So you want to create public GAs, but you don't want bots and auto-join scripts to enter? Good. Just post a comment in this thread with a link to an invite-only giveaway. The idea is very simple and is really not different from many (most?) of the other threads in the forum, except that you don't need to invest much time or thought into it. Just post the link in a comment, and you're done :-)

A few additional guidelines:

  • Feel free to obfuscate the link to make it more difficult for bots/scripts to enter. This is completely optional and may not make much of a difference, because the forums are probably not as infested with bots and auto-join scripts as public giveaways (see example).
  • You may use itstoohard.com, sgtools.info or other sites as filters to the link, but do try to keep things easy (for humans) to enter.
  • Don't feel obligated to write anything to accompany the giveaway link. If you have stuff to share beyond just the link, you probably should create a dedicated thread for it. Needless to say, you can also write it here, but it's not required.
  • Cross-posting giveaways your posted in other threads is fine, as long as they are your giveaways.
  • If you want to add a dynamic signature showing the game name, giveaway end date and current number of entries, but without revealing the URL to bots, you can use this tool created by Reforced. It takes the signature created by SG and provides you with a new URL that hides the original giveaway address. Just add it to your comment using the regular format for posting images: ![](URL)
  • Just like public GAs typically have a lot of entries, there's no need to maintain a low number of entries in GAs posted here. If you want to give especially good odds to people who enter and still get CV, you may want to instead consider posting the link here (and then remove it when you have your 5 entries). This is not needed here in this thread. The more (humans) the merrier :-)
  • The best way to bump this thread is by posting a link to your own invite-only giveaway. With that said, if the thread drops from the first page a regular "Bump" would also be appreciated.

I'm trying to find how serious the issue with bots really is. So far the results don't really prove things one way or another. Here are some stats from my latest experiment:

Game: Space Trader: Merchant Marine
Number of giveaways: 5
Period: 3 days

Giveaway # Level Type Number of entries Winner's Sent:Won Reroll needed?
1 Level 0+ Public 891 0:82 No
2 Level 0+ Invite only, direct link 55 4:47 No
3 Level 0+ Invite only, SGTools (no restrictions) 48 6:71 No
4 Level 0+ Invite only, shortened URL, captcha-free 50 1:205 No
5 Level 0+ Invite only, shortened URL with "I'm not a robot" captcha 54 162:86 No

Yet some more stats:

Giveaway game Period Level Type Number of entries Winner's Sent:Won Reroll needed?
Tales from the Void 5 days Level 0+ Public 755 0:37 No
Tales from the Void 5 days Level 0+ Invite only, obfuscated link 183 42:514 No
Hyper Box 4 days Level 0+ Public 554 0:32 No
Hyper Box 4 days Level 0+ Invite only, obfuscated link 193 178:188 No
Ace Combat Assault Horizon 3 days Level 0+ Public 1596 0:28 Yes
Ace Combat Assault Horizon 3 days Level 0+ Invite only, obfuscated link 234 88:107 No
7 years ago*

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Inertial Drift - Twilight Rivals Package consisting of base game plus DLC

Level 4 ends tomorrow
(sgtools link updated)

https://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/75a3d2b3-ca46-4239-a86a-b6f9f4172d58

2 weeks ago*
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2 weeks ago
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Thanks

2 weeks ago
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๐Ÿธ

2 weeks ago
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๐Ÿธ II

2 weeks ago
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bump

2 weeks ago
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๐Ÿธ

2 weeks ago
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Cheers! ๐Ÿคœ๐Ÿป๐Ÿค›๐Ÿป

2 weeks ago
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bumpo!

2 weeks ago
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Wow, thank you! Bump :)

2 weeks ago
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Jumpo

2 weeks ago
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Thnx'n'Bmp! ๐Ÿ‘

2 weeks ago
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๐Ÿธ

2 weeks ago
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Thanks for the nice train!

2 weeks ago
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Thanks! Didn't even realize until now, that there was more to this than the initial game, which I already own.

2 weeks ago
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one more bump :)

2 weeks ago
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๐Ÿธ ๐Ÿ” ๐Ÿฆž ๐Ÿ‘ฎ๐Ÿฝ

Bump!

1 week ago
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๐Ÿธ

1 week ago
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I admit this is ๐Ÿธ

1 week ago
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๐Ÿธ

1 week ago
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bump!

