Okay, so here’s the deal. I was trying to activate a bunch of game keys on Steam today. You know, Humble Bundle had a sale, and I went a little crazy, as usual. Bought a whole bunch of games I probably won’t even play, but hey, it’s the principle of the thing, right?
So, I started plugging in the keys, one after another. Got through a decent chunk of them, feeling pretty good about my expanding digital library. Then, bam! Steam hits me with this error message:
“There have been too many recent activation attempts from this account or Internet address. Please wait and try your product code again later.”
What a pain! I mean, I get it, they probably have some anti-spam measures in place, but still, I just bought all these games fair and square. It’s not like I’m some kind of key-reselling bot or something.
First, I tried closing Steam and restarting it. Like it was going to make a difference. Nope. Still the same error. I even rebooted my whole computer. Just in case. No dice.
I hopped online, started digging around to see if anyone else had run into this issue. Turns out, it’s actually pretty common. Some folks were saying there’s a cool-down period, like an hour or two, after you activate too many keys. Other folks mentioned it’s about 48 keys before they hit the limit, I was not sure but I thought I should make a try.
Here’s what I did:
- Waited it out. I figured I’d give it a break and try again later. Went and made some food, watched some videos online, basically just killed some time.
- Tried again after about an hour. Came back to my computer, fired up Steam, and tried activating another key. Success! It worked.
- Kept activating in smaller batches. I figured I’d pace myself this time, activating a few keys, waiting a bit, then activating a few more. This seemed to do the trick.
So, yeah, lesson learned. Steam doesn’t like it when you go on a key-activating spree. I guess it’s their way of preventing abuse or whatever. If you run into this error, just take a break, come back later, and activate your keys in smaller batches. You should be good to go.
It’s not really a big deal, just a minor annoyance. But hopefully, my little adventure can help someone else out there who’s staring at the same error message, wondering what to do.
If you have any experience, feel free to share them!
