The perils of buying Steam games from non-Steam sites

[CPA]

Looks like a made a costly error in making a purchase from Gamefly last night.

I already have Civ V, both expansions and all DLC on my Steam account. These were all purchased seperately throughout a period of time.

My 13-year old has been looking to buy Civ V for a few weeks but I've told him to hold off until it's on sale. This week he's away at camp. So, as a surprise, I pick up Civ V Complete Edition as it was on sale at Gamefly. Steam key came with the game.

So, thinking I already have the game, if I enter my Steam key into Steam it should dump the newly-purchased game into my inventory for gifting. Nope, it installed the "Complete" version over my previous version. I've put in a ticket with Steam but I'm not hopeful I will get the copy back for gifting purposes. $25 down the drain, and Gamefly wouldn't let me purchase a second copy

Worst yet, when it completed the re-install, the game would not load. Kept getting a "read disk" error message.

Need to be more careful in the future. sigh.....

 

[frozentundra123456]

Sounds like a frustrating problem. Maybe if you delete local files and reinstall one of the keys, at least one copy of the game will work.

Would have been easier to just make him a new Steam account for playing that game. Maybe that will still work, but I doubt it because the new key will be registered to your old account. Too bad steam doesnt make it easier to transfer games from one account to another.

And, yea, dont mean to be negative, but good luck getting help from Steam support. My one experience with them was awful. I had to wait days for a response, and when it finally came, it was just an obviously stock response and did not really address the particular problem I was having.

 

[Aikouka]

I'm pretty sure that Steam won't even let you redeem a key for a game if you already own it. ...and it looks like Civ V Complete Edition is a bundle, which means as long as you don't own a single item in that bundle, you can redeem the key. However, just like when you buy bundles on Steam, you forfeit any title that you already own.

If you want to feel better, one time I saw what I thought was the X-COM expansion on sale. I bought it, and went to enter the key to find out that it was actually the original game. I think whoever thought to give the main game (X-COM: Enemy Unknown) and the expansion (X-COM: Enemy Within) such close names ought to be smacked.

 

[Lonyo]

"These were all purchased"

That's where you went wrong. You thought you purchased games on Steam.

 

[xantub]

I wouldn't be worried about the error message, it's probably just an out-of-sync problem or something. Just make sure everything finished downloading, and if it did and you get the problem, try 'verify integrity' under properties->local files (or something like that) for the game. If that still doesn't solve it, just delete local content and install again.

As for you getting credit for the two games, that's a different problem. Once you've redeemed a code it makes things difficult. Sometimes Steam helps, sometimes they don't, but either way it commonly takes them a couple of days for their verdict.

 

[SunnyD]

Nope. Nope nope nope.

IF you ever buy a key from a non-Steam site, then consider the key you get a "gift key" in its own right unless otherwise explicitly stated. Once you redeem the key, it's attached to your account. Steam has always been like this with keys from third-party sites.

Never, ever redeem a key from a third-party site that you don't intend to use yourself.

 

[sweenish]

So, PEBKAC was the root cause here, but we should be worried about reputable third party sites like Gamefly?

They don't sell gift codes. ONLY Steam allows for that. Live and learn, I suppose.

 

[darkewaffle]

IF you ever buy a key from a non-Steam site, then consider the key you get a "gift key" in its own right unless otherwise explicitly stated. Once you redeem the key, it's attached to your account. Steam has always been like this with keys from third-party sites.

Yeah, I bought my friend South Park Stick of Truth off Amazon for his birthday a little while ago and simply copy and pasted the key into a message for him. Gifting only works if you purchase the game actually in Steam afaik, even then I'm not sure if only certain games are giftable or not.

 

[EDUSAN]

i think you cant buy 2/4 packs as gifts... you need to redeem the pack, 1 of the copies gets redeemed to you and then you receive gifts of the other copies of the pack to give to your friends

I think

 

[CPA]

So, PEBKAC was the root cause here, but we should be worried about reputable third party sites like Gamefly?

