I like the idea, but what you'll do with an issue: if somebody give a tradeable game (not key from the bundle) that was in a bundle?
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In other words, ALL giveaways of a game that is part of a bundle are treated the same. Unfortunately, this is practically unavoidable, because SteamGifts can't monitor the actual game transfer transaction to see if it's a bundle key or a tradeable inventory item being given to the winner.
This is a fair and reasonable compromise.
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Yeah, I found out by checking my new values, but Magicka isn't part of any bundles, my true value should be around 55 because of frozen synapse, but besides that I believe all of my giveaways should be in the clear
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They wouldn't.
If you could trust the receiver to tell the truth, you could ask them to state whether they received a key or a tradable gift. Other than that, there's no way of knowing. As someone who's given away giftable steam copies of "indie-bundled" games this is of interest to me. And of course, there's the possibility that any one of the non-games I've already given away could be included in a bundle in the future.
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You should be able to choose if its from a bundle or tradeable. Dont handle all shadowgrounds-giveaways the same for example, there are a few people who really buy the game and give it away here. It would be unfair to trade them like the ones who submitted free copies.
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Insta-Ban them, shouldfix this.
I mean I tought the same, add the "Gift", "Key from bundle" option when creating a giveaway and ban the one that was reported, or is so obvious (like now, yeah right a lot of ppl bought Rig N Roll and are giving it away, can't be more obvious), but it still will be exploited since poeple don't bother if they won a key from bundle .
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Well, he'd buy full game so it's not that big exploit (at least until "he then can give it to friend" part), but there are ideas about adding "received as key/gift" option, which would result in insta-ban for either giver (if he can't provide screenshot of his gift history) or reciver (if he can't provide screenshot of key) in those cases.
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What if I just showed you the same screenshot, with Amnesia (since that's the example cg used) at the end of the list? Or I took a new screenshot each time, but my inventory wasn't actually changing at all, because each giveaway was actually a key. How could you prove that I was NOT buying one copy at a time, every time, and taking a screenshot of that rather than taking a screenshot of the exact same copy of Amnesia every time I give away a bundle key?
And then there's the problem of if the winner marks it as "received as a key" **even though the gifter gave them a Steam inventory item. And screenshots can be manipulated. Your plan relies too heavily on digital screenshots.
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I really wonder how you're gonna show same screenshot of gift history (if someone would start many giveaways of same game then that would be required to prove you're not abusing the system), since with every giveaway it would change, wouldn't it?
And if winner would mark it as "received as a key" then gifter would only need to show gift history and voila, either he have giveaway sent and winner gets permaban or his gift history is empty which means he sent key.
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You're a genius cg! There's really no better way to say this.
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Mine will drop from $14.97 to $5.99 because two of the games i got from a four pack will be randomly devalued because they were in a bundle, which i didn't know until this moment
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Same boat for me. None of my games came from bundles but were released in bundles after I gave them here so I loose about the same.
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This I think would be the main issue with this change. There are new bundles coming all the time and we'll soon end up with most of the games becoming bundle games.
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I'm impressed, cg. I like this.
Not that they necessarily have a veto or anything, but have you made contact with any of the bundle organizers for their input on the problem and this solution? (Do they care if we break up bundle keys? etc.)
Edit: Value $611.14 ($611.14)
<strut>
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Good Point. This breaks Terms of Service of many bundles. Though, i suppose Steamgifts itself is not liable/responsible for those who break TOS.
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We should prohibit gifting bundle keys for those bundles that don't allow this.
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But that goes right back to the problems with the old policy -- nobody is going to listen, the number of complaints and reported giveaways is going to outpace the ability of the admin to respond (especially during peak times, like when those bundles are up for sale), and then the bitching about people abusing bundle keys and how this ruins the contributor system begins.
SteamGifts can't take liability for someone creating giveaways that violate a bundle's TOS except to simply remove the ability for every single game in those bundles from being given away period, and at that point you are making very real impacts on a publisher's sales numbers--not to mention Valve's cut of the sales.
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One question: Are contributor values going to be subject to arbitrary recalculation when, say, Humble Indie Bundle 27 comes out with Skyrim (I know Skyrim isn't indie, just go with it), and everyone's Skyrim giveaways are suddenly substantially different than they were? Or will this only apply going forward?
