Imagine:
vector A: [1,1,1,1,1]
vector B: [0,0,0,0,1]
What is the sum (C)?
If we take A to represent the games in a bundle and B to represent the games I own on Steam, then the sum is the games I own in total. Does 1+1 actually give us 1? If we acknowledge that I own 2 copies/licenses/instantiations/whatever of a given title as a result of this addition, it stands to reason to assume that one of them can be given away.
As far as I can see in this thread - NOBODY is arguing for splitting non-duplicates, or at least - a negligible number of people. The crux, I believe, is in this basic mathematical intuition, that if I have ONE of something and I get ONE MORE... I now have TWO. It's hard to eradicate.
I can see the other side of the argument as well - things work the way they do, bundle-makers ask us to behave in a given way, "pacta sunt servanda" and all that...
I admire you for the courage it takes to stand up to people here in order to defend what you believe to be right. It doesn't even matter if you are right or not - your heart appears to be in the right place, and that is precious quality.

Ah, crossed wires then because I was only ever talking about giving away a second licence. Sorry for misunderstanding you!

I feel that in the instance where you've actually bought two separate licences, their request for you to not give away the keys is unjustified, but I do agree that it's not cool to disobey the ToS.

I have a feeling though that the primary reason for that request is to prevent the situation that you were talking about where someone was buying one licence and then giving away a steam key. A lot of people don't even seem to understand what's wrong with that, so I think that's probably the main reason for that request.

So true :)
One hell of a fan club indeed :)

I loose 5 rep a day for about a week now, and I can't even find my posts downrepped. I'm getting paranoid because of that shit... :P
Not longer than 3 days ago he was saying that having the same game on two different stores is having "more", so I believe he agrees with you on that stance.

*sigh*
It's like being given two ice-cream cones, but not allowing you to eat or share the second one.

Some would say: "b... but it's not the same! because digital games are so different than physical items... for... reasons!"

On a good day. Usually they'd say something along the lines of "Oh noez, Vestin D: ! You are making a false analogy !". Hell - you know what they say about looking at the finger pointing to the sky...

So you don't think they have any business telling people not to post abandonware links either?

Lol, no. As they were telling in countless interviews already, all that counts is that Drm free games on GOG sell. "You see? We have EA on board, and we sold xxx copies of their games, it works!"

If you think businesses would restrain from publishing on GOG because some bro posted links to humble bundle keys, you are really overestimating shit.

And the reason why they don't allow abandonware is simple - there is no such thing as abandonware.

And because the cost of publishing a game on GOG is pretty much non-existent (GOG does all the work), every copy sold on GOG is monies and copies sold. It's pretty much "free" money EA got from GOG when they arrived here.

Ah, so that's why it took so many years to convince them. The only thing they had to worry about was whether or not they wanted free money. Well, I don't know about you, but I'd certainly think long and hard for a couple of years before I said yes to a deal like that.

Seriously, if you think that's the only concern publishers have, then I think you're quite naïve.

Too bad (LucasFilm Arts) Disney don't realise this :(

Yep. Read GOG interviews. They said they approached EA for the first time right when they started, and EA was "naaah, we don't think it's worth our time". But much later they approached them again with "you see, we have Ubisoft, Activision and others, and see how many people buy our stuff, this really works!" and they were "Ok, let me pass this to people in charge".

Read interviews before making your own stuff up.

There are also ferw companies that so much love their DRM, they don't even want to hear about GOG. It's just their concrete corporate heads that can't understand there's no point in DRM-ing 10 years old games. There are also companies who are like "we are not interested in selling old games on PC", and nothing will change their stance other than changing the people in charge.

GOG is loosing sales because of HIB, but not the way you think. They loose them, because indie devs first launch on GOG and steam, and 2 weeks later they are selling themselves for a dollar. This is a bigger problem for indies than keeveek posting a key for Dungeons of Dredmor on GOG forums.

If there are even around 20 keys for the bundle game at GOG forums given away, it means absolutely NOTHING for like 200k sales on HIB. It's not even a drop.

And a lot of others.

It also makes me wonder why EA do not even try putting newer titles here...

It's simple, really. They want people to use Origin for their titles that aren't considered "old" enough. They haven't released any of the classics on Origin (and how nice of them!), so they seem to be like

Oldies - GOG
Newer games - Origin
anything in between - nowhere.

and I'm most worried about the stuff in beween, like Medal of Honor Pacific Assault or Black and White games that aren't sold anywhere... for some odd reason.