Humble Bundle alters terms of sale

Humble Bundle, a digital storefront offering activation keys for video games, altered their terms of service on December 24 2024 and retroactively enforced a 3 year expiration period for keys bought and not redeemed via their service.

Background

Humble Bundle is an online market place that started operations in 2010, initially offering collections of (mainly indie) game keys at a price determined by the buyer splitting the revenue with charities and the game developer. While they still offer these bundles their store has offered single keys for games (similar to Steam) since 2013 with a portion of the sales going to charitable foundations and developers. Monthly subscriptions with similar revenue split schemas have been offered since 2015. In 2017 the company was acquired by IGN Entertainment and has since been involved in game publishing as well via Humble Games, however as of July 2024 the Humble games division is, according to the company, restructuring and all the employees have been laid off. Humble Bundle continues operations.

Limiting key validity period after the sale

Delivery of product section in TOS before Dec 2024

Delivery of product section in TOS after Dec 2024, highlighted additions

In December 2024, Humble Bundle modified their terms of service to include wording that allows them to remove unclaimed game keys from accounts after a period of 3 years, with no obligation to reimburse the buyer. This wording was not present in the previous revision of the terms but has reportedly been applied retroactively to all previous purchases on the platform.

In addition to the limited time to redeem the keys there is also the issue of limited supply of keys, highlighted in the same section of the TOS, that may result to periods of unavailability. According to the terms of service as of the time of or writing

In some cases due to various reasons, a key may not be available to replenish and in such cases, Humble Bundle may offer the same game on a different platform (“Alternate Keys”) if this is a possibility. In cases where Alternate Keys are not available to replenish, Humble Bundle is not obligated to provide them.

This may add complexity for users who may purchase their keys during a period of unavailability and be unable to redeem them immediately and could possibly result in keys being declared "expired" before a user has an opportunity to download the game they correspond to.

According to one user report on reddit that has been corroborated by others the expired status has been added to keys that have been "revealed" in the platform (claimed at a time they were available) and not redeemed to download the game. These keys were still found to be valid after they were deemed "expired" by Humble Bundle bringing into question the purpose of retracting the codes from use.

Humble Bundle's response

Humble Bundle has not issued a public statement regarding the change of the terms and the possibility of refunding or compensating users. Users have not as of now reported on how Humble Bundle's costumer support regarding keys that are unavailable to redeem and coming close to expiring.

Consumer response

Example of keys showing up as expired.

As this change has been rolled out without much notice the users who have noticed their keys showing up as expired that also have unredeemed keys on their accounts have been trying to get answers from support without much reported success. Many have been criticizing the change as stressful and questioning its legality in the EU and Australia .

See Also

• Retroactively amended purchase
• Post-purchase EULA modification