What do you think of SGtools giveaways?

I am not arguing your spoiler-tagged texts, but what does reserved for spyware mean? o_O

I'd be especially interested in your opinion, given recent events.

Yea this is the part that disturbs me the most when I make giveaways in SGtools, some people might be blacklisted from my giveaway without me even knowing about it :/

+infinity

The more I think about your statements, the more I agree with you. I think the SG Tool ban should depend on the giveaway creator and not be a universal prohibition when applying for SG Tool backed giveaways. SG Tools is built by one person, but invented to be used by everyone on this site.

@Topic
Personally I enjoy using sg tools for its convenience, simplicity, and customization. I feel more safe knowing entering my giveaways illegally is almost impossible. I can even discover who entered into my giveaways illegally without no hassle at all and blacklist them, then enjoy my day longer. The rules are listed and are easy for everyone to understand, so I do not have to be agitated by questions the rules' meanings. Maybe I want to be creative for my giveaways, but I am not in the mood for using Jigidi or It's Too Hard. That is when custom rules hit the sweet spot. Rules made for my liking gives a sense of power.

At the very least they should include an option to allow banned users or not when creating a giveaway.

Most certainly. For a site whose intent is to offer options, forcing an option is deeply counter-intuitive.
As far as the banning itself, it makes up for SG itself being so lenient on leakers. It's a good option to have, same as the (rule-breaking ban even if it wasn't within the past month).

Has it been a bit clumsily handled? Sure.
But I'm all in favor of having more options, on the whole.
The more I think 'hey, this would be nice to do', the more like I am to, y'know, actually do it :P

Besides, SG alone doesn't allow me to set filters based on a repetition of the numbers 1 2 and 3, in a certain Barbie-loving individual's honor. What a tragic shortcoming that is! Thank goodness for SGT! :D

Seriously, it's all good fun, until someone starts getting prickly about being excluded.
So it's the same old drama, just in a different way.
I'm not going to argue some things can't potentially be handled better, but the "SGTools is inherently bad" bit is nonsense, with no actual supporting element thus far.

Basically this. it was great in the beginning but it turned into something completely horrible. Especially since even innocents are getting banned.

Solid answer, basically the spirit of SGtools has changed from what I originally saw it as. kind of blinked and it changed =(

SGT is a cunning plan to take the focus away from a certain country that was the focus of most negativity before :P

For the most part it's the same drama-promoting [typically highly entitled] subset of SG as always, or people misinformed about how SGT works, so it's unfair to blame it on the site itself.

SGT encourages many people to post private giveaways, who otherwise would only post group giveaways (myself included). The only downsides are people wanting to control how others give games away, or complaining about the ban system, despite the only issues with it so far being recent, unforeseen glitch, and a difference in opinion on whether the ban system ought be applied retroactively.

Neither is exactly worthy of pitchfork-raising.

I totally agree with everything you said. I've been here for a couple years now and I've also noticed a change in this site that in my opinion isn't for the better. It feels like it's become much more cliquish, divided, and dramatic, and things like SGT seem to exacerbate that.

I hope that by offering a neutral forum where people can express their opinions people can be convinced by the arguments of the other side to some extent and by trying to prevent ad hominem attacks I'm hoping that people will be civil and comfortable with commenting.

Mainly, people are held accountable for SG rule-breaking because all you have to do to permanently remove the infraction, is give the game back to the GA creator or add it to your library. Certainly, complications may occur, but for the most part it's a simple process that anyone caring enough could deal with.

Ought there be a time limit to it? Maybe, likely, and SGT allowes custom setting to do exactly that.

VAC ban does seem overly highlighted, given that it's not near on par with the other two [and why is it even listed, if community ban isn't?] but it's still up to the giveaway creators to determine if that's something they care about or not.

Most I've seen, myself included, don't care about it.

I agree in the category of VAC bans. I have a VAC ban for using a "non-official" FOV fixer for CoD: MW3. This shit had 65 FOV and it was hard to play without getting a migrane headache from 20min of multiplayer gameplay. I mean, 65!!?? It's on PC ffs, not on console. People sit more far away from their TV screens so it' okay, but sitting behind your desk and close to the monitor is gonna be one hell of a rollercoster ride. The whole case with was like - "we allow it. we don't allow it. oh..we only allow this one specific fixer, others will be flagged."