2 weeks ago
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Giveaway times have been nicely laid.
I mean, bump.

2 weeks ago
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Bump!

2 weeks ago
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Bump!

2 weeks ago
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I love this URL scheme

2 weeks ago
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Bump!

1 week ago
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Thank you! Bump :)

1 week ago
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Always wondered how much truth is to evil forum bots, whether link obfuscation is really needed or just a nuisance.
So I prepared a test-field, 4 times the same game, all at level 1.

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/IpkUo/

direct link

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/T6r?L/

? = B
change first letter to lowercase

https://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/52c93c7f-0e7c-4292-9aa7-a667701c29d2

direct SGT link

https://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/2cb7bfc3-8b95-?450-b6e2-25ad1721747

? = 4
add 8 at the end

1 week ago
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Deleted

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1 week ago
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I'm curious about the results.

The multiple tests that I have made show a slight difference, but not much.

1 week ago
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Wouldn't surprise me if it's just people being lazy lol

1 week ago
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Never underestimate people's laziness ๐Ÿ˜‚

1 week ago
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Direct SG - 113
Obfus SG - 107 (-6)
Direct SGT - 103 (-10)
Obfus SGT - 100 (-13)

Obfuscation having lower can always be due to human laziness (plus there were 2 instructions instead of 1, oh man the effort!) but I wonder why "Direct SGTools" is 10 less than "Direct SG" if there are no SGT rules. There can be some people that decide not to click on the SGTools but you can also potentially chalk it up to bots not being coded to go through sgtools. SGTools is definitely less effort to join for a human than an obfuscated direct link (in my eyes) but it have less entries than the obfuscated direct link which is strange.

I can definitely see a obfuscated direct link with only a ? being easily brute forced by a bot (26 lower case + 26 upper case + 10 numbers = 62 tries) but adding in any other brute forcing strategies would only get exponentially longer such as switching case for letters. (8*62 tries). So I doubt bots got into the obfuscated links.

What you can say is that the percentage of people that dropped out from obfuscation lowered with sgtools than with the direct link (6/113 or 5.3%) than SGT (3/103 or 2.9%). If you assume no bots clicked the direct SGT but bots did click the direct SG, then it could indicate potentially 2.4% (5.3-2.9) of the entrants from this discussion thread are bots? Or something? But I think it's hard to assume that when the direct SGT got less clicks through than the Obfus SG when Obfus SG (I'm assuming) has no bot entrants.

I'm throwing lots of words at the wall, not all of it flows together nicely so it may get confusing, but just what I thought of for the bit of time I was typing this up.

edit: The numbers of entrants may be lowered a good amount due to the hitsquad godfather twitch channel's giveaway on this game 2 hours prior to the giveaways completing. I got a copy and synced my profile immediately and thus removing all 4 of my entries. Not sure what assumptions you want to make of the people that redeem their games and re-sync their profile in that ~2 hour span but it's something.

1 week ago*
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It's very interesting, and seem to confirm what I already saw in my previous tests.

There is a difference, but it's not much.

There are certainly some bots that entered in the giveaways. Difficult to say in what numbers exactly, but your maths seem accurate. However, we do not see a huge diffference between all of these.

So either the bot problem exists but is not so important , or most bots don't stalk the discussions. In any case, we should probably have seen a much larger number for the Obfus SGT Ga. Not a difference of only 13 entries. Unless, as you say, they can bruteforce the obfuscation.

I often have the feeling that using sgtools does not really prevent bots to enter.

However, it prevents abusers, and this is really important in my book.

1 week ago
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So either the bot problem exists but is not so important , or most bots don't stalk the discussions.

A lot of bots exist but not so much stalk the discussions, besides all sorts of keydrops, because the gain in the discussions is much lower as the same invested time as autojoiner.

However, it prevents abusers, and this is really important in my book.

This is only half correct because in the theory yes but in the reality it give 30 - 50 hardcore abuser accounts that are perma banned on sgtools and still can enter the GAs after getting the clear sg link from friends or their other accounts.
The sgtools perma ban can't stop this extreme abusers and sg (or better cg?) don't care for other sites punishments, which means sg don't stop the known abusers too.
The owner of sgtools could give cg or the mods a list and they could perma suspend the accounts that clearly repeating to break the rules many times and check each of them for multiaccounting on top.
Would be a fast and effective way to stop this extreme ones... but nothing happens since years

With other words, only the small fishes gets stopped.

