Seems to be the run of it. No doubt people have tried abusing the system as well, prompting them to take this stance even more firmly.

I wonder how they will explain the gift option for purchased keys now...

Gifting is Ok:

"We do not condone trading or reselling keys, but gifting is perfectly fine; we typically recommend gifting to a personal friend or family member, as highlighted in our article. If you are a Humble Partner that has received a key as part of the program, those can be given or raffled away. Raffles can use Humble keys as a reward - just make sure you do not require a form of payment as an entry requirement."

Yeah, it sounds like they're okay with gifting keys, but just don't want to take responsibility for issues that arise from it. The reason I was concerned is people have been saying they've had their accounts locked for gifting keys and gift links. I have no idea what's gone into the individual decisions to lock accounts, but I've never heard of any other site doing that. It's especially bad that Humble Bundle is doing it because some people like myself have a sizable library of DRM-free games with them. Losing access to that would be much worse than just losing access to keys I've already used or gifted. I suppose I'll continue buying games from them, but everyone should be aware of what they're doing.
Granted.

The main issue (other than strangers have little way of dealing with broken keys) would seem to be that gifting harms developers and publishers...

... Humble claims as much in the response...

... but how does this harm them?

The sale is still made -- as a direct purchase or as a gift / traded key. There are no monies lost.

So how does this harm developers and publishers?

This is all so unfortunate. They will lose business from me because I usually don't want most of the keys in these bundles. I want to gift and trade them, but my gamer friends have similar tastes and often don't want them.

I'll still buy from them. It simply means I am less likely to buy because it has much less value if I can't feel safe about my account if I continue to gift and trade on forums instead of with friends.

I don't think it does. At least if the key is redeemed and the game is played, the devs can benefit from a larger player base (and increased visibility that entails). In the end, in most cases the people who use giveaway keys are those people who weren't going to pay full price anyways. If they cared enough to pay that much, they'd have bought it long before it got bundled.

This isn't linking to the right document.

Is this the correct document where I'd find if I still had keys that haven't been claimed? If I have any Humble Bundle keys left, I want do withdraw them and replace them with keys from Fanatical. I don't want my Humble Bundle account locked for gifting and trading on forums.

No. That "giftees" document is simply to track how many requests people have made each month so they don't go over the request limit. It has nothing to do with Humble keys, it just makes life easier for finkleroy to manage the giveaways.

Giftees are the people who receive keys from this giveaway. It's a list of everyone who's received a key and what they received. Damon18 compiles this information and makes it public so everyone can see how many requests they have remaining in any given month, if any. If you'd like for me to dig up all the keys you've donated, please send me a chat message.

Back to the Humble Bundle situation: It looks like it should be fine if you reveal and donate keys you received from Humble Bundle. Just don't create a gift link.

Oops, I read "gifters." That makes more sense.

Alright, I won't make you go through all the work. I'll just not donate Humble Bundle stuff anymore.

Thanks Koreabeast for Cyrofall

You're welcome!


As for the Humble Bundle problem, I recommend everyone to just donate keys. Humble cannot track what happens to a key so gifting them is safe.

Exactly. Don't use the gift link option anymore and you should be fine.

My understanding is this:

Games sell for different prices in different regions of the world. Sell everywhere at high price, and poor countries would just hack and steal. Sell everywhere at low prices, devs make no money. So there's regional pricing.

A person in a poor country could buy tons of games at cheap price and trade/sell in rich areas online, taking advantage of what's supposed to be regional consideration, causing devs to lose money by not getting the sales from the richer areas themselves, and threatening the regional pricing system overall.

Gifting is fine because no money is changing hands, but when keys are being sold, for profit, that makes devs/companies want to be even stricter on digital sales.