, Humble Bundle is a non-profit organization, so it's hard for me to be too annoyed with them for too long.

LOLWUT

It's always been a non-profit. It's raised $120 million for charity. It was bought out last fall by IGN, which kept it non-profit and has used its resources to help it raise even more for charity than before. Did you not know this?

Your innocence is almost heartwarming. :P


From Humble's own FAQ:

Umm... A for-profit company has raised more than $120 million for charity in eight years, sells 12 of Rockstar Games' games for $15, sells $150-$200 worth of games for $12 each month, and recently gave me 10% off my purchase of GTA V + gave an additional 10% of the purchase price to charity? How is this a for-profit business model? They should have gone under a very long time ago with massive losses like that.

Well, seeing that their own words aren't enough to convince you I don't expect to do it myself, but just two points:

1) Allocating part of your profit to charity (and getting some not incosiderable tax deductions as a result, by the way) is not the same as being a non-profit organization.

2) Charity aspect notwithstanding, many other online stores offer deals at least as good as those you mention, so I'm not sure what's your point there... Is e.g. Fanatical a non-profit organization too in your opinion?

It's not that I don't believe you, it's that I don't understand this business model. I have no idea who Fanatical is, and the only reason I heard about Humble Bundle is because I backed a Kickstarter project, and the developer/publisher (Red Thread Games) gave me access to the game and its extras (Dreamfall Chapters) on Humble Bundle, and the only reason I heard of GOG is because they also gave me a GOG key for the game. Yes, I'd been living under a rock for the previous six years. I don't understand how there could not be a massive loss, let alone any profit at all, on selling $200 worth of games for $12, even if every game is extremely heavily discounted. Assuming that the publishers and Humble Bundle make enough off of the sale to keep the lights on, how is there any money at all left? The Monthly Bundle surely heavily eats into the would-be profits that would have been made on sales of the individual games if they hadn't been in the bundle.

If someone said they bought you a present, and went on and on about how nice it was, and even showed it to you, and then told you couldn't have it. Because it's Tuesday. Would you be totally fine with that?

I have no problem with keys that expire. I have no problem with a limited time chance to get a key, or random chance, or a finite number of keys chance... or it will go to someone else. Those are all fine. But apparently Humble has a permanent key that was "given" to me, but I didn't redeem, and so now nobody has it.... it's a key that will never expire and never be claimed, and it's denied me by Humble because I didn't understand their redemption process.

It's arbitrary and wasteful. Plus, I'll admit to childhood scarring about things being offered / promised me, and then denied, so perhaps I'm hypersensitive to it.

EDIT

My understanding of how Fanatical offers low prices is a legal loophole: they buy deeply discounted keys meant for very poor countries, and then turn around and sell them to rich countries.

Humble Bundle ALWAYS states when the keys "expire" so that's absolutely not comparable. We can argue if it's nice or not to let valid keys disappear after some time, but since they openly announce the expiration date I don't really see how it's their fault when people just take the offered gifts without even looking at it ...

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