A big warning for all humble bundle gift link traders on barter!

[F4/80]

I came here to warn all honest users on barter to NOT trade humble bundle gift links to other users!

My HB account was permanently deactivated because of this, i guess.
No further explanation was given from HB but a default phrase of violation of rules.

So, what i suspect is either some bad guy reseller sold my to him traded link on grey site and the user who bought it there reported this link or it was a revenge from a user on barter for something what was not fitting in his eyes.

My unredeemed games are lost, my subscription is lost, btw some months ago HB didn't allow for classic subscribers to sub month by month plan.
And the most worse i can't buy anymore new bundles!

So, whoever sold my traded link/s, shame on you!

Do NOT trade gift links to anyone, do NOT trust resellers if they tell you that they need HB links for whatever reasons, if you really need to trade with them then only keys.


P.S.: Maybe someone has experience, but is it possible to make another HB account with same Payment account method?

[luckz]

180 days before now is January 12, 2020. My working theory from another revocation incident some years back was that HB can or do only revoke that far back.
The January bundle released on January 3, so assuming it matters when you claimed your keys, if you grabbed them before that date, the January ones might be safe.

[DJ_Grind1983]

Im not a lawyer but it seems like this would be illegal. Its a product youve paid for (whether its digital or physical), I dont see how can they or anyone can take and not compensate.

[F4/80]

Ok, so this are my thoughts: HB/IGN revoked all choice games which i paid with year sub since January 2020, this would only make sense, if they would give money back. Till now i got no money back, so i will wait some days to see if they really give the money, if not then it would be illegal for EU laws.

Now what are the reasons why now many accounts deactivated?
1. Resellers to whom one traded your games were selling gift links on grey stores
2. Revenge of someone on barter (i hope and don't think so)
3. Reseller to whom one traded games are flaged with their mails as resellers on HB database, and if you trade with them you are also flaged.
4. Trading at all is not allowed
5. Gifting is not allowed

Point 4 and 5, if it's the reason then it's illegal, cause you can't be above laws of a customer's country or your own. In EU there are laws where i think it is allowed to trade and even to sell digital goods which you paid for.

That would also mean, the whole system of Barter and Steamtrades is illegal.

Nevertheless, i will add all people where i see that they redeemed the games on their own accounts and compensate.

@Tecfan: added

I will only compensate Choice games January 2020 started, whoever comes and tells me about other HB games, should show proof 1st.

[Darkhosis]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von F4/80:

3. Reseller to whom one traded games are flaged with their mails as resellers on HB database, and if you trade with them you are also flaged.
4. Trading at all is not allowed

I guess the nomenclature associated with 'reseller' is someone selling it for fiat. Trade is a form of barter. There's really no difference here. Both would be against their ToS. Whether that ToS would hold up in a court would depend on where you reside (but who is going to spend the money to challenge it?).

Probably giving away links on Steamgifts gets you in hot water too, since I have no clue how they could tell if you were trading the game for another game (reselling via barter) or just giving it away. Maybe based on the # of different email addresses used to redeem. Use keys?

If anyone gets suspended that has just done giveaways on Steamgifts, maybe you could give them all the urls to the Steamgifts giveaways. The ability to create a gift link would imply that giving the stuff away for free is OK. What wouldn't be OK is giving it away for something else.

[F4/80]

If someone sells the games for money, i would definitley ban him, but trading games for games is it really a violation of rules?

Should we close barter?

[Darkhosis]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von F4/80:

If someone sells the games for money, i would definitley ban him, but trading games for games is it really a violation of rules?

Should we close barter?

What's the difference?

You are trading the game for something of value. Maybe the person you are trading to would have bought that bundle if they had not known they'd be able to get it via trade ... or maybe they would have purchased it from Steam store, or some other key retailer.

As far as law goes, there is no difference here. I guess for me, it's common sense, too, ... dunno why anyone would view it differently. It's a good way to avoid buying the bundle yourself, right (for person trading for x game)?

[F4/80]

So, what do you want to tell us?
Stop trading games for games, inclusive you?

Buy the games, leftovers you will simply delete from your memory, you never seen them?

[shade00]

thinking about it, if you have like 50+ people on your gift links thru humble
they might assume that there being sold off on the markets
sadly companies act like this at times, they act without telling you why
and they remove you over assumptions
best idea is to uncover the keys and make an backup list
then HB system wont look and go this looks odd they have been sending giftlinks all over the place
plus giftlinks are probally more meant for friends id assume

[F4/80]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Aristofop:

Resellers aren't selling giftlinks, they're claiming them and selling the keys. If they see the same person (account/IP/whatever) claiming lots of links for the same game it's pretty obvious what's going on and they know which account created the link.

There's probably behaviour(s) of your own around creating/using giftlinks that they flag, along with multiple accounts and purchases, etc. But I suspect the resellers leading back to accounts is a big factor and unfortunately Barter is full of them.

I already told i am not a reseller and never sold any game, for sure i traded with 1 or 2 (as i suspect), cause they wanted only gift links and traded from other people same AAA games of choice games.

