On the 30th of April it was announced that UK ISPs had been ordered to block thepiratebay.org[1]. Mark Wilkin (Virgin Media Community Manager) confirmed[2] that as of 16:50 2012-05-02 Virgin Media customers are no longer able to access the site.

The block is both when attempting to access the site via the domains (thepiratebay.org / thepiratebay.se) and via the IP addresses (194.71.107.50 / 194.71.107.15). This is what customers see when trying to access the site: 

A plaintext copy of the text:

Sorry, the web page you have requested is not available through Virgin Media.

Virgin Media has received an order from the Courts requiring us to prevent access to this site in order to help protect against copyright infringement.

---

If you are a Virgin Media home broadband customer, for more information on why certain web pages are blocked, please click here.

If you are a Virgin Media Business customer, or are trying to view this page through your company’s internet connection, please click here.

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17894176

[2] http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Fibre-optic-broadband-cable/When-does-the-Piratebay-Blocking-Start/m-p/1184517/highlight/true#M127563

This is the first time I’ve ever encountered this and it caught me by surprise. 

I administrate minecraftforum.net, the largest Minecraft community with over 100,000,000 page views per month. We have had spam problems previously but recently we’ve had a really bad one: football streaming spam. The way it works is simple, they sign up and post a topic linking to all different streaming sites and stuff the post with keywords, we find it and delete it. 

Google values our site very highly, we’re linked to by hundreds of thousands of sites, tweets, Youtube videos and Facebook statuses. Apparently this makes us the perfect host for their spam; our value to Google and their keyword stuffing makes our topics (with their links) rank very well in very little time, Google index our topics before we can delete them. Google search “barcelona vs real madrid”, we’re right there on the front page, Google search “barcelona vs real madrid live stream” we’re 2nd and 3rd. 

What does this cause? ~3,000 people trying to use a Minecraft forum to watch a live stream of a football match. 

Following on from my new apartment post a few weeks ago, I now have the keys and move in within the next week. Here’s a video:

Today (March 12th 2012) is minecraftforum.net’s 1000th day online, the 1000th day for minecraftwiki.net is tomorrow. It has been a wild ride, we’re currently one of the largest forums in the world, there are a variety of statistics available here.

Minecraftforum.net has had 1,590,993,372 page views with a current average of ~110,000,000 per month.

Minecraftwiki.net has had 1,451,064,292 page views with a current average of ~120,000,000 per month. 

That makes 3,042,057,664 page views in total. I wonder how many websites can claim over 3 billion page views, a page view every 25ms. 

See also: A history of minecraftforum.net and minecraftwiki.net

Last week I had to write an article for the front page of minecraftforum.net. I needed to include an image relating to the post but I didn’t have access to our normal file hosting system so I figured s3 would be a reasonable choice, it’s stable and would deliver fast to all of our users.

2,847,360 requests, 341.49 GB bandwidth and $52.68 later I realise maybe in future using s3 for this sort of thing is a bad idea. 

Just waiting on reference check, then I collect the keys, hopefully move in next week or the week after. Mine will be the top floor on the right, with the curved window and balcony. Moved in April 1st 2012.

Located in Brighton, around a mile from the train station and (I think) the office. I should check where the office is.  

Apartment has solid oak flooring with underfloor heating in all rooms, 2 bedrooms (one with ensuite shower room) and a “communal garden”. Also 50MBPS cable, awesome. 

Yesterday (after being unable to find one) I decided to put together a simple site that listed all the HTTP status codes, there is currently quite a lot of 502 errors appearing on minecraftforum.net and users are often asking why so I wanted a simple resource to reference when explaining what a 502 is. 

I had previously created a simple data layout for use with my domain name management system (which I have yet to launch) so I decided to re-use that as it’s the perfect format for this sort of data. Half an hour later I had the system built, then I had to spend a few hours populating it with data, I had to re-format the wikipedia and RFC descriptions and then create the “mini” descriptions for the home page, more time consuming than one would think.

Response seems to have been positive, it’s always the little things that people like. Lots of tweets and positive comments, although some said it was dumb because they can just look at Wikipedia… they have a point but I like well formatted data.

http://httpstatus.es

May 2009 is the month I was introduced to Minecraft by my younger brother, at the time it was a brand new game with creative mode only, there was no option to save, worlds were only temporary, there was no multiplayer and there was no option to purchase the game. (relevant: notch.tumblr.com)

June 2009 Minecraft was growing in popularity, still a very small game with only a few thousand players but with Notch’s constant updates the game continued to grow at a steady pace. After the game became available for pre-order (the only reward was a custom skin!) the game continued to grow, on June 16th 2009 with the original mojang forum (mojang.com/forum) succumbing to masses of spam I created what we all today know as the Minecraft forum: minecraftforum.net.

