Humble Indie Bundle 4 Being Used In Steam Holiday Giveaway Scam

Tweet

The next time someone asks you why so many game publishers seem to dislike the PC gaming crowd, send them to this story: apparently, some sleazy gamers are using Humble Indie Bundle 4 as a means to cheat the system and gain more entries into the Steam holiday giveaway, which is going on now.

These gamers are purchasing Humble Indie Bundles for a penny each, and then using the Steam keys that come with those Humble Bundles to “legitimize” multiple Steam accounts and try to get pieces of coal. As revealed on the first day of the Steam holiday sale, those pieces of coal can be turned into other Steam gifts or hoarded until January 2nd, when they’ll be counted as entries into the Epic Holiday Giveaway. In other words, they’re trying to gain as many pieces of coal as they can while essentially shafting the Humble Bundle people.

As a result, Humble Indie Bundle 4 purchasers will have to fork over a dollar or more if they want to receive Steam keys – no more of this penny business. The Humble Bundle blog has been updated with a message explaining why this needs to happen:

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.

If you can’t pay more than a dollar but still want your Steam keys, you can contact the Humble Bundle support team. They’ll give you your Steam keys, but not before making you promise that you aren’t going to use this bundle for malicious purposes.

Quite frankly, it’s ridiculous that it needs to come to this, but I guess there’s always going to be a few bad apples where ever you go. The good news, however, is that Humble Indie Bundle 4 is just $50,000 away from breaking $2 million in sales, so at least the majority of Humble Bundle purchasers seem to be good people. If you know someone who is trying to game the system by using Humble Indie Bundle 4 Steam keys, try to make them see the error of their ways, but make sure you use you words (only kidding – go ahead and give them a good ol’ punch in the gut).