Humble Bundle’s revoked all those Indiana Jones keys it gave away for free (even if it was already in your Steam library)

If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is, especially if the item in question is a digital key for a brand-new game that can be swiped away using DRM witchcraft just as swiftly as it can be activated. That’s what happened with Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, which Humble Bundle had labelled as ‘free’ two days ago, prompting a good number of people to pounce on the irresistible bargain. 

Sadly, Humble Bundle has now revoked all those keys, releasing a statement saying that “due to a mistake in the provided pricing for this game, the game was incorrectly marked as ‘free.'” In a move that’s understandable but also reminds us of the ethereal nature of digital ownership, Humble not only deactivated the Steam keys it had given away, but revoked the game even after it had already been activated in players’ Steam libraries. Some disappointed players on Reddit even said they’d started playing the game on Steam, only to log in later and find that it had been pulled from their library. 

Intriguingly, at the time of writing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle has been delisted from Humble Bundle altogether, so maybe some stern words were had with Microsoft or Zenimax about their latest flagship title being given away for nothing.

The laws behind buying mispriced items vary from country to country. In the UK, for instance, if you buy an item in a shop for a lower cost than the vendor intended to sell it, you’re entitled to keep that item, assuming you were unaware of the correct price. Online, if a seller realises they mispriced the item before sending it, they can cancel the order, but usually once it’s in your hands it’s yours to keep. 

But in Indiana Jones’ case, those keys are just licenses to play the game under the Steam Subscriber Agreement, and as we can see, you don’t have that much control if a seller or publisher decides they don’t want you playing that game on Steam. The joys of DRM, eh? If it’s any consolation, you can play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle within your PC Game Pass subscription, which is still a pretty good deal for what our review deems to be a great game.