In other words, if I gave away a copy of Bastion on day 1 of its release, and then it later goes into a bundle -- if we assume that this proposed change was in place from the start -- would this retroactively lower my contribution value and possibly disqualify me for a contributor giveaway that I might've just barely qualified for? And if this happened, would I get my points back for that giveaway?
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Since Bastion's already been in a bundle, yes. And no, you'd still be entered into it and would have to manually remove your entry (or keep it in and hope the gifter is understanding).
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So, even if I made a giveaway for GAME-X the day SteamGifts launched for beta testing, and tomorrow GAME-X goes into a bundle, my contributor rank would be retroactively reduced? Hmm, I guess I can see that, although it seems to me like it'd be easy enough to process this based on the conditions at the time of the giveaway.
I'm just a little more concerned that I would be made to be responsible for revising my entered giveaways anytime a bundle was announced and caused a recalculation of the contribution values. Now, what I would be satisfied with is if a red bar came up, much like the "one of your giveaways has ended/you've won something" green bar, warning that a bundle forced contributor recalculations and I'm now deficient in one or more giveaways. At that point I'd at least be aware that something needs my attention, and if I win a giveaway with insufficient contributions, I can't say I wasn't warned (unless the timing was awful).
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it would be good to show a notice when creating a giveaway if the game is a bundle game.
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That value won't be lost, it will be unlocked with every "legitimate" new giveaway You make. What bothers me is that for example I could buy Orcs Must Die now and give it away, but some time down the line they release it in a bundle and poof goes the contributor value.
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sadly I don't believe there will be a perfect system for this...
one thing that could / should be considered though is the date the bundle was released - "bundle games" that have been gifted before shouldn't be affected by this...
otherwise the contributor values of some people might get "adjusted" unfairly over time, when new bundles arrive...
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To me that seems like the best fix and I don't get why they don't do that. If you gifted it before it was in a bundle it shouldn't count as though it's in a bundle later. Unlike some of the other requested fixes this is one they could do as they do store when a game was gifted.
For me this is already an issue as I loose most of my value for gifting games that weren't from a bundle but have since been released in bundles.
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This was being considered if I recall correctly. Zeroing out the value of everything after that date, but this also has it's own widespread set of problems in terms of handling it and implementing it (it's a stupid amount of work from what I understood).
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+1 for this. My updated score is $2.99, yet I'm unsure why. I have TR: Legend, Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light, and SpaceChem...SpaceChem is my only indie game, so it must be that, but I don't recall it being in a bundle.
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I like the idea, but I am wondering about one thing. If a game that had never previously been in a bundle is put in one, will this affect previous giveaways of the game?
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It's understandable that games like Faerie Solitaire and Dwarfs get counted in this new rule, though I think it would be good if developers are immune to this - maybe have something like Valve and Twitter do, where developers can verify their legitimacy (eg. provide proof).
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As it stands now, yes.
None of the games I've given were from bundles but were bundled later and if I check my updated value it reduces it.
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i don't care about my contributor value, but it would be great to be able to give away my duplicate bundle keys! it's unfortunate though that this affects people giving away a game before it gets added to a bundle or offered for cheap / free, or even after the bundle if they got it somewhere else that shouldn't be devalued. i think the first case you could do by tracking the bundle start dates and the giveaway end dates (so before the bundle would mean full value), but then you have to track all the bundle start dates.
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There should still be a way to gift Steam inventory instances of previously bundled games, and get properly credited for it.
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The only way I could see that working is if SteamGifts required that, if you are giving away a serial key and not a tradeable inventory item, you had to give the key in text to SG as escrow and allow it to automatically distribute it -- and that way, if someone received the key from the gifter and not SG, it'd be against the rules.
That way, the only "correct" way to receive a gift from a gifter directly is as a Steam inventory item. However, that comes down to the winner reporting the gifter, and given the number of entries any given giveaway got even when it was advertised as a bundle key, winners won't care. Reporting means less chances to win games, fuck the rules.
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Actually, come to think of it...
You know how that gigantic Faerie Solitaire giveaway by the devs actually delivered the key right to the wins screen of the winner? We could do that with keys.