At the time the forum ran the software fluxbb and had only a small amount of sections, an archived copy of the forum a couple of days after it went live can be viewed here (it’s only the homepage, none of the links work). The first 14 members of minecraftforum.net were, in order: citricsquid (me), Vetle, Notch, Mikesword221, Randati, msarge, ZomBuster, Nalok, wingboy, Quatroking, Evil-Ville, jack, Eibz and ez. Hopefully some of you recognise the names here!

June 17th 2009 I was talking in #minecraft and Quatroking suggested that alongside the Minecraft forum we should also have a Minecraft wiki. I registered the domain (minecraftwiki.net) and installed the Mediawiki, from that point on Quatroking lead the administration and I only dealt with the small technical issues that arose now and again. To this day he remains active, a dedicated community member. 

August 3rd 2009 I ran into financial issues, at the time I had just left high school and had no job, I couldn’t afford to pay for the servers that ran the forum and wiki so they unfortunately went offline. Nothing was lost as I kept backups, but they were down for almost 3 weeks. After 3 weeks community member aera (who has contributed a lot to the Minecraft community over time, including the first ever custom Minecraft server myne!) stepped forward and offered to cover the costs and he did.

The forum continued to run as it had been and everything was dandy. As Minecraft continued to grow over the next few months the forum and wiki did too, both becoming an essential part of the Minecraft experience. As the forum grew we realised that the software I had chosen (fluxbb) was not suitable for a large community, so aera started to work on converting the forum from fluxbb to phpbb at the request of users.

February 7th 2010 marked the day that minecraftforum.net moved from fluxbb to phpbb thanks to the hard work of aera. Forum user “gilbbbr” took some commemorative screenshots of the forum on the day, they can be found here and here.

During 2010 Minecraft grew exponentially, it marked the year that Notch formed Mojang as a proper company, the year of the first Minecon (arranged through the forum by lanternghost!) and the year that the Minecraft forum and Minecraft wiki doubled in size every week for over 2 months. 

In August 2010 with Minecraft growing so fast we out grew the hosting that aera was providing, he had been covering all costs for over a year out of his own pocket and we needed a new plan. Community member WedTM stepped forward and offered to help, he had spare hardware that he allowed us to use and we did, however it didn’t last long, with the forum and wiki growing even faster than ever we were having serious stability problems.

September 2010 was a very rocky month, we started the month on around 200,000 page views per day and by the end of the month we were doing over 1,000,000 per day. As we fast out grew the hardware we had access to and we had no financial backing (at the time the forum and wiki were completely advert free) we turned to the community, we asked for donations from the members and in one short week we raised over $3,500 which was enough to allow us to rent the hardware we needed to return to stability. This was the month we also introduced adverts to the forum and wiki to allow us to cover the on going costs, our bill for October was over $2,000. As part of the move to generate revenue we formed the company “Redstone Wire, Ltd” (which is now at the time of this post Dissolved).

October 2010 was a more stable month but we were still suffering from fast rising traffic and costs, things that we couldn’t keep up with. WedTM, aera and myself (all volunteers) were the only people involved with the day to day operations, WedTM with a full time job of his own and aera with a business to run and myself with technical incompetence, 3 volunteers running sites that were now bigger than Stackoverflow. 

In November 2010 we were approached by Donovan Duncan of Curse, a company that focuses on operation of video game communities, at the time their lead forum was mmo-champion.com one of the largest World of Warcraft fansites. The deal we came to meant that Curse would acquire Minecraftforum.net and Minecraftwiki.net and hire myself, aera and WedTM to manage them. The deal meant that Curse would ensure the stability of the sites with their server management experience and allow us to focus on running the community, which had now grown to over 50,000 members.

…and the rest is history!

Today 14 months since the sale Curse has moved minecraftforum.net to superior forum platform IPB, helped grow minecraftforum.net to over 1,000,000 members, minecraftwiki.net to over 100,000,000 page views per month and both sites into an essential part of the Minecraft community, with minecraftforum.net being one of the largest forums in the world. 

