Hi everyone,

There was a new feature recently added to the site, that allows moderators to view a log of all feedback and key changes corresponding to each giveaway winner. For users, this will simplify "Request New Winner" tickets when the winner is unresponsive. In the past you would need to submit screenshots and information to prove you attempted to contact the winner over one week ago. Now, that is no longer necessary when you send a key or gift link through SG. You can just click the "Send Key" button as usual and that's it. We can quickly refer to the log and confirm how long the gift has been available to the winner. Reviewing the database, about 97% of gifts are sent through SG, so that will cover the majority of cases. If you choose to send a gift outside of SG using email or Steam, then you will still need to send us additional information if you cannot reach the winner. The FAQ has been updated to the below.

  • What should I do if the winner of my giveaway has not redeemed their key or gift, and I'm unable to get into contact with them?

    1. If you sent the winner a key or gift link through our site over one week ago, then you can create a support ticket to request a new winner. Select "Unresponsive Winner" as the reason for the request.
    2. If you did not use our site to send the gift, then when creating the ticket we ask you to show you made an adequate attempt to send the gift to the winner over one week ago. This needs to be screenshots for one of the following:

      • A key or gift link sent to the winner's email address or by Steam chat (censor the key or gift link in the screenshot).
      • An email or Steam chat attempting to move forward with the gifting process (e.g. "Congratulations on winning my giveaway, where would you prefer I send the key?").
      • A pending Steam gift purchase or trade offer sent to the winner.
      • A pending Steam friend request, along with either an email or comment on SteamGifts to explain the pending request to the winner (e.g. "I sent you a Steam friend request, please accept so I can send the gift through Steam"). If you choose to write a comment on SteamGifts, include a link to the comment instead of a screenshot. The comment needs to be a reply to one of the winner's comments in your giveaway or a comment in one of the winner's own giveaways to trigger a notification for them.

      When providing screenshots, include timestamps when possible, as we will use these dates to determine when the conditions were met. If no timestamps are provided, we'll wait one week from receiving the screenshots to approve the request. When sending us a screenshot of an email, the date of the email and the recipient's email address needs to be visible.

A few notes...

  • When requesting a new winner the "Unable to Contact Through Steam or E-mail" reason has been renamed to "Unresponsive Winner".
  • Logging started in the middle of February, so we have data from that point forward.
  • Moderators can only view a part of the key or gift link in the log, and the remainder is censored for security.
6 months ago

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A welcome step in the right direction.
Here's a revolutionary idea: <I'm sure this has been suggested before once or twice in a similar fashion.
As soon as a user wins a GA, they cannot do anything on SG other than be automatically directed to the claim page.
The only other page on SG the winner can reach is the GA page itself in case they want to communicate with the GA creator.

6 months ago
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This does not seem appropriate because if a user can't activate the key (on steam) for any reason, he could not do anything else apart contacting the gifter.

6 months ago
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This is assuming the key doesn't work or there's a problem from the gifter's side.
How often does that actually happen?
Very few, especially compared to the overwhelming number of winners not claiming their wins fast enough.
For these fewer instances, a ticket to unfreeze their account would suffice then.

6 months ago
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I'm not very fond of decisions that alter the life or liberty of some legitimate users, just because there are "bad people"

I understand your point of view though, and i also hate it when someone claims his key 5 days later without a word of explanation.

But as many others said, life can happen. Fighting against bots should not be at the expense of other people

6 months ago
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It's not so rare that I get the red icon for a win, but there isn't a key yet. It has taken up to 2-3 days to appear sometimes. Your idea would see me blocked from even reading discussions, entering other GA or even answering comments on my topics / GAs.

6 months ago*
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For these fewer instances, a ticket to unfreeze their account would suffice then.

6 months ago
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I saw that, but tickets take time to get solved and often a lot of time.

6 months ago
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It boils down to how much we can all endure to get rid of or at least greatly curb a problem.

6 months ago
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Just like mentioned multiple times further up the thread you assume "creator good - winner bad". Which is simply not true to reality.

6 months ago
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If something is obscure to you, maybe it's better to ask for clarifications than to assume something yourself. "Person wrong - Me Mod right"
EDIT to add: Just because something is mentioned multiple times, it doesn't make it correct or accurate.

EDITED THE WHOLE COMMENT

6 months ago*
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blinking icon is only when key is available, red but non-blinking icon is when you won but there is no key yet

6 months ago
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Yes, you are of course right. I edited my comment.

