The problem is that it's blatantly obvious during key activation. And even before that as finkle puts notices.
Plus the people are apparently not asking support. And the amount of incidents is worsening allegedly.

Hmm, sorry if I’ve made myself a bit confusing. What I wanna say is that, if converting games back to codes is possible, then there seems to be no need for guessing people’s intention—just ask them to do it, and then their invisible intention can be proved by their visible actions. And since people’s intention becomes provable as such, the situation should get better—innocents can fix the mistake and stay, while ill-intentioned ones will get banned and the community can prevent further harm from them (at the cost of the games they steal).

The only question, what if they claim that admins refused to convert the key/haven't answered?

Hmm, well...
1. Responding to this issue this way or that way doesn’t really concern me personally, and I’m merely giving my opinions hoping they can somewhat help the GA. So, if they are indeed flawed, it’s totally fine to ignore them;
2. About this particular question, since I have never contacted the supports, I’m not sure how it works in detail, but I suppose there should be email/PM evidence and likely someone that we can contact to confirm the real situation with, to see if such conversations do happen. And what’s more straightforward is just to contact the supports to see if that’s still a possible solution for mistakenly redeemed games.

This may sounds like a lot of extra work, but I think it does provide some merits that can make the situation better as a whole:
1. No need to guess anymore. If someone is clean, they can be proved clean; and if someone is intentionally stealing, let them leave with what they stole and cause no more harm to the GA;
2. If such rules are enforced, it’s likely that would-be thieves would just behave themselves and cause no problems, just like what laws in real life do to ill-intentioned people, because now rules are well prepared for such bad behaviors. And as such, not much extra work would actually be needed.

Then I would say they have to cough up and pay out of pocket.

What about adding a note in the rules explaining the nature and problems of multple-key donations, so that in the future this situation will be less common? This may prevent this situation and allowing us to avoid putting our faith in people's honesty which is always a bad move. Probably many who donates don't even know abot this multiple-key gift thing

What is this supposed to mean? I am still here, finkleroy is still here and a couple of other great guys and gals are also still here ... so it is still a great community with its fair shair of black sheep that we try to shush away as good as we can ;)

Yes, it's really sad that some people did this and for me it is hard to believe that somebody - especially someone who is supposed to be active on the forums and therefore should know his/her way around GOG - did this by accident. Then again, that's just my opinion and maybe some people are just too excited to get a game so they don't pay attention of what they did. However everybody who did this hopefully immediately contacted finkleroy to tell him that he suddenly got more games added and asked if this was intended? If not - no, then I really don't believe the accident.

Finkleroy's way of dealing with this is great. He told us once (in caps ;)) why he had to make this change and tries to not make a drame out of it - kudos! for this. Once again we can see that he is the right person to run these giveaways.

About getting the money from gift back that is possible if the gift whas not more then 30 days old if bought. Sadly the one where he bought more then he should is over the 30 days. Only problem is, I do not know if you need to give back all games or just the one that is "mistakenly" redeemed.

Right, because support SURELY acts EXACT same way in every case... You know, there are situations, let's say abuse for example, or personal humour of support person, and other things too, that would impact decision making of a support person working on a ticket. Support TOTALLY COULD deny something in one case and accept in another - so asking "if it's possible" is irrelevant as it depends on a lot of things.

No they would not behave themselves. You essentially said "let mistakes happen and if they are corrected then NOTHING HAPPENED. And if not correct then LET THEM STEAL and get away with it by getting banned".
In some situations getting all games and then a ban could still be lucrative.
And besides there is a high possibility this would introduce some high level scammers.
They could use "dated" alt accounts or use "accelerated rep gaining" to make account look legit. And since finkle has no way of tracking those (it's not possible for him to know fingerprints of logins to identify alt account without reports) it would introduce a huge room for abuse.
Not to mention money laundering - people could hack and steal other peoples accounts, get into giveaway (and claim for their OWN accounts) and consequently ban those hacked / stolen accounts and then "leave them be" only for real owners to regain control of them and see a ban.

So generally letting this slide for the sake of those "accidential" claims would introduce lots of potential scammers claiming "it was na accident".
Besides dealing with those even legitimate ones is an additional wasted time by finkle and he could get sick of it eventually...
It's just unfortunate that this situation exists and it's GOGs fault for having such blatantly obviously flawed system. But we can't get too soft here.