They don't sell gift codes. ONLY Steam allows for that. Live and learn, I suppose.

never said we should be worried about Gamefly or the it's ilk. I've bought a shit-ton of games of Gamefly, GMG, GOG, Amazon, GamersGate, Origin, etc. I made an assumption based on the fact that I already had the game on Steam and using a Steam code, Steam would recognize I had the game and dump the new one in my inventory. I thought for sure I had done this before and it worked fine, but I may have confused it with a purchase off of Steam. Either way, it was my fault and the peril of buying off a third-party site. The site itself is not a peril.

Got the game working after deleting a cache file. Also, GMG has the game on sale with 15% discount. I learned my lesson and will install it directly on his computer.

 

[imaheadcase]

One trend i wish would die is games DLC content needs to be automatically put into base game when they release them. Having a Game of the year edition you would think would include all DLC, but more often it does not. Borderlands is like this, its very tricky to see what you have and don't have.

Steam has fallen behind in innovation over the years. They really need more options and ways to manage games you already have. Simple things like a button for automatically copy ALL steam keys to clipboard. Or ways to completely remove games you don't want anymore. Even selling old games, which could boost steam and the developer profits. % goes to you/devs/steam.

 

[DaveSimmons]

This might have happened even if you had bought it directly from Steam, except there it would have given you the "as a gift" option.

Bundles almost always just write over and evaporate a base game, and you lose the base game.

This would have worked if you'd just sent the code to him as an email instead of trying to convert it into a gift.

So: for non-steam purchases, don't try to make it a gift keep it as a code.

 

[Topweasel]

Yeah, I bought my friend South Park Stick of Truth off Amazon for his birthday a little while ago and simply copy and pasted the key into a message for him. Gifting only works if you purchase the game actually in Steam afaik, even then I'm not sure if only certain games are giftable or not.

All purchases on Steam can be "gift" purchases. It's just a check box. On top of that Steam can give you gift copies of games (like a Dota 2 invite or Portal). In some rare occurrences (Orange Box) you can get gift versions of some of the products in a set. But they specifically tell you that you will get a giftable version of whatever game if you already have it.

So really what happened OP is that you got a set or version of the game which included items that you hadn't previously gotten. If it was the same version it wouldn't have let you add it. There would not have been any option for creating a gift for your son. Like others have mentioned if you bought a download key from a third party. Make the key the gift.

 

[CPA]

This might have happened even if you had bought it directly from Steam, except there it would have given you the "as a gift" option.

Bundles almost always just write over and evaporate a base game, and you lose the base game.

This would have worked if you'd just sent the code to him as an email instead of trying to convert it into a gift.

So: for non-steam purchases, don't try to make it a gift keep it as a code.

Yep, lesson learned.

 

[you2]

Did steam support reply? Sometimes they will actually help in situations like this one ? I think - maybe not - curious if they do ?

 

[Midwayman]

I had civ 5 from long ago and jumped on one of the big bundles when it came on sale this summer. I remember them having explicit notice on steam that it wouldn't free up a gift key if you already owned the base game.

 

[Nebor]

Why in the world would you redeem it on your account? It's a gift code.

 

[CPA]

Why in the world would you redeem it on your account? It's a gift code.

lol, I already explained the reason.

 

[Nebor]

I had vanilla Civ 5 and tried to buy the Complete edition off a 3rd party site. I wound up with Civ 4 complete. Whoops.

 

[GStats]

Steam really need to ditch their DRM. It doesn't stop pirates at all. Something like GOG would be so much better.

 

[Nebor]

Steam really need to ditch their DRM. It doesn't stop pirates at all. Something like GOG would be so much better.

I wasn't even aware that Steam had DRM.

 

[HeXen]

I bought a game once on GOG and even though it said it worked with Win8, it didn't. Some of the others like Robin hood only use about a 1/4 of my screen ..some kind of scaling issue probably from the fact that it's an old ass game but I couldn't read anything on the screen so that was a bust too. So I'm pretty finicky over my game purchases nowadays.

 

[sweenish]

In short, no perils.

 

[xantub]

I wasn't even aware that Steam had DRM.

It's optional for the developers to use it or not. Almost none of the games in my library have Steam DRM, once installed I can play them offline no problem.

 

[CPA]

In short, no perils.

sigh....

In any case, Steam did respond and pointed to the Gifting rules and third-party purchase rules.