6 months ago
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Very often.
If you can just "unfreeze" it then that makes nonsense of locking everything in the first place.

6 months ago
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If you can just "unfreeze" it then that makes nonsense of locking everything in the first place.

It will do two things for certain:

  1. Expedite the process of claiming wins since no one wants to be locked out.
  2. If the user being frozen for not claiming their win, they either aren't there so no harm done or they're bots who wouldn't be autojoining till his or her highness who created said bot account comes back to claim their wins. Either way, something is happening. What you claim -nothing will happen- is illogical.

EDIT to add:
You answered with "Very often."
May you provide statistics to your answer?
How often compared to the other side as clearly mentioned in the comment you replied to, thanks.

6 months ago*
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it's easy to tell an autojoiner from activity logs. All these ideas are missing the point and self-deluding.

6 months ago
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No point has been missed.
Maybe you're unaware that the bot problem has been raised a lot, repeatedly, by many, many users, for years (check older Suggestions threads), to no avail from the site runners.
Now suggestions focus on what can be done (i.e. accepted by the site runners) rather than what is ideal or you dream of doing.

6 months ago
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What I'm trying to say is these ideas are unnecessary since staff could easily tell autojoiners from activity logs, so it'd make sense to automate things there... And it's self-deluding, because if staff cared about the bot issue, they'd have done something right there, at the source. I'm repeating myself.

6 months ago
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Your insistence on using self-deluding to describe solutions or suggestions you don't approve of is rather amusing. You seem to agree that the site runners do not intend on taking stronger measures against bot users, yes? Great. Why do you see my suggestion as related to the bot problem in any way, shape or form? Because I assure you, it isn't.

6 months ago
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Sorry for the assumption.

6 months ago
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It's fine really. I just lost hope that the bot issue would ever be addressed so that it's more or less eradicated, so I've adjusted my expectations accordingly.

6 months ago
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I just have 2 words:
Thank you!

6 months ago
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lol, what a character

6 months ago
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lol

6 months ago
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Amazing!

6 months ago
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Thank you.
This is a welcome change.

Now all the other valid points brought up by the community have to be tackled as well if you want SG to survive.

6 months ago
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What valid points are you referring to?

6 months ago
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Too tired and at this point, no longer willing to help out by listing them all.

But there are several concerns the community keeps bringing up for months and years now. When the concerns are voiced by a big part of the community, by longtime members and are mentioned again and again and again, those are valid points.

On the contrary we always get topics created where only a few users want something to change and within a few days those threads get buried and the topic never gets brought up again. Those are also things some people want to change, but I don't consider them valid and CG should not focus on them.

6 months ago
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If you refuse to cite even one then I would classify your suggestion as invalid

6 months ago
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You do you.

6 months ago
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This is an excellent move forward, thank you for doing this!

6 months ago
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This is definitely a positive step forward.

6 months ago
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I'm not sure if you saw my comment in a previous thread here, but I think it would be a good feature to have rerolls automatically approved if a 7 day timer has expired and the winner never looked at the key. The giveaway creator would still need to initiate the reroll, but it would be approved automatically without support like when deleting a giveaway that is still running. I explain the process in more detail in that comment. Like always, I am not a programmer and don't know how difficult it would be to implement or if it would cause issues, but it sounds good in theory.

6 months ago*
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It's not a good idea. Read the discussion higher up about this. It would be a recipe for abuse on the creator's side.

6 months ago
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I don't see a possible abuse scenario because the gifter have no control about if the winner try to reveal a key or if he don't look at it for 7 days.

And only in the cases that the winner not checked the key for 7 days it would grant a automatic reroll, which would anyway granted, as soon as the mods would see the reroll ticket now with the updated rule.

All other reroll request cases with a revealed key, would still need a moderator to look into it.

For me it looks like "lesser work for the mods" and no abuse possibility.

Gifts on steam or giftlinks are a other thing that need to be excluded from the automatic reroll granting and still need a mod in each case.

6 months ago
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Possible scenarios for abuse have been pointed out in other replies.

6 months ago
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I was about to agree until just realizing that it opens a hole when the winner intentionally does not reveal the key, allowing for small circle cheating.

Automatic would only be possible for public then. Still, given the current ticket/mod situation, and the new approach that ain't necessary, right now at least.

6 months ago
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You're right. I didn't think about it enough. I thought restarting the 7 day timer if they changed the key would prevent abuse, but I didn't think about the creator putting something fake in the key field and waiting for the 7 days to get a new winner. I don't see any way to prevent that without Steam giving the ability to check keys to see what game it is for and if it has been used.

