Humble Indie Bundle responds to Steam exploiters with $1 minimum

Humble Indie Bundle organizers have imposed a $1 minimum price for obtaining Steam keys with their latest game pack after discovering a significant amount of users were exploiting the online charity to increase their odds in Valve's holiday raffle

The changes were announced yesterday in a post on the Humble Bundle Blog which explained a number of “un-humble” users had taken to buying the Humble Indie Bundle 4 for one penny in order to attain the Steam keys required to validate accounts and gain more entries in Valve's ongoing prize raffle.

“This is unfair to legitimate entrants and is definitely not what we wanted to encourage with Humble Indie Bundle 4,” wrote the Humble team, noting, “It’s a lose-lose situation for the indie developers, charities, Valve, and Humble Bundle.”

To keep users honest, buyers will now have to pay over a dollar to receive Steam keys. However, organizers said they would still consider selling Steam keys for under a dollar to legitimate customers on a case by case basis.

The Humble Indie Bundle 4 is on for five more days and features a generous amount of games including Cave Story+, Jamestown, Bit.Trip Runner, Super Meat Boy, Shank, and many more—plus the entire Humble Indie Bundle 3 for those who exceeding the average donation. Join the over 360,000 donators and load up for your holidays here.

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.