It is pretty much wat happens when people start getting the feeling that they are being 'cheated' on their generosity or get the idea that some people can be 'unworthy' of winning. Policing starts and it becomes less and less about feeling good about giving and more about feeling good that somebody is playing something you gave them. I argued about it several times, but everybody will have their opinion, of course.
As far as I am concerned - 'gifts' in the name of the site pretty much became invalid, as it is drifting towards becoming something really close to being just another form of trading and closing itself off from people who would be the most happy with winning. The people who don't have cash to buy all that many (or any games) and thus can't pass all those high criteria of ratios, levels, contributions and what have you. They can't because SG nowadays is an 'investment' of the 'I scratch your back, you scratch mine' type. People give away for the entitlement of being able to win some better, close off stuff.
And to hell with those who can't, right?

Pretty sure I agree with this, but none of my games have been leaked. I think I'm going to start using it more to be frank with my future events. I mean as amusing as our mutual "friend's" problem is, it's not exactly fair system, like this is why we have blacklists, if we don't want someone entering our giveaways, there are blacklists and a plethora of features on SGtools to make it harder for people you don't want entering your giveaways to enter.

Though really if you have a history of getting into leaked giveaways there should be a feature maybe under VAC Bans that allows you to click and move on. Like a history of sorts.

and i will repeat it again, sg doesn't punish leaked entries except with a reroll if they win.

And do you really think that it's good MuIIins?

You know that I don't share KnSYS opinion about banning people in 100%, and I have my own concerns about banning system (because nothing is 100% trustworthy, and mistakes happen, with such tools even more than usual), but not doing anything with people that have giveaway creator and his rules deep in the ass, doing everything they can just to "enter giveaway" is simply put - wrong. How would you feel if I created a group dedicated to leaking SG invite only giveaways, where I'd post every single SGT and non-SGT giveaway I can find? Of course I wouldn't do that from my own account, I'd do that from an account that is not registered on SG and not in any connection with me, so nobody could prove that it's my account. Everybody could anonymously leak post invite only giveaways, and nobody would be doing anything with that.

Innocent until proven guilty, right? SG doesn't punish leaked entries, right? Do we want that? People joining leaked giveaways left and right because of no consequences? Because it's only a matter of time if nobody will be willing to do anything.

One of the reasons why I stopped doing massive amount of public giveaways and moved almost exclusively to group giveaways.

This is pretty much where I stand on the issue. I and a few other people were the first couple of test cases regarding SG support doing a re-roll for an illegal winning entry. To me, that's more than enough as it serves as a warning but doesn't give me the power to exert influence over whether or not the person can enter other GAs.

To put a bit more of a personal touch on this, I did have a winner at one point who entered through an illegal entry. They reached out to we on Steam chat after the re-roll was approved. They apologized and explained they didn't realize the link was gated and said I absolutely had the right to request a re-roll. No hurt feelings on their part, and I more than happily took the person off my blacklist.

Now if I'd had the option to report them to SGT, I'd had felt like a total shitheel getting them banned from other's SGT GAs (and my own) after they reached out to me in such a friendly and understanding manner.

Which all goes back the point. There's no way to prove guilt in a case like this unless you have hard evidence that the illegal entrant is in fact the person who leaked your GA. And even then SG has support to deal with that.

Use the * character to designate italics on the SG forum (two for bold, three for italic and bold). Whitelisted.

But I think it solves in a really good manner the problem people have with I've given away a really nice thing here and this doofus ended up winning and so now I am honor bound to give my nice thing to this doofus. Now I feel bad about giving.

Certainly. While I in no way regret the awesome group that it's become, I created Positive Thoughts because nothing like SGT existed at the time, and I was tired of having to manually filter each giveaway (or deal with, shudder, public giveaways).

After SGT, I've become a lot more comfortable with making non-group giveaways, and feel better about the site as a whole.

That's really unfortunate. I had someone cheat and enter two of my SGtools giveaways that had only minimal requirements. I'm disgusted that people would leak the link, and disgusted that people would cheat at that basic a level because the filter I used was essentially just level 1 without a level 1 minimum requirement (.01 real CV requirement, no reroll fodder).

