To clarify something about the new WB humble bundle and gifting etc.

To redeem the games for yourself, you need to sign in with your Steam account with the web browser and page you use to browse the humble bundle site.
So, after you finish paying and all has gone fine, you sign in with your Steam account there and you get a list of the games you bought. It looks similar to the past, but it is not the same.

First, to redeem the games you click on the Steam icon next to the game and you will (if you are alright signed in humble bundle with your steam account) immediately connect the said game with your Steam account.

If you want one or more of the games to give them to others, then you need to click on the small icon next to the hidden "key" field to each game you want to give away. That will provide you with a hyperlink which you need to copy and give that link to the person you want to give the gift to. When that person tries to use that link, he will get a window which will ask him/her for a name and email and then that person will be able to connect the game(s) to his/her account in a similar way you did.

http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/DDB-KCC/the-kings-crusade-collection-bundle

Includes:
The Kings Crusade
The Kings Crusade- New Allies
The Kings Crusade- Arabian Nights
The Kings Crusade- Teutonic Knights

£3.74. No idea if it's any good as RTS's aren't my cup of tea.

edit: Steam

If you want the Crusaders Kings Collection, it is cheaper at Bundle Stars, and you get a lot of other games thrown in as a bonus - http://www.bundlestars.com/

The King's Crusade != Crusader Kings.

He's talking about "The King's Crusade" though. Different game, not offered by Bundle Stars at all AFAIR.

But the names sure _are_ confusing! ;)

whoops, yes, my mistake
and I am easily confused...

Thanks for this link.... Good info here on how to gift unwanted games from Humble Bundle. That's a change from their policy on only using the games for your own account.

They caved in after the outcry about the initial changes ;)

Indeed, I would have only bought bundles from them under that new policy which when I took the games that I actually wanted and divided the price by it - got a price per game which was very worthwhile compared to other deals that pop up from time to time. In some cases only one game would be needed to justify it, but in other cases might need 2 or 3 or more. It'd still be a good deal just not quite as good per se. I'm glad they changed it to allow gift codes for unredeemed games though, that effectively makes it the same as before for all intents and purposes pretty much.

I'm not sure though how this prevents anyone from doing anything they did before though. Instead of selling/trading/etc. Steam keys, one now just does the same with the http links no? Perhaps it is easier to monitor/track now and punish people who try to abuse the system in high volume.

That's my concern too. If people are making a business out of buying up bundles and then reselling codes that defeats the purpose/mission of humble bundle, and it'll probably end up messing things up for everybody.

It's not a big deal to me either way in most cases - I understand the publishers have to protect themselves - but gifting unwanted stuff is nice to have.

The new system has two advantages for Humble Bundle:

Previously, as soon as the buyer revealed their key, it was out of sight and out of control of Humble Bundle. Now, they can keep track of them. This will allow them to analyze better what people are doing with their purchase, whether Humble needs to change the rules again or not, and/or whether the problem is big enough to warrant enduring the outcry if they do.

Also, and that's probably the biggest advantage, the new system takes re-resales out of the picture. There were people who ran scripts that bought bundles. These people then collected the keys, and offered those to distributors for resale. Reputable shops would reject such offers since they deal with the publishers directly, but there are probably enough shade key resellers to make the effort worthwhile. However, with the new system, this is now harder to do, and more apparent to the customer. Now they can't trade keys to resellers, they could only trade links (which might not be valid forever, as keys are supposed to be) - and the resellers would have to give these links to the customers. Which means that the customers would notice that they have bought a Humble Bundle key, so the resellers can't uphold their usual claims about "working together with reputable vendors to get legitimate keys" any more.

I agree completely. They ultimately have to have an effective business model or there wont be any bundles in the future at all. They just need to modulate their business model with the expectations of the honest customer and they should be golden. But, just like DRM schemes that have come up over time to combat the darker half, DRM ended up being a penalty for the paying customer and not harming piracy at all. I just hope that any schemes any bundler comes up with end up giving the true honest customer what they want without penalty or excessive restriction, while combatting any usage they'd like to prevent.

I've bought about 14 bundles this year from various bundle sites. The best bundle site out there IMHO is http://www.bundlestars.com however I've also bought from Humble both regular bundles and weekly sales, Indie Gala (bundles and Gala Store), IndieRoyale, and Groupees. I do not register all my codes when I get them, I hold onto them either until I'm going to actually play the game, or until I want to give it a test install and trial for 15-60 minutes or so to get a feel for the game. My codes sit in a text file until then, and I highlight the games I actually want for sure, a separate tag for ones I want to just try out, and a 3rd code for games that are totally uninteresting to me.

For those games I wont register myself due to lack of interest, my plan is to hold onto them for a while and eventually start using some of them as gifts, offering some in giveaways, and others in game code swaps such as the GOG Classifieds thread. I think all of these are completely fair use of paid for game codes personally, and I guess most people in the forums here do also as witnessed by the giveaways and trading every day. :) I do not however plan on trying to sell any of the game codes for money or whatnot as that's not really my thing and the effort involved is worth more to me than any profit I'd get from selling a game. Just don't care to do that. Likewise, buying up hundreds of the bundles and selling off the games just seems like a shady thing to do and seems that eventually that would come back to bite one in the ass for trying to take advantage of something good.

So as long as these sites offer these great deals and have a way to share spare codes and dupes with the fellow man, I think that'd make most of us happy.
Does anyone know if there are any time restrictions on the Humble bought games under the new system? I normally don't register games until I'm going to actually at least trial them, but if the codes are going to expire then that would be bad. Presumably this isn't the case, but if it is and someone knows, please share so we can go and register our bundle purchases sooner than we might otherwise, and gift the keys we're not going to use.

Thanks for bringing this up too, I hadn't considered it!

Keys don't have time limits. The new licenses won't have time limits either - otherwise Humble would lose a lot of trust from people who take their time to redeem their games, and that would be madness.

However, I kind of expect them to let the _gift links_ expire after a while. Because that will not bother people who do a quick direct trade - even if a gift link has expired, the legitimate owner can just create a new one. But it _will_ make it much less feasible to re-resell games, because the re-reseller won't be able to regenerate an expired gift link, only the original buyer can.

That's all speculation on my part of course, and I may be wrong. But I believe that Humble Bundle was looking for (and has probably found) a way to keep gifting intact, monitor the effects of direct trading, and curbing the shadow market of indirect trading that the keys had fueled.

Excellent analysis, and I suspect you are correct. It sounds like a good solution to their dilemma, as well as a way to effectively thwart those who abuse the system for personal gain.