Momo1991: Yeah and no crappy ToS begging you not to gift extra keys and encouraging anal-retentive peeps to chastise other peeps for violating their rulez. HB needs to grow up and join the actual bundle business in the way it has developed. Go Bundle Stars, IndieGala, Groupees et al!
Yeah, personally I think they have a misperception that it causes loss of revenue or whatever. A large number of the keys are probably never ever redeemed anyway and so money was received for nothing to some degree of games that wont ever get played. Also, would someone who used spare keys from one person's bundle have actually bought the bundle themselves, or bought the actual games individually? Some may have but I doubt it is an earth shattering percentage really. Plus, people enjoying the bundles will tell others who many of which wiil buy them too. Take away the incentive for people to buy and you take away their incentive to do word of mouth free advertising as well. ;o)
CD Project RED's CEO could teach them a thing or too I think. You can't prevent piracy, and you can't prevent people sharing things legally that they want to share either. You can put up walls and try to control people, but a wise man once said something to the effect of "The Internet comfortably detects and routes around censorship." (paraphrase). I think the same is true for copy protection, and more widely with everyday consumer choice based on the terms we agree or are bound under when doing business.
Years ago I started buying all of my games because I perceived it to be more convenient for the time I had available compared to borrowing or other options. Then I bought some Ubisoft Tom Clancy games, in particular the entire Splinter Cell series, Rainbow Six series, and Ghost Recon series up to circa 2007. Brand new games in brand new unopened boxes. I installed them on my computer over time, and I live alone so nobody could ever have access to my license keys which I kept in the boxes and in storage. In short, it is impossible for anyone to have stolen my keys due to any carelessness on my part. When I went to play the games online multiplayer, shortly after starting a game I was disconnected for having an invalid CD key. Contacting Ubisoft led to them telling me my key was in use by many computers and was disabled and basically "tough luck". They didn't really care what I had to say and obviously did not trust their honest paying customers. The Internet is ripe with thousands of people with similar stories of almost all of their games post 2006.
Two of my friends who also bought the same games had the exact same problems too! We ended up having to hack the game to disable the copy protection and use a VPN to play online with additional latency and hassles. It would have been 1000 times easier to just pirate the game.
Instead, I chose to never buy Ubisoft games again if they contained any DRM. I buy some from GOG DRM-free, but aside from that I wont buy Ubisoft products again knowingly. Had similar experiences and conclusions with EA Games. These things are a large part of why I'm here today. GOG provided the product that I want and at a fair price and so I am here. I think GOG understands their customers and has built a big following as a result. CD Project RED also clearly adopts this philosophy above them too, and so they've got my loyal support as well.
When businesses misunderstand their customers and aim to seek profit above all else and at the expense of the customer's freedom, flexibility, and trust - they will ultimately lose their customers to other companies that offer a better product or service. It might not happen overnight, but eventually people move on to better things I believe.
I'm going to stick to Bundlestars and Indiegala for now I think and only get other bundles after seeing GOG folks advertise what they got for the money, the terms, how many keys, experiences good or bad, etc. There are so many options to choose from now that a bad move by one company really hurts them more than it hurts anyone else right? :)
We've got our options! Power in numbers! :P