The thing with that is that we have to do something about the flipside, which is when someone has just a key but says it's a real copy.
One first-line-of-defence idea would be to force people to declare a giveaway to be a key or a Steam inventory item in the giveaway creation screen, and then advertise this fact on the giveaway's page itself. This doesn't prevent the problem, but it does create a bigger chance that the winner might feel "cheated" if all they get is a key when they were promised a giftable copy.
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Oh! Anyone who claims he is giving an inventory item should link to an image of its existence in his inventory, which will be linked on his giveaway page allowing entrants to see it.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I somehow missed his big post underneath. Okay, bedtime!
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It's impossible as far as I can tell. For example, a few ideas, and why I do not think they'll work.
We setup a system to check user inventories. If they have the game in their inventory, their giveaway receives full value. How does it get exploited? Well, say I buy a copy of Amnesia and place it in my inventory. I could then easily give away a bundle key for Amnesia and fool the system. I could then trade it to a friend, and they could do the exact same.
Winners have the option to mark their received game as a Steam gift if it's flagged as a possible bundle key. We then have the issue of creators convincing people to inaccurately click the button, or asking their friends to click the button through group and private giveaways. As well, it's another option to confuse users, and we have a rather large audience that speak english as a second language.
You have the option to send the Steam gift to a moderator, who in turn send it to the winner. We have over 1,000 open giveaways right now (including group and private). This option isn't feasible, and asking moderators to hold hundreds of games in their account at once is a security issue. If a Steam accounts gets flagged for any number of reasons, the gifts from the community might be taken into question, and I'd rather not risk them.
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But it's always a bad idea to punish the honest people because of some scammers :/.
I'd support your second idea, that one with the checkbox. Of course there will be ways to circumvent this, but the damage to honest would be much smaller
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All my gifts was proper Steam Gifts, but my value going to be halved… Ok.
If I don’t buy and giveaway “big” games (supporting indie scene? yeah, right), I don’t “contribute” anything. How about dropping contributor’s giveaways? It’s one logical solution, then no one gonna bother with keys.
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You realise that when contributor giveaways were made, we had hundreds upon hundreds of legitimate giveaways, right? Bundle keys have always been an issue. Why do you think we had a policy against them?
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My understanding is, what is worse now, because contribution value is mean something besides inner economy. Am I wrong? And it seems that inner economy isn't important all of a sudden, because you can submit individual keys…
If there is no benefit from contributing value, who cares where it came from.
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But the majority of these bundle games comes from keys, so a date on the bundles games would be nice, so if you given away a bundle game BEFORE it became a bundle game, it has full price.
It sucks a bit to have some of your giveaways deflated because the game was added to a bundle...
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Love the idea. I would make one addition though, since the bundle games are being flagged, please make a warning appear explaining the rules and effect to users, when they are creating the giveaway. I can only imagine that if this isn't called out specifically, that there will be disgruntled anger. In this, i know people should read the rules, but this whole situation is being forced, because people are not currently reading the rules, or pretending to be oblivious of the rules for exploit purposes.
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Eh. Honestly, if you don't read the rules and bitch about something, the response in Support is going to be a diplomatic "tough shit."
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Doesn't this discourage making giveaways for indie games (that were on bundles) directly bought from steam though? The number of games that get in bundles keep growing.
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Yeah, but what about the aclaimed and great games?: Bastion, Amnesia, Psychonauts, Fortix, etc
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What about dungeon defenders, limbo, bastion, pixeljunk eden, it would discourage people buying those gems.
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Or we could make a box for "this is a bundle key" that is checked by default and let people uncheck it if they want to declare something is a Steam inventory gift.
And I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone who doesn't have too much random money lying around to think about both the games he/she likes and also the idea of bang-for-the-buck in gifting games that might be on sale.
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I'm pretty sure people would feel a bit scammed if they were promised a Steam inventory copy of a game and then the giver just passes them a key.
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Yeah, well taking away contributions from people who actually bought games to giveaway from steam doesn't seem like a good route to me.... a few people have posted saying the same thing, so I am not alone in this. I mean, I will deal with whatever happens and something does need to happen with the individual keys, but it seems like the ones being punished are the ones who actually bought the games outside the bundles.