November 2010 - January 2012: over 2,500,000,000 page views.

xoxo

I was recently offered the opportunity to move to Brighton to work from an office, I figure it’s a great idea so what the hell, I’ll move, maybe there’s somewhere nice in Brighton!

My first browse of available apartments in Brighton was disappointing, but I figured more would become available at the start of the next month so I left it. At the start of January I returned to browsing and found an absolutely wonderful apartment (gallery here) and decided this was what I wanted. 

I phoned the letting agent on January 16th to arrange a viewing, they said that the earliest possible viewing would be Wednesday 25th between 1 and 3, I agreed to view on January 25th at 1, the earliest available viewing. 

Sunday 22nd of January, I book my train tickets for my 400 mile round trip to Brighton to view the apartment. 

Tuesday 24th of January, day before viewing, I get a phone call. The current tenant can no longer do the viewing for the arranged day. My train tickets were only partially refundable, but with the cost of them I figured it was at least worth getting a partial refund, so I phone up and cancel them, refund processing. I’m quite annoyed.

Tuesday 24th of January… an hour later I have another phone call, after the letting agent spoke with the tenant and explained that I was travelling over 200 miles just to view the apartment she conveniently managed to make the viewing as agreed, so it’s back on. At this point I’m already out of pocket and decide this time I’ll get fully refundable flexible tickets, these cost more but can be refunded whatever as long as they’re not used. I also decide because the cost of first class is only about 30% more I may as well, I figured I could sit in a nice seat and use my laptop. 

Wednesday 25th of January, day of the viewing. I wake up early, have a shower and get ready to leave. My train departs at 9:36. As I’m putting on my shoes my phone rings, it’s the letting agent. She tells me that she’s just been informed that the landlord has had another offer but it’s below the amount I am willing to pay, I confirm I’ll pay the list price, I also ask if the viewing is still on and she says yes. I walk to the train station.

It’s 9:36, my train is boarding and I sit down. Super comfy seats, they offer me tea and coffee but I’m already drinking DELICIOUS SPRITE. 10 minutes into my journey my phone rings, uh oh, it’s the letting agent. 

Landlord has signed away the property to someone else, they offered below list price but because they agreed to his restrictive terms (6 months tenancy max because he wants to sell — this is fine for me as I can find a more reasonably priced long term apartment) he was eager to agree to their offer.

I’m sitting on an expensive train in first class, 10 minutes into the first 90 minute journey to go to view it and I’m told now that there won’t be any viewing, it’s been signed away to someone else.

Fuck (but not the end of the story, oh no)

I spend the next 80 minutes browsing the internet, train arrives at the station (London Euston) and I walk to platform 13, board the train back to Stafford and once again browse the internet for 90 minutes in fancy first class.

After arriving back in Stafford I thought about it a lot, I was very annoyed I’d lost the apartment of my dreams but some things just aren’t meant to be, shit happens. 

While writing this post I got a call, it’s the letting agent again. The land lord has agreed that I can rent the apartment if I pay list price and agree to the terms he set out, which I’m fine with, so now I have to go back on the train to Brighton on Friday 27th to view the apartment. 

If this apartment isn’t as I imagine, what I’ve built it up to be, I will cry. Maybe I’ll use the height of this one to terminate my existence. 

tl:dr;

booked viewing for apartment
viewing cancelled
train tickets cancelled
viewing back on
train tickets booked
train boarded
viewing cancelled apartment gone
return home 
apartment available
viewing booked friday

… 

———-

Friday 27th January update

Had a phone call this morning, the viewing for today is cancelled and they’re going to try and arrange a new viewing for Monday 30th January. At this rate I might get to view it before I die! My train tickets for today were fully refundable though, so thankfully I’m not losing any more money.

———-

Monday 30th January update

As is apparently a running theme, I got a call and once again the viewing is cancelled. This time the landlord has decided instead that he no longer wants to rent the property he wants to sell it, he is requesting offers in excess of £600,000.

Final list of what happened is:

 booked viewing for apartment

viewing cancelled
train tickets cancelled
viewing back on
train tickets booked
train boarded
viewing cancelled apartment gone
return home 
apartment available
viewing booked friday
viewing cancelled
viewing booked
apartment removed from market 
viewing cancelled

fin 

Photo gallery from my perspective

Photo of the setup with the light on:

Video of me playing Need for Speed Shift

Video of the Need for Speed Hot Pursuit intro from my perspective (sitting in the seat):

Specs of PC, laptop etc.