I have had some leaks, but I haven't reported them either. I did track down some leakers (I'd say like 90% accuracy since, the only person on their Steam friendslist that had entered my SGtools link) and I asked them why they leaked, since I had only basic rules...
I did blacklist the leakers though, since the two I found refused to give me an answer ^_^

I had someone enter with 5 multi-accounts once- on a limited entry giveaway, past the limited entry cap [minutes before it ended, so there oughtn't have been time to post a leak, which combined with the low levels of 4 of the accounts, seemed to verify the multi-account].
If nothing else, SGT is great for catching stupid cheaters. :P

Also, leaked giveaway entry is not a punishable offense on SG, period. (Staff informed me they simply reroll and move on when a leak is reported).
So SGT taking a harsh view on it rather makes sense, since it's the only way we can actually deal with that kind of thing.

Could it be changed to something more "fair"? Maybe, though anything that clears through the cesspool of exploiters thriving on SG is a plus, by my perspective, even there's imperfection to it.

I feel like SGT is hijacking Steamgifts. I guess that is why Archi joined to support, it's doing a better job than his bot :P

Interesting. As far as I know, knsys implemented most if not all of those filters because of user requests, so I don't know how to judge the tool if it's just giving people the options to do what they want; however, some people have stupid and arbitrary requests (IT life T_T).

SGT just mimics all the rules people were setting for private invite events to begin with, it just makes the process more efficient and reliable.
If you view SG as a site that facilitates giveaways, then SGT is inherently intuitive to the process.
If you view SG as a site where "you need to freely give away games without restriction", then it's profoundly counter-intuitive.

Whether some settings are nonsensical or overly strict or whatever, I don't see how that matters in the least. I don't pay those filters any mind, and I still have tons of giveaways to enter and countless amazing games won on a regular basis.
SGT isn't harming me, and it's helping creators feel better about giving things away.
Let people behave the way they want to, so long as they're not going out of their way to actually hurt others. If it's what's comfortable for them, then that's okay by me.

If you think they're applying needlessly strict standards that aren't fair to their own wins, then remove those giveaways from your perception of their sent games and re-review their profile. If suitable, consider them a leecher at that point.
..no issues with leechers? Then why would we care about SGT?

There's no validation that these games would be given away otherwise.
Certainly, my own would not [though in fairness, I only use the Non-Act/Multi-Win and some very simple ratio requirements].

I don't get this hubris, that makes people think they know better than others about how giveaways ought be given away, beyond the scope of what a blacklist can already respond to.
It's the same argument that's made against blacklisting, whitelisting, and group giveaways, on a regular basis- and very often, by the same individuals.

If people (somehow) started applying their SGTools filters to other giveaways than their own, then yes, it goes too far. But so long as they don't, it's on them to determine what too far is.
Hell, SG itself allows you to use the region restrictions as a filter already, even if your game copy isn't actually region locked. How is that not the same thing as what you're describing?

For the most part, all SGT does is let you refine the filters SG already provides, expand expectations on rule-breaking for those not comfortable with SG's approach, and add in a few similar concepts like VAC ban filtering.

Sure, you can argue against that last bit, but again, why should we care if someone doesn't want to give to someone else?
We're not businesses, we're not obliged to serve everyone. If someone wants to be whimsical, or even an outright bigot with their filtering, then we just decide whether to blacklist them and move on.
If it's something outright abusive, that's for SG staff to consider, not us, same as any of the [sometimes dubious] rule enforcements on this site.

I respect your right to your sexuality, your religion, your giveaway preferences, your boat party invite list, whatever. I don't see why that's not a mutual thing..
Because SGT is 'harmful to the community'?
How, exactly?

Let's review: I do private giveaways because I feel secure in them now, because of SGT.
SGT filters based on public and private ratios/CV encourage me to do more private and public giveaways than I would otherwise [which is close to none].
Ergo, I'm going to counter the thus far unfounded sentiment others are promoting with the opposite: SGT is better for the community.

Could there be improvements, could SG integrate features, etc? Sure.
Do those things currently exist? No.
Take what we have and appreciate it, and don't force others to meet your expectations on things they should have the rights to set the rules for.