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Isn't The Ship that game that gives you an extra copy of itself when you buy it?
Shouldn't its value be halved for that reason?
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Actually it gives you 2 gift copies when you buy it, 1 copy when you activate a gift copy. Either way, I still spent a good amount of money on it (much more than most of the bundle key people).
Plus getting into things being halved for certain reasons would bring up sales as well. I got 3 copies of "the ship" for a higher price than I could have paid for 3 copies of quite a few other games on sale. Probably best to leave that one alone.
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So...you buy one copy for yourself, and you get two gift copies, which you can then gift to two people, who can each activate it and get one more gift copy, which they can then gift to two more people, who can each activate it and get one more gift copy, and then...
...is this thing a fucking self-replicating machine?
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Pop-up windows work wonders for instances like that, I.E. If game = STEAMAPPID similar to Bundle Game ID HERE then js window to warn/politely ask to inform admins of inventory gift or bundle key. That way they had to click something AND then its bannable. plus for added security (time wasting) you could have admins/support verify these giveaways.
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"The number of games that get in bundles keep growing."
Heck yeah, this is a big problem with this plan. You've gotten some pretty big-name games in bundles now. And if you remember the Because We May sale, you would have noticed that you have to look hard to find a Steam game that hasn't been in a bundle somewhere before.
For those of us who really like indie games, this is a big problem.
And I know I've been hoping that Recettear, Chantelise, or Fortune Summoners gets put into a bundle sometime. Now sunddenly I'm wonder if I should hope it won't so that it will avoid getting the "bundle taint" and become a problem if I decide to gift it over SteamGifts.
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What happens if someone gifts a game that has been in a bundle, but the gift is not from a bundle--for example, it is in Steam inventory item form?
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+1. I'm totally in this situation right now. Maybe some kind of verification system, since so much good <$10 games have been featured in some bundle.
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I am also in this situation.
I've got Shadowgrounds pack as a gift in the winter sale, and now the value is being deducted as if this was part of a bundle.
This is so absurd.
If it is a game that is on a bundle, let the website check if it's in the gifts inventory (upon creation) an not deduct the value if it is.
Besides, cg, if you do choose to use your proposal, please make it effective from now and on (and not on previous titles, which cannot be checked whether they're from a bundle or not).
Thanks!
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The idea is actually not bad at all, but, I suppose, a list of "bundle games" is needed, cause now the calculations are far from transparent.
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I have no strong feelings about this one way or another, and will happily abide by whatever works best for the site and the admins. I also don't particularly care about my contributor level dropping, but I do feel like there might be an issue with the calculation.
Right now, I'm at $51.94, with an updated value of $38.35. I gave away Sol Survivor ($9.99), which understandably probably got decreased because of the groupees bundle and/or dev key giveaway. However, that's the only game I've given away that (to my knowledge) has been a standalone bundle game, so in theory that should have very little impact on my current level. What I'm guessing is happening is I'm also seeing a reduction on a couple of games I've given away that were in HIBs at one time such as Psychonauts, but that never had separable keys. Psychonauts was never available as an individual indie bundle key, so any individual copy of it would have to have been ok under the old system. I don't know if that's anything worth looking into?
[edit]: Actually, the Amnesia example in the OP is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. It's only ever been available in a bundle as part of a collective key, so should standalone Amnesia giveaways see a reduction?
Like I said, not upset about the drop in any way, just throwing it out there for consideration. Thanks for the continued effort, cg and others!
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Hmm, that's a great idea: Differentiate between "collective" bundle keys and "individual" bundle keys. Collective keys are ones that add several games at once; you can really only give them all in one bunch. Individual keys, on the other hand, add one game at a time.
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That's a good point. However, I could see users trying to exploit the system going that route. For example, they have a key that activates a few games, including Psychonauts. Although they do not own an individual key, they create the giveaway under Psychonauts, and after it ends, tell the winner they not only receive Psychonauts, but a couple of other games as well for free by using the key. They winner gladly marks it received, and they get full value for a bundle giveaway.
Edit: Since you mentioned Amnesia, please click here. You can see a large spike in Amnesia giveaways directly after the Humble Bundle went live. It was only a collective key, but obviously a large number of users posted them under the individual game.