Desktop

2012-02-04

3 x Samsung SyncMaster P2450H 24” Monitor 1920x1080 2ms 70,000:1- HDMI
1 x Logitech MX518 Optical Gaming Mouse
1 x Logitech G15 Keyboard LCD GamePanel 
1 x Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Gaming Keyboard (2011-04-05)
1 x Coolermaster Silent Pro 1000W Modular PSU
1 x Zalman CNPS10X QUIET Socket Ultra-Quiet CPU Cooler
2 x Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache
1 x OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5” SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s 50,000 IOPS
1 x OCZ 240GB Vertex 2 SSD 3.5” SATA-II Read = 285MB/s, Write = 275MB/s 50,000 IOPS (2011-07-02)
1 x Asus P6X58D-E X58 Socket 1366 Gigabit Lan Tripple PCI-E 8 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard
1 x NZXT Phantom White Full Tower Case
1 x Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Triple Channel i7 Memory Kit CL8 1.65V  
1 x Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9(9-9-9-24) 1.65V (2011-08-12)
1 x Intel Core i7 950 3.06GHz Socket 1366 8MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
1 x XFX HD 6850 1GB GDDR5 Dual DVI HDMI Mini Display Port Out Graphics Card
1 x PowerColor HD 6970 2GB GDDR5 Dual DVI Dual Mini DisplayPort HDMI PCI-E Graphics Card
1 x Creative Fatal1ty Gaming Headset 
1 x SteelSeries Siberia V2 Headset - White (2011-04-01)
1 x Creative Sound Blaster Audigy SE 7.1 OEM PCI Soundcard
1 x Logitech G930 Wireless Gaming Headset (2012-03-10)

I originally purchased 2 of the 6850s, but after my sound died (onboard sound) I had to replace it with a soundcard, the graphics cards are so large that together they cover all 4 PCI-e slots, that meant to have sound I had to remove one of the cards. I now have 1 of the 6850s and an old 4650 I had from my old PC. I’m hoping to replace them with a single card that is almost as powerful as 6850s combined, although I’m not sure which to go with yet. I use the 60GB SSD as my OS drive and then the 2 x 1TBs for files. It runs Windows 7. I have now switched to using a single 6850 with 2 monitors running from the DVI ports and the 3rd running through an adapter on the Mini Display Port, haven’t upgraded to a newer more powerful single card yet. (2011-03-15)

Laptop

Acer Aspire 5742

Intel Core i3-370 2.4GHz
3GB RAM
250GB HDD
15.6” TFT
Webcam
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit

HP Pavilion DV6-3180EA (2011-04-01)

Intel Core i7 720QM 1.6GHz
4GB RAM
500GB HDD
15.6” HD BrightView 
ATI Mobility Radeon HD5650 
Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit 
Logitech MX518 Optical Gaming Mouse 

Netbook 

Samsung N150 (2011-01-10)

Intel Atom N550 1.5GHz
1GB RAM
250GB HDD
10.1” LED Non-Gloss, 

* I use the netbook as a web server for my apartment, I installed Ubuntu 11.04 on it and sit it on top of my NAS. 

Projector

Optoma HD600X
DLP Projector
3D Ready
1600 ANSI Lumens
HD (720p) Widescreen 

Network and NAS

1 x Cisco Linksys WAG320N Wireless-N Dual-band Gigabit ADSL Router
1 x Netgear STORA MS2000 Enclosure
2 x Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 64MB Cache - OEM Caviar Green 

Misc. technology

1 x iPod touch 2nd Generation (8GB)
1 x iPod touch 4th Generation (8GB)
1 x iPhone 4S (32GB)
1 x Google Nexus 1 

________________________________________

Crossed out denotes an item that has been replaced, the date listed next to the item below is the date it was replaced by that item. Date format is YYYY-MM-DD.

Update Today Blizzard posted to the Starcraft 2 blog, a post that outlined the reasons for Real ID and what it entails (source). This post confirms my explanation as being accurate, I can therefore conclude that my conclusion is 100% accurate. Through testing my theory and based on this post I am confident this method works, there is no extra part of the process as some claimed (involving a realid Facebook application).

__________________________

With the release of Starcraft 2 and the new World of Warcraft expansion Blizzard have announced the release of battle.net 2.0, the new identity/game management “portal” for all their games. The new system supports some great new features, but it has also brought quite a few that a lot of gamers don’t like.

