Humble Bundle Raises Price For Steam Keys

[Andy Chalk]

Humble Bundle Raises Price For Steam Keys

The Humble Bundle guys are now charging a minimum $1 for Steam keys, thanks to jerks who are using one-penny bundles to cheat Valve's current promotion.

The Humble Indie Bundle 4 [http://www.humblebundle.com] is crazy awesome. Pay what you want for a dozen games - good ones, too - plus soundtracks, all cross-platform, DRM-free and, for maximum convenience, available through Steam. But Bundle buyers who want Steam keys are going to have to pay a little more than the minimum, thanks to gamers taking advantage of the system to gain an unfair advantage in the current Steam draw.

"Hey guys, we've noticed that a number of un-humble users are buying lots of Humble Indie Bundle 4s for one penny, and then using their Steam codes to 'legitimize' automated Steam accounts in order to increase their odds of winning prizes in Valve's current raffle promotion," the HIB team wrote on the Humble Bundle blog [http://blog.humblebundle.com/]. "This is unfair to legitimate entrants and is definitely not what we wanted to encourage with Humble Indie Bundle 4. It's a lose-lose situation for the indie developers, charities, Valve, and Humble Bundle. Therefore, starting immediately, new orders under a humble threshold of $1 will not contain Steam keys."

One dollar for a bundle like this is still ridiculously cheap, but gamers who really, honestly can't afford it [and who simply must have a Steam key] can contact the Humble Bundle support team, which will provide them on a case-by-case. That's amazingly generous, but I think I'd be more inclined to provide advice that if you can't afford a dollar, maybe you shouldn't be spending money on videogames in the first place.



Permalink

 

[kebab4you]

$1 minimum still seams like an easy way to get for example: Skyrim for 1 dollar(through the holiday sale) if you ask me it should be $10 or so, so people don't try to jew out valve or the developer themselves :/

Other then that I think I will buy it even though I own half the game, want those soundtracks, so bad.

 

[GeorgW]

I did get the idea that you could abuse Humble Bundle to get games cheap for Steam gift achievements later on, but didn't know you could use it like this. That's possibly 3 games for the price of 1 cent, plus a very low chance of every game on Steam. Glad they put a stop to it.

Still, why not abuse it now that it's a dollar? It's still a damned good deal, given that you get 3 free things for basically doing nothing. I hope Steam's monitoring this, maybe not allow this to authorize accounts at all?

 

[Owlslayer]

This is just...lame. Pretty damn lame. This is what we get when people try to be nice.

 

[RA92]

And this is why we can't have nice things in life.

 

[Ciler]

I wonder if Valve can detect the keys from these "automated" accounts and ban them from the contest... This ruins the Steam sweepstakes for everyone else.

 

[DamienHell]

The only people this will inconvenience are people nobody cares about anyway.

 

[mad825]

No shit Sherlock.

If given a choice with no consequence will without a doubt leads a system to be abused, kinda raises the question why this was allowed in the first place.

It's their own fault for not putting measures into place in hindsight.

 

[mad825]

 

[Sporky111]

The title seems a bit alarmist compared to the article. I came here expecting to see some kind of rage over a price hike in the humble bundle, but it's really just introducing a minimum cost.

Which honestly, is fine. I think they've done well with the "above average incentive", where if you donate more than the average (which usually comes out to about $5) you get even more games. I agree that the only people that this is going to bother, are the people who are being cheap and only pitching in one cent for what is a charity event at it's core.

 

[ActionDan]

Well that is a dick move on the 1 cent guys. I paid £5 for the HIB 4 even before the extra games were added, and I'm glad I did.

 

[ActionDan]

Duhhhhhhhhhhble post.

 

[Formica Archonis]

Still, why not abuse it now that it's a dollar? It's still a damned good deal, given that you get 3 free things for basically doing nothing. I hope Steam's monitoring this, maybe not allow this to authorize accounts at all?

Old way: 100 tries at the Steam raffle for $1
New way: 100 tries at the Steam raffle for $100

You can still do it, but to really up your odds of winning would take more money than just buying the games you wanted out of the raffle.

Knowing what credit card transactions can cost, personally a $1 minimum across the board wouldn't bother me. A person who can't afford the extra $0.99 isn't in a situation where PC gaming should be a major option.

 

[Kapol]

You know, I didn't think they could get any worse then buying them for a penny to sell on the Steam forums for a profit. And then... this. Abusing a charity in order to get more entires and even free stuff from Valve and take away from people who actually paid for this. This is one of the reasons I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Also, I honestly hope Steam just bans every single account that only has these games on them or are used as basically spam accounts. If they don't and one of them wins, I'm going to be angry beyond words.

 

[Giftmacher]

$1? Peanuts still, I can't imagine a huge proportion of buyers would be so stingy or am I just being hopelessly naive?

-Gift.

 

[Lancer873]

You know, I didn't think they could get any worse then buying them for a penny to sell on the Steam forums for a profit. And then... this. Abusing a charity in order to get more entires and even free stuff from Valve and take away from people who actually paid for this. This is one of the reasons I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Also, I honestly hope Steam just bans every single account that only has these games on them or are used as basically spam accounts. If they don't and one of them wins, I'm going to be angry beyond words.

Unfortunately, Steam doesn't really know how much people paid for the HIB. There'd be no way to differentiate between the people who legitimately only bought the HIB 4 and the people who signed up just to get it as an extra chance...

 

[Kapol]

You know, I didn't think they could get any worse then buying them for a penny to sell on the Steam forums for a profit. And then... this. Abusing a charity in order to get more entires and even free stuff from Valve and take away from people who actually paid for this. This is one of the reasons I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Also, I honestly hope Steam just bans every single account that only has these games on them or are used as basically spam accounts. If they don't and one of them wins, I'm going to be angry beyond words.

Unfortunately, Steam doesn't really know how much people paid for the HIB. There'd be no way to differentiate between the people who legitimately only bought the HIB 4 and the people who signed up just to get it as an extra chance...

Well, what I was suggesting was more banning anyone who's account only had the HiB4 or only free games from being eligible to winning the contest. I don't think it'd be too hard to find those who's only games include the HiB4 activation key (because it's a registered retail key on their system) and other free games. And it doesn't actually have to deal with banning them. Just take away all of their privilages to enter the winter contest to make it, you know, actually fair.

 

[DEAD34345]

I was a little worried when I entered this thread, but now it's been explained, I don't think there's any way someone could argue with that. The fact that you can still actually get the games for one penny shows that nothing has really changed, it's just closed up a loophole in the system. I don't actually buy the games for 1 penny, but I think it's important that it should be a choice, and I'm glad to see it still is.