1 week ago
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I'm in line with you.

But I'd add that in the few trains/GA I've set since I joined, I closely looked to the invalid entries and did not have the same abusers each time. Possibly coincidental, but I keep looking anyway.
But clearly, I was VERY surprised to see who were the abusers. Some don't have the profile....

1 week ago
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SGT is the 2nd easiest, providing that you have an SGT account and that you ar logged in. Maybe that's the cause.

1 week ago
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SGT's account is just another "Sign in through Steam" button so that shouldn't stop anyone being redirected from steamgifts to login. Not sure what privacy concerns there are that would stop someone from logging in, especially when sgtools is thrown around quite a bit on this site.

EIther way, the sample size is pretty small and you can't gleam much. Not a huge difference anywho. You can gauge some information if you want by grabbing the info of the entrants and seeing who entered one but not another and the statistics of that person vs those that entered both but that's pretty involved.

1 week ago*
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I'm not a bot but i can't resolve the second and i don't know why, looks so easy, i'm maybe doing something wrong.

1 week ago
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others seem not to have problems there, just look which letters are in uppercase in the first place

1 week ago
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I have the game, and have tried a few combinations, and I also can't enter to the second giveaway.
Maybe I'm dumber than bots.

1 week ago
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just read all carefully

1 week ago
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Nah, I think the process of copy and paste, it directed to the original link, instead of the modified one, even if i was seen the modified one, it directed to the original one. It seems when I modified the letters, i was only modifying the text of the link, not the proper link. I should have made it in a dumb text editor.
Once I pasted just the letters on another GA it worked.

1 week ago
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Try on another browser. Chrome is the problem.

1 week ago
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Nice experiment, looking forward to see the results

1 week ago
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As of now, 21% more entries for the first one versus the last one.

1 week ago
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Bump!

1 week ago
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https://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/87412ce7-b397-4d45-8bac-920b5658f8f7

last number <> first number
Poly Towns
Begins in 1 hour

1 week ago
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last number <> first number - What does it mean?

1 week ago
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It means swap them

1 week ago
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Nice, TY. I thought it means they should be the same

1 week ago
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As a programmer, I think <> means "not equal to" ๐Ÿ˜€

1 week ago
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I thought the same!

1 week ago
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1 week ago
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3 days ago
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Thanks

3 days ago
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Bump.

3 days ago
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Thank you! :)

2 days ago
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Thanks

1 day ago
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If you can solve my jigsaw puzzle and if you are at least level 3 then you can hop onto my train.

Hurry up - the train leaves in less than 21 hours.

Edit:
The train will stop at the following stations: Apocalipsis, Grotto, Styx: Shards of Darkness, Creepy Tale, Creepy Tale 2, Just Die Already

2 days ago*
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Very appropriate Jigidi for today :D

I'll get to it now!

2 days ago
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I think we should celebrate the European Union. It is such a great thing. :-)

2 days ago
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HARD agree :)

1 day ago
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Bump

2 days ago
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bEUmp

2 days ago
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EU get another bump ;)

2 days ago
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View attached image.
2 days ago
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bump~

2 days ago
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Bump for solved! Thanks! :)

2 days ago
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bump

2 days ago
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Bump, thank you for the ride :)

2 days ago
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Thank you! :)

1 day ago
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Thank you for the train! Bump :)

1 day ago
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Thanks for the train and bump!

1 day ago
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Darn! Missed your train by just 1 hour. ๐Ÿ˜ญ

Thanks anyway, and have a nice day!

1 day ago
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Sorry. I hope you still had fun with the jigsaw puzzle.

1 day ago
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1 day ago
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bump!

1 day ago
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bump!

1 day ago
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thanks

1 day ago
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Thanks for the generous train!

1 day ago
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thanks

1 day ago
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great selection of games, thanks!

1 day ago
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Thank you! :)

1 day ago
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Bump

1 day ago
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Thanks for the ride! :)

1 day ago
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bump~

1 day ago
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Deleted

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1 day ago
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bumpo!

20 hours ago
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Bump, thanks for the ride!

4 hours ago
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