The feature that most people have a problem with is the Facebook integration. The Facebook integration allows someone to provide battle.net 2.0 with their Facebook details and then Battle.net 2.0 will tell them which of their friends has an account with Battle.net 2.0 and give them their friends username. This, for some people, is a very big problem. However there is a solution!

It’s a very simple process, but it’s not something that Battle.net 2.0 supports “natively”, you’ll need to change settings on your Facebook account to prevent this. With the solution provided below you can choose to block everyone on your friends list from finding you, or just a select group of people like your boss and girlfriend! I’ve linked to a video below explaining how to do this but I’ll explain it in text form too!

How to prevent people from finding you through battle.net 2.0 Facebook integration (click the images for a full view)

Login to your Facebook account, once you’re logged click “Account” in the top right, a drop down will appear and from there you should select “Privacy Settings”. At the bottom of the page you should see a link for “customise settings”: Select this.

Now you’ll be taken to a page that lists all your different options in depth, if you scroll to the very bottom of this page you should see your email address listed, to the right of this is a button that displays your current choice, click this and then select “customise” from the drop down box.

This is where you can select who to hide yourself from. To hide from everyone simply select “Only me” then “Save Setting”. If you wish to hide from specific people, for example your wife, girlfriend or boss, enter their name into the field and select them and click “Save Setting”.

Done! It’s that simple! Now the people listed (or everyone!) can’t connect your Facebook account with your Blizzard account!

How/why does this work?

The way battle.net 2.0 Facebook integration works is pretty simple. After entering your username and password it’ll connect to Facebook as you and look for the Email address associated with each of your friends accounts, after it has all these email addresses it will compare them against their database and if a match is found it’ll say “oh hey, we found your friend”. Facebook’s extensive privacy settings (fortunately) allow you to say that you don’t want your friends to be able to see your email address and because battle.net 2.0 simply logs in as your friend they’ll also be unable to see the email!

Are you sure?

I’ve tested this out with a friend and I am 100% sure. After changing the settings (as instructed above) my friend no longer showed up on my list when entering the Facebook information required. This doesn’t mean that in the future it won’t change, however it would require Blizzard to work directly with Facebook which is unlikely!

The video is below, although the sound is quiet and it doesn’t add very much beyond visual representation of the instructions. 

Hopefully this explanation will help those of you who will suffer adversely from people being able to find you! Don’t worry, your secret WoW addiction is safe with me. 

During the 2009 Steam Christmas sale I started posting tables of the game data and pricing for multiple regions in the comments section of the each reddit submission. Many people appreciated the data in an easy to read format so I carried on.

This past week there has been another Steam sale, the “perils of summer” sale. I’ve been doing the same again [1][2][3][4]: creating a table of data for all the games on sale that day including pricing in most regions and some extra information and then posting it in the comments section, just like during the Christmas sale many people appreciated the tables and gave me some sweet sweet karma. I promised early on that I would release the generator I made for this, not that I expect it to be much use to most people…

The generator currently only supports exporting the data in Plain text and markdown, I eventually plan to add HTML and BBCode to the list, although right now I’m avoiding doing any more work. I’ve also developed support for creating a list of games that aren’t part of an on going sale, but that’s still a bit buggy so it’s disabled for now. I intend to add all future sales to the site so that it’ll remain useful (and save me rebuilding it in the future). 

How to use it

The first step is to select your countries. The more countries you select the wider your table will be and the longer it will take to process, I personally recommend selecting UK, AUS, US and a single European country (I use Poland). To select a country simply click on the icon and it should highlight, the countries will be displayed on the table in the order which you select them, if you want to start again just click the selected ones to deselect and reset. 

Now that you’ve selected your countries you need to choose which data you want displayed. The default is the games name (with a link) plus the percentage saving and then the prices. The options here will be displayed between the percentage and the pricing. Much like the countries option the order in which you select the options is the order in which the options are sorted. For my example I’ll be selected the meta critic rating and whether or not the game is available to play on a Mac, I’ll leave the other options unselected. 

The next thing you’ll need to select is the format in which the data should be displayed. The only formats available at the moment are plaintext and markdown. Hopefully at some point in the future I will add the other two and anymore that are suggested.

Now that the format, options and countries are selected the only thing left to select is which games to include. There are currently two options, “perils of summer sale” which automatically takes all daily sale games or “custom” which allows you to specify the games to chart yourself, however this is disabled currently as I need to fix a few bugs. I’ll be selecting the Perils of summer sale…

Now that everything is configured the last thing to do is generate, hit the “generate” button and the process should begin. The time taken to generate depends on whether you’re hitting the cache or the live site, if you’re hitting the cache it should be instant (~100ms) but if you’re hitting the live site it can take up to 2 minutes (if you select every country).