I mean, gosh. They're giving away freely, isn't that commendable, fairly nearly regardless of the specifics?
Not everyone has to take your approach to the site- appreciable as it may be, it's just not comfortable for many of us.

Much as I want to agree with your argument for the sake of hoping people aren't terrible and intentionally gaming the system, I don't want to make ignorance a get out of jail free card. That said, I'm still not sure I like the way bans are implemented; I preferred an earlier draft of the system with incremental strikes, but even that I'm not entirely sure about.

I'm not entirely sure, but I want to say that once the link is issued you cannot be banned for falling out of ratio; I haven't tested this, and I haven't checked with knsys, but if I understand how the system works it's impossible for the link to be revoked or your entry invalidated once you pass, which is why people try to game the system in another way with unactivated wins, by marking the giveaway "not received" and then trying to pass through. I think knsys said he found a way to block that, but again, he'd know better than I.

Can't top that. :3

+100000000 best answer EVAR.

I hate SGTools from the bottom of my heart

As most hardcore leeches do.

Some people, like me, are just kids who don't own any of those

If you're looking for a handout, maybe you should try somewhere else

I understand your frustration to some extent (though giveaway level requirements do the same thing and get much less hate, and VAC bans can prevent someone from playing the game to its fullest or indicate a contempt for rules/etc., though In think it's the hardest criteria to justify). However, SGtools can also be used for screening for rules violations with no other criteria, which doesn't seem to be an improper use of SGtools in your argument.

You're supposed to just gift it to someone who wants to play that game,

On other hand I see it as great way to stop part of population that enters everything possible. Or at least have provided something equal in value to community. Maybe not all users are equal worthy to win...

Make gib of a game no one has > use sgtools to make a DS3 gib with stupid requirements in the description > laugh to yourself as no one can enter it > cry as Archi kicks you for trolling :P.

SGT bans are needed, because without them people could post real links to giveaways left and right and nobody would even bother doing anything with it.

I remember when there weren't blacklists and instead people made a huge pastebin of blacklisted people. Not sure why that wasn't calling out, but would this be better: an anonymous googlespreadsheet with names + offences be made public, and then have a script that users could used to autoadd those reported users with different numbers of offences to their blacklists. The only issue is the blacklist limit, but it could give users even more control. (A thought from your report center thread and Twitter block lists).

The only issue about introducing a SGtools bans rule is that the decision to ban/unban people is rather contested in the forums. Even though those banned users can message the giveaway creator to get the link directly if they're deemed worthy, I don't see many people doing so for good reasons.

Are the SGT bans really needed though? The game will be rerolled and the infractor will potentially be blacklisted by the creator; isn't that enough punishment, especially when bans may come out of ignorance?

I understand your stance on filters but each of them has at least two perspectives. You can argue that ratio filters punish lucky people or you can view it as rewarding unlucky people. It is the same mechanic in both cases but has drasticly different meaning based on which point people view on it. Filters are just tools to automate and speed up giveaway making and control. Some of the giveaways wouldn't ever be made if there weren't tools for them.

My issue with the ban list is it can catch people who use the leaked link, but not the leaker. That's a shame, because I don't care if someone who can be rerolled free has the link, I care that someone leaked it, and the current system mainly punishes entrants. Don't get me wrong, I'm not crying over them getting banned if they've been warned and didn't care/read/have basic human decency, but I agree that the optional ban list idea is nice. Perhaps someone should suggest that to knsys...

for SGTools the ban list should at least be made optional with the default option being "not selected" and people should be able to make changes on the list.

Even that is not a good idea at all.
Imagine you'd get banned for no reason as it's so popular now, and half of the people will actually use the ban list in their rules... that means you'll not be able to join some GAs you have the right to join, until you go through the annoying process of providing proof to some dudes who are not even SG support, and they have the right to keep you in the list because they don't like your (lack of) proof. And if you try to make noise about it on forum, it will be you who gets all the blacklists because it's their word vs. yours, and you're the banned cheater and they're the good developers.
Even if you manage to get out of your unfair ban though, you'll never get back the time and nerves you lost while dealing with the shit you shouldn't have been dealing with in the first place.

There's a drama up above already. xD

It's always entertaining to see the same group of people picking on the same subjects all over again every other day.