Edit: This is wrong, this actually wouldn't allow for giveaway creator abuse because the automatic reroll process was only ever meant for when the winner doesn't ever look at the key over the 7 days.

6 months ago*
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It's unimportant if there is only gibberish and not a real key because the automatic reroll approval would only jump in when the key (or the gibberish) wasn't looked into from the winner.
So if someone write gibberish instead a key in the keyfield and gets a automatic reroll granted because the winner don't looked into it for 7 days, than the next winner, that reveal the key/gibberish in the 7 days timeframe, would see and report it.

6 months ago
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The giveaway creator will check the winner before sending the key and change it to something fake because they don't like them for some reason. They they will click send, wait 7 days, click the button to get a reroll, and then after clicking the reroll button and getting an instant reroll, put the real key in for the new winner. The new winner will never see the original fake key because it will be changed right after the new winner is selected.

It doesn't even need to be gibberish, they can just enter a used key. If the new winner saw it somehow, they would just say the key is used and the giveaway creator would replace it with the good key. They would then mark it as received and there would be no support ticket.

The original winner could create a support ticket if they know the creator is refusing to send the key and hope support will see it before the 7 days ends, but support might not get to it quick enough. Or the giveaway creator could pretend like they are getting a replacement key, but just wait out the 7 days. There would probably be comments on the giveaway proving that this happened and the giveaway creator would end up getting a suspension, but it still sucks for the original giveaway winner.

6 months ago*
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All under the premise the original winner waits 7 days to claim the game.

6 months ago
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To be honest, i am very confused right now because of your example(s).
A gifter could do this all right now too.

A gifter could copy a used key before sending it to the winner that aren't liked from him.
As soon as the gifter appear in the 7 days and reveal his key it is complete unimportant what is behind, if a key that is ok, a dupe key, gibberish or whatever, because no automatic reroll will happen after this. Not after 7 days, not after 3, not after 2 months or whatever.
So no hurry for the winner to do something besides looking on the key (that the automatic reroll would not be activated after 7 days).
If the winner see a dupe key, no automatic reroll would happen, so the gifter couldn't change the key afterwards for a rerolled 2nd winner.

6 months ago
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Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I am getting confused now. I even mentioned it in my original post in the other thread. If the winner ever looks at the key, the automatic reroll process will not be available and it goes back to support needing to approve it. This automatic reroll process was only intended for winners that never view the key for the 7 day period, so it doesn't matter what the giveaway creator does.

6 months ago
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Actually, I don't see how this could allow for abuse by giveaway creators. This automatic reroll conversation started in the other thread specifically for winners that are not viewing the key in the 7 day period. That was one of the things I originally mentioned in the comment I linked above. Only if the winner has not viewed the key after it has been sent for 7 days would this reroll button activate that allows you to get a new winner without waiting on a support ticket. If they don't care about their win enough to look at it in 7 days, we should be able to get a reroll, and if they never viewed the key, there is no reason support needs to be involved.

If the winner views the key, then the automatic reroll button is disabled and it goes back to support needing to approve the reroll. It is similar to how deleting and active giveaway is approved automatically and doesn't require support.

6 months ago*
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Thank you!

6 months ago
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Excellent update :)

6 months ago
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Love it @_@

6 months ago
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Might I suggest a means of allowing suspended accounts to view tickets communications related to their suspensions during their suspension.

I have just came off a (4 days and then 1 additional added day) for a game I won 5 years ago which was not the game advertised in the thread at the time. The issue seems to have been semi-resolved thus far (I am hoping the person who made the giveaway deletes it) but I have been reprimanded for starting a second ticket on the issue completely unaware that the first had even been looked at.

This seems to waste moderator time as well as people who are suspended's time and could be easily fixed with a system to keep everyone in the loop of the process instead of me coming back to an active account once the suspension had played out and finding that two tickets had been opened with replies to them.

The new system does seem to work well though and so well done with implementing it. No easy task I'm sure.

6 months ago
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This is welcomed update, can't even describe my frustration with not only unresponsive people but also with Steamgifts mods who seem to work tirelessly to make this quick step painful. Situations, where you have to beg someone to take something from you for free. Hopefully this eliminates that for the betterment of the whole community.

6 months ago
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Counting back the few hours (I think) left to 2 unresponsive winners who didn't bother to activate their wins, despite being online multiple times (one of them always within 1 hour, they are really dedicated to this site's well-being and activity)

6 months ago
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