+1 O.o

*puts on a hood and stands by triock while jiggling axe in a rather merry manner*

Ummm, first, doesn’t what you said apply to all kinds of rules/laws? There could be all kinds of situations and exceptions, yeah, just as things are in real life, and yes, in real life different judges may judge the same case very differently, but that doesn’t just mean rules/laws, while always imperfect, do nothing at all. And finkle has always been trying to refine the GA rules, as far as I can tell. Besides, are you sure about what you said about the supports being volatile? Because Enebias did mention more than one case where the things get solved just well (showing some consistency), and so far no counter examples are told within these discussions. If you do have seen cases like that, maybe you should list them first. I don’t feel right criticizing people if there’s no hard evidence...

And secondly, all the situation you mention can happen under the current rules too, or shall I say, more easily? They can just get away with stealing things over and over again and don’t even need to bother themselves to do those alt account stuff. These may be good insights, but I don’t see how they stand as good counter examples to my thoughts...

Finally, sorry if it’s me feeling things that don’t really happen, but it sounds to me that you’ve entered an “arguing mode”: you seem to have started to focus on proving you are the right one, rather than trying to find a better solution through discussion. As I’ve said, I posted only trying to help with the situation and I’m totally fine if proved wrong, so, no real need to prove it to me that you are more thoughtful. I’m fine with you guys being more experienced and thoughtful. Sorry again if you did want to give constructive advice.

Anyway, I’ve tried to give my 2 cents, and I guess it’s time to move on before discussions go down to argues because of me :)

Well the sample amount here is rather small. Just because it worked "so far" does not meant that it works ALWAYS.
You can't just ASSUME that if THESE cases were positive then EVERY case is like that.
If you are saying that if 2 cases were succesful (or similar low number) then it "must work" then you just have to be super naive. That's a very small sample amount - if there would be like 4 cases here positive and 1 negative then it would be very high 20 % failure rate. The sample size here is way to small.
Just because you didn't see failures HERE does not mean they don't exist.

The thing is I don't have to. I have talked to a lot of support teams from a lot of different companies (examples being valve, valve higher ups, origin, humble bundle, gog) and it's very common (in fact I have not yet met a company that I would know that they don't act like that) for every support person to be "moody" and sometimes doing things to their own personal liking. Have you like never met a support person that for example doesn't like the way you talk or perhaps they are just having a bad day or mood and they just refuse to help you? And then you open a new ticket, totally different person comes in, and helps you right away. That's a thing. I'm yet to see a company that is not like that.
Bending rules is a thing. You may lie to yourself that company X is ideal and their support is perfect but I'm sorry to inform you that such things generally don't exist.
Even taking bending rules aside there are still GOG internal rules for dealing with repeated cases. Do you think they would allow "reforging a key" for person that for example frequently makes refunds? Or a person that has vast support history? Maybe, but possibility for that is much lower than for a person with "clean slate". That's a fact. And GOG may even have rules for X amount of such cases per day LIMIT.
I don't see ANY mention of THIS procedure in GOG TOS or really anywhere on GOG page so there is possibility they are not doing it based on any guarantees, just out of generosity. And expecting them to do that ALWAYS is kind of naive. It's their money after all. And GOG has already been often to generous in some cases.

Perfect irony :P Because you just critisize me without having hard evidence for the claim that "this always works".
Maybe it works for like 90 plus % cases but you just CAN'T ASSUME it works for EVERYONE.
There is just no proof that it works for everyone. That's a fact. Especially since this doesn't seem to be GOG written policy (if it is then please point out to me TOS section or support article that claims that). And you need to know and understand that. That was my point.

And GOG is known to be understaffed so quality of support will OBVIOUSLY vary (more importantly quality control of that).

My entire message was NOT meant to "counter yours". You are part of a discussion. So am I. I am NOT fighting you. I'm conducting a conversation.

Yes they can to degree happen under current rules. But if there would be a rule about "no worries" or "you have 1 get out of jail free card" then it would be open encouragement for scammers. It's like saying "hack me" on the internet or placing "free pizza" sign next to pizza place. What do you expect to happen? Would you really think scammers would hestitate MORE? If anything they will hestitate LESS.
People are monsters and use others generousity.

Wrong

Wrong

I am taking a part in this discussion for this very reason. If I come up with a good idea I will post it.
But before that I'm commenting on existing and emerging ideas.

So did I.

I'm not trying to prove anything. I don't personally attack people for conversating. I'm not that kind of person.
And quite frankly most people don't give a single S about my opinion most of the time so I'm not even trying to prove anything here. I am not suggesting anything. I don't have anything personally against you or anybody here.

Again, I DON'T personally attack you. I'm TRYING to be constructive. I'm sorry if I fail. And I'm sorry if you ever feel bad because of me. Gomenasai :(

EVERYONE:
Sorry for this wall of text. I couldn't make it any shorter (I tried). Please refrain from downvoting this JUST for sheer fact it is a long read. Please be civil ;) Thanks ;)

any specific reason this thread keeps getting derailed?