After the markup is generated you should see it displayed in the center of the screen (where the loading used to be). All you need to do is copy this and paste it wherever you want and you’ll have a fancy shmancy table of sale information. The table that I created can be found here!

The generator can be found on m00d.net: m00d.net/steamtable/

If you’re interested in future updates on this project or anything else I make you can follow @dotm00d on twitter where I sporadically tweet about projects! 

update it seems there is some confusion and maybe poor wording on my part. This does not let you purchase games at the sale price after the sale, it is how you can purchase multiple copies during the sale so you can gift then after the sale.

The current Steam “Perils of Summer” sale has a large number of awesome games at a very low price. Steam allows users to gift games to others, making it the perfect place to (lazily) get a gift for your friend or relative. However, it’s not always the case that your friend or relatives birthday/event coincides with a sale, luckily there is a not so publicised method for purchasing a game that you can gift at a later date. 

Steam requires gifts to be accepted by the recipient, this is to prevent someone stealing a credit card and forcing others to have illegally purchased games which will often result in a disabled Steam account. This feature comes with an added bonus though, it allows you to purchase a game in a sale and then gift it whenever you want, a day later, a week later, a year later, there is no expiry! I’ll describe the process below.

How to purchase Steam gifts for later

The first step is to find the game you wish to purchase, I’ll be using Half Life 1 as it’s on sale today for £1.19! Go to the Steam Store and select your game, click “add to cart”.

Now it’s time to checkout, click “Purchase as gift” not “Purchase for myself” even though we won’t be gifting today. After selecting “Purchase as gift” you’ll be taken to the gift options screen, here you will be asked to send your gift either via Email or direct to a Steam account. Select “Email my gift” and enter your email address, this should be an email address that you control, I use my gmail account. You’ll now be asked to enter a message to your recipient, you can enter anything here!

After entering your email address for the recipient and entering your message to yourself you’ll be taken to the payment screen, from this point on it’s the same as normal. Fill out your payment information and submit your payment, I use PayPal. 

After your Payment is taken you’ll receive two emails, one from Steam thanking you for your purchase to the email associated with your Steam account and another to your alternate account (for me it’s my gmail account). The email your alternate account receives will explain that your friend has sent you a Steam game! This email will contain a link that says “receive [your name]’s gift of [game]”. Do not click this as it will activate the game on your account if you don’t own it.

Once you’ve confirmed that you have the email, open up the Steam client and in the top menu bar click “games” - the menu bar that contains “Steam”, “View”, “Friends” and “Help” - then in the drop down box select “Gifts and Guest passes”. In this window you should see a list of all the games you have gifted to others and all the games you have given guest passes for. In the list you should see the game you just purchased, it will say “Sent” in the “Status” column, this means that the game has been sent but not redeemed. 

A game that is not redeemed can be re-gifted to anyone as long as it is never redeemed. So select your game from the list (for me it’s Half Life 1) and click “Resend”. A window will open asking for either an Email Address or for you to pick a friend to send it to. 

Games that remain “Sent” but not redeemed never expire. During the current sale you can purchase many copies of cheap games (for example, Half Life 1) and save them using this process, then in the future you can use the games as gifts for friends, or games to give out on forums you use. There is no limit on the number of copies you can purchase, you can have as many copies as you like, however you can only purchase one at a time!

Warning The entrepreneurial readers of this will be thinking “gee whizz, I can purchase L4D2 for $10 and sell it for $20 after the sale, I’ll profit by undercutting Steam!”. The Steam TOS states that you may not sell gifts, if you were caught doing this you would have your account disabled, if you try this and get caught don’t hold me responsible! 

Summary of process

Step 1: Add the game to your cart
Step 2: Select “Purchase as gift”
Step 3: Enter your own email into the “Email my gift” field
Step 4: Pay for the gift
Step 5: Open Steam client and click “Games” and “Manage gifts and guest passes”
Step 6: Select game with “Sent” status and re-gift to anyone, via Email or friends at any time! Gifts never expire.  

Final word

I have tested this method repeatedly and I’ve been using it for months now, it has never had any problems and it’s been nothing but awesome, it has allowed me to purchase sale games and then gift them when they’re at a higher price, giving the illusion that I’m really a good friend! If you have any problems please let me know and I’ll try and help!