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True, true. Damn crafty abusers. :P I suppose if there were a system that perfectly addressed every situation and was immune to abuse, it would have been in place long ago. The one outlined in the OP sounds like as fair a system as I've seen, with the least room for abuse, so I'm all for it.
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Similar to this, will you adjust the value of the bundles, Gala especially, to account for the change? I have several Gala's I'm waiting to give, many being Gala 5 with 12 games. The bundle itself is worth 6some however if I give away the individual keys (there are 8) I would at a bare minimum get 2 dollars more value (at one dollar per game and obviously it would be more depending on what games there are). I don't care either way as I got them to give, just an observation that might have some people doing more bundle keys especially if their contributor value will allow it. (Sorry if this is hard to read or written badly I work nights and am exhausted.)
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Even so, Amnesia cost $20 on the steam store and $1 for a steam key from the HIB. That's still a 95% sale. Show me any game or bundle that went on 95% during the Steam Summer Sale.
I reported all suspicious Amnesia giveaways when HIB5 was live and shortly after because not many people would have thought people would have exploited a collective bundle key (or they didn't think it was exploitable), when in fact it was more exploitable because of the lack of vigilance concerning it.
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You're right that games are generally not discounted to 95% off, but a darn lot of them are discounted to 75% or even 80% off, and you always get a bunch of giveaways made when something's on sale. What about that?
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I think you're taking the long light on what I am getting at. I'm just saying that people shouldn't treat Amnesia giveaways as always being giftables, and assuming it's not a key just because Amnesia was available only as a collective bundle key :P
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Oh so Psychonauts do count? I've given away 2 copies and actually exactly during HIB V, 'cause I felt there is no reason to hold onto them as most people I know will prolly get it. I actually asked support if it is okay to make those giveaways.. Now I suppose yah, people could misrepresent the stuff like it happened with Ironclads, sigh. So Psychonauts and Amnesia get the boot too.
Ah well by the looks of it it's still less than 20% of my other contributions because I don't see any effect on my value.
Seeing the whole list of games on the index would be a good option.
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Hey everyone, it's no surprise we've been struggling with bundle keys lately, and we're bouncing a lot of ideas back and forth. One suggestion is below, and we're curious to hear what people have to think.
Proposed changes to contributor values
Bundle games, and those freely available at one time or another (Ex. Shadowgrounds), will only add a maximum of 20% to a user's non-bundle contributor value. For example, if a user has submitted $50.00 in non-bundle games, they would have a cap of $10.00 (20% of $50.00) for any bundle games submitted. Therefore, if they submit $10.00 or $10,000.00 in bundles, their contributor value would reach a maximum of $60.00. To further demonstrate, a few scenarios are below.
User #1
Previous value: $119.95. New value: $119.95. They receive full value for Amnesia due to the amount of non-bundle games they have contributed.
User #2
Previous value: $39.98. New value: $23.99. The value of Amnesia drops from $19.99 to the max of $4.00 (20% of the Counter-Strike value) since their non-bundle contributions are quite low.
User #3
Old value: $69.95. New value: $23.99. Same as the above, the max of 20% is reached, so it cannot increase any further through bundle games.
User #4
Old value: $29.98. New value: $0.00. With zero contributions not from bundles, their contributor value remains at zero.
How will this affect your contributor value
Add /update to the end of your profile URL, and you'll see a new contributor value in brackets, next to your existing one. This reflects the updated value, limiting bundle giveaways to 20%. This will have no affect on the vast majority of our users, and only begins to adjust values on those that have submitted a higher than usual amount of bundle games.
Proposed changes to what can be submitted
Lately, the rules are difficult to understand. Certain bundles can only be submitted at given times, and there are over 100 individual bundle games. Users submitting individual bundle keys, whether on accident or on purpose get a bad reputation, and it's the cause of countless arguments. It creates a lot of confusion and brings a negative feel to the entire community, which completely goes against what we're trying to accomplish. The above changes would mean anything can be submitted at any time, and the site will automatically keep contributor values in line. If someone enters a $120 contributor giveaway, you know a minimum of $100 is coming from non-bundle games.
Feedback
No changes have taken place yet. At the moment we're looking for feedback from the community to decide on a fair approach. Please post your thoughts below. Thanks!
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