Notice how he also has his pokeharvest alt post right after Ceterum too...

I disagree, why take a game from someone that you don't intend on playing yourself and deprive another person that really wants to play it. If you read Cyraxpt's post then it is clear that he is not happy that the game he gifted is now being offered for a trade. Unless specified by the gifter that they don't care what the recipient does with it, most likely implies it is being gifted to be redeemed instead of being traded for another game.
Indeed, advancedhero, ceterum and pokeharvest all seem to be frequenting the same threads on the forum.

I personally would prefer that any games I give are redeemed by the person I gift it to, but since I don't put any stipulations on them, they're free to do with them as they wish. I would like it though if they stated that they were going to trade it beforehand.

I know if I were in a situation that if A had a game I wanted, but I had nothing they wanted, and B had a game they wanted from me, and the game A wanted to trade, I'd ask and inform before trading.
That way, everyone knows what's going on, and it's all transparent and above board.
A bit like that story the farmer needs some wood, but the wood cutter needs an axe, and the blacksmith needs some coal and the miner needs some vegetable. So the farmer gives the miner some vegetables for the coal, for the axe, for the wood.

Gifts, though, I wouldn't trade. It's not that nice to have a gift traded off like a re-gifted present. Why ask for it if you don't want it?

Let's all PM them with this thread and be all:

Its a case of multiple personality disorder, is probably the excuse we'll get. :P

"I see... other people." :D

It's still not scamming and this sort of thing is why I object to this whole thread. People get accused, maybe they did it, maybe they didn't and all that's accomplished is a lot of whining.

It's certainly preferable for somebody that's given a gift to just use it themselves, but the whole gift set up doesn't provide any control over that. People giving things away need to realize that once they've given it away that's the extent to which they have the right to control the copy.

Is !=ought.

If someone says they want to play Game A which I like, and I buy them Game A with my own money, it's assholery to turn around and trade it for Game B. Because that way, the person who actually wanted to play Game A had to pay for it, and I ended up sponsoring a lying asshole's gaming habit with my money. In particular, this applies to GOG vs steam codes: I buy someone a valuable GOG key to support a fellow fan of DRM-free gaming, and they trade it for steam bundle fodder.

Trading gifted games is basically the same as selling food stamps. Except we know people have to be socially disadvantaged to actually qualify for food stamps in the first place, so them wasting the money on drugs and whatnot is regrettable but not evil and laws forbidding such trades should be protecting these people from themselves. Asking for gifts you don't actually want is an outright scam; it's applying for food stamps when you don't need food stamps.

As for the blame game, the next time anyone sees a user offering a suspected gift code for trade, they should just agree to the trade, ask the alleged scammer to send first and ask the original gifter whether the codes match.

Inform the gifter and post proof here, for example. Who cares, it's a scammer. The actual problem is when it doesn't match and the concerned citizen might have cost the suspect the opportunity to make a valid trade. In which case the not!Sherlock should pay up.

A big part in this is people applying double standards to behavior here and in real life.

Years ago, a friend of mine had quit playing guitar and gifted the instrument to another friend, who was actively playing in several bands. The musician took it in thanks and immediately sold it to a fellow musician. My friend found out and was not amused.

Now think about this whole situation. Why was my friend disappointed and angry? After all he didn't have any use for the guitar himself, did he? He wanted to make the musician happy and he did, so where is the problem?

The mana. The spiritual force that imbues gifts and represents the gifter in it.

Your friend didn't simply want to offer money to his friend, he wanted to share a thing (an object, a function, an activity), and to have a bit of himself over there. His friend redefined it by purging the object of its symbolic value, and of its bonding/sharing function. He made it a neutral, monetarizable commodity. It's common "social" sense to not sell (or further give away) objects that are imbued with mana, that is : you don't give gifts further away, or you don't sell away gifts, because it severs the symbolic tie attached to the object, and constitutive to the gift action.

It's colliding two realms. On one hand : the realm of gifting (the reason why, in general, you don't offer cash to your friends at christmas), which is about the social bond sustained by reciprocity and perpetually asymetrical reversible debts (you keep 'owing' your friends who keep 'owing' you). On the other hand : the realm of commerce, where the objects are being exchanged through carefully quantified equivalence of value, to prevent any 'debt' to last, and to allow for stopped relationships (you don't feel like owing anything to a merchand/client after a transaction, they can exit your life). This is why, for instance, "paying" a gift through the exact sum of its value or through the exact same gift in return is being percieved as an act of separation. And that's why you remove the price labels on the stuff you offer.

That friend took a gift, and transformed it into a commercial commodity. He wanted an impersonal profit, your friend intended a social act. Your friend saw the "guitar" as a token, his friend saw it as a "type". There was a disagreement about the meaning of the gift, and about the nature of its object.

In short : your friend gave a piece of himself, which was treated as an impersonal item.

Exactly and beautifully said, Telika!

There's one aspect I'd like to add. If the giving person doesn't care much about the gift itself, the act of giving and the presentee's joy is sufficient to make everybody happy. There only has to be pleasure and appreciation on the presentee's side, no matter what happens with the actual gift later on. But things change significantly, if the giver cares about the gift itself in any way.

But what does this mean for the ethics of taking? Well, keep in mind that the least a generous giving person deserves is to be happy afterwards as well. Only take, when you fulfill the gifter's expectations of cherishing the gift, being happy about winning and appreciation of the gifter's generosity. In many cases you won't, if you're just hording games and never play them or plan to trade the gift.

Well, since i'm involved in this situation i guess i have to give my two cents...

I'm not gonna lie, i even told on that post that i was giving away "garbage" so it's not like i gave something expensive to that guy and i do agree that after i have given it's no longer mine therefore he is free to do whatever he wants with it, BUT.... thing is, he should at least told me what he intended to do just as a sign of respect and appreciation for my gesture.
Again, not gonna lie, i would kindly refuse offering the key to him since the only thing that i expect from the other person is that they at least try the game, if somehow i was responsible for someone having a great time and discovering a great game, i'm already happy, that is all i wanted in return since i'm that kind of person that likes to share (as in youtube links and not what you're thinking, eheh) new music that i find, recommend new food or even gift games to friends that i really enjoyed and think that they should give it a try.

But this is nothing new to me, there was another forum where i used to give away the rest of the stuff that i get on bundles (and other more worthy stuff) but i eventually found out that i was also being tricked into giving games so that they could trade/sell (thanks indiegala for the new system where i can see who activated the key) or i would see people taking advantage of giveaways (making multiple accounts) so that they could grab some keys and sell it (i'm remembering someone that grabbed a large ammount of keys from one of those multiplayer zombie games and proudly bragged that he got 20€ of it), i mean, c'mon, i don't even try those because even if i can get the +1 backlog i would prefer that it went to someone that really wants to play it...

TLDR version - I'm not calling him a scammer or mad at him but if he (or anyone else) is going to accept something from me to trade/sell it at least have the decency of telling me that before even if i will probably will refuse to give it away.

I really do not understand how people have the time to deal with more then one account. Some people ruin it for others *sigh*