That was my doom i guess.

But still there is no excuse what HB did: they deactivated my 6 year old account!
I have no access not only to my games, but also books, music, comics etc.
But not only that, they also revoked choice games which i paid ahead for 1 year, and did NOT return money back. It's almost 1 month, so NO, they will not return my money!

They don't want to discuss, nothing!
Is it fair to me as a customer, that they hide behind their ToS?

[Yirg]

One thing for sure, if I ever buy a bundle with a secondary account, I'll make sure to set "Humble Tip" to zero and change my donation to be split between developers and charity. HB aren't going to see a cent from me until they at least explain why they revoked purchasing right from my account.

[jb2097]

While I applaud your desire to do right by users who have had your traded game revoked, you should be careful here.

Some retraders are liars and / or sociopaths (not exaggerating there, given how some gouge people for extreme profit), and I imagine they'd happily tell you the game went into their account, so you "owe them" a game.

Yet they may well be one of the people who helped get your account deactivated through their actions. If they know of the game being revoked its probably because the person who paid for it got pissed at them, and knowing of your stance against retraders, or just being stinky liars, won't admit to the truth when they could still profit from your decency.

What do you owe those people, really? They're happy to profit off of you to a high degree, but not take the consequences despite you suffering more, and having much less to lose themselves.

If someone comes to you saying their game was revoked: did you give them a link? Because someone who wants it for themselves shouldn't need one. That would be my first thing to look up.

Then: how many games do they have to trade? do they have games marked as extras? are their trades heavily skewed in their favour, based on grey market prices?

There's things to look for, and if you see them, think twice about what you "owe" these people no matter what they tell you. The game you got from them was probably dirt cheap too, as it was likely either bundled or on sale.

[jb2097]

One final thing: if we traded, and your game gets revoked under circumstances like this, I would only, at most, expect back what I paid for the game I traded to you. Which is generally less than a £1 in most cases.

This is because I'm not a scummy piece of crap. In fact given how cheap I legitimately get these games I'm more likely to say don't even worry about "making good" on it.

If someone expects more than what they paid for their game...they're quite likely a scummy piece of crap. And a retrader. But that is probably obvious :)

[F4/80]

@jb2097: Thanks, all what you told is similar to what i thought about the resellers in this sad time.
Meanwhile, when i compensated people with replacements only 2 told me that they don't need a replacements cause they understand the situation but i still provided replacements, 1 other told me i should give also to resellers replacements, i guess cause he was and is one. And yes the whole situation around HB is because of resellers.

Most probably sign if it's a reseller is that 1) someone trades a curator game, 2) will not redeem it for him/herself and 3) trade for multiple copies of the same choice game.
About curator games you can debate if it's nice or not, personally i would always gift to friends the rest copies.

Normally i would not say anything about HB situation, but what they did is really crap, they simply revoked games not only from me but i read also from many other users and did not refund the revokes, so i was double punished, no refund and needed to provide replacements.

[Halo]

The whole point of Humble Bundle is that you are getting games at at extremely discounted price - you could call it wholesale or less.

As a consumer this is great and why I have 1000+ games and in theory for developers who get sales all-be-it at not retail prices if you tip them or from the monthlies.

And charities also benefit.

BUT - and this is the grey area - they have never been for trading or making a profit since HB was launched, remember when your account was linked to Steam?

It always made me uncomfortable to think of making a profit from the spare keys as they benefited charity, just a 1-1 trade at most, I have sold retail bundle bought keys with no moral problem.

Yet I can't do that any more because the predominance of buyers on ebay are from hacked accounts and I lose everything.

And this it the crux of trading these games - it is against the TOS and small print so is not 'legal' nor is it really moral either in relation to the charities and the revenue that developers are losing.

And in the past they tried to stop it with linking which failed.

So I am not sure that all this moral outrage is really valid, yes I have dozens - over a 100? - spare HB keys that are of no use to me other than gifts to no one I know, but I got the games I wanted at extremely low prices, so the transaction was completed.

I am not defending HB, I used to buy most bundles but between duplicates and poor quality I now think they aren't HB any more and haven't been for years, BUT you aren't supposed to trade/sell spare keys and we all know that.

And I am sure that the main problem is profiteers, even if they are a small number, and any action being taken is to counter them and not the majority of 1-1 traders.

So you have lost your account as you are being treated like a profiteer, whether you are or not, and the system is set up to punish the 1% and catches the 99% up in it, like all systems are.

The 1% bottom feeders are why life is so complicated, they are always trying to find an angle to hustle/scam and the rest of us have to jump through the daily hoops put there to try to stop them.

And if anyone is interested - I am the oil minister for an African country and need to get $40m dollars out, I will pay you 10% if you launder it for me through your bank account.

[F4/80]

It's all nice what is said but how can you explain that HB revoked / deleted the games and cashed the money? And no one can help you cause they waited 180 days with revoke and ban cause then nobody can refund anymore. They know that a normal person will not go to a lawyer cause it costs more then 100 usd.