Contact the individual who supplied the key first. Let them know. They may just contact support themselves.
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Contact the one who sent it, yes. He has to provide you a working one.
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Because that's reserved for when you aren't able to work out an amicable resolution within the 7 day window that the gift giver has to send you a key.
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But he already sent him a key :D
not working key = not received
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Regardless, the giveaway creator still has 7 days to provide a working key. Most likely it's just a misunderstandment and can be sorted out. Besides, you can't even mark it "not received" before the 7 days are passed.
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he could have made a typo, and it is stated in the site rules that you have to give the creator 7 days time to provide a working key, if he desides to give 6 days strate a troll key and the 7th the real one, he is allowed to do so.
It isnt smart, but he has 7 days the time to give the correct key, and if it isnt resolved yet, both parties can agree that they wait longer, if they want
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not working key = not received
That's false. If you fail to communicate that the key isn't working, and you mark it as not received, then you'll be the one risking a negative outcome, one which may even run the possibility of a (potentially permanent) suspension for misuse of giveaway feedback. Always leave a comment that the key isn't working in the giveaway. If you've been blacklisted since the giveaway ended, send a support ticket via the "Other" category instead.
[To be clear, my interpretation is that Support won't make any extreme assumptions on such things, but them getting repeated reports claiming that you're mismarking keys (due to GA creators having to assume such by your silence on the matter) may see them eventually making those assumptions regardless, given the risk to other site users if the claims are valid. Either way, not something worth risking, just for the sake of not wanting to have to interact with the GA creator. Of course, as a less extreme outcome, you still have the more immediate potential risk of ending up having to take a Non-Activation on the game, depending on how staff decides the matter should go.]
Much like how the GA creator has to prove to support that they attempted to contact the winner and provide them the game before they're allowed a reroll, winners have their own minimum obligation to communicate their attempts to receive the game. Support can't magically know what the situation is, so it's important to leave them something to review- else they may have to guess at the situation based off whomever contacts them about it first, and that could go very poorly for a non-communicative winner, given that they're in the more vulnerable position there.
In short, when using the site:
1. Communicate
2. Be Respectful
3. Don't be a dick
4. Don't talk about Blacklists- wait, no, I think that's supposed to be #1, hang on, can I rewrite this list?
5. Don't be a dick
I think that covers it!
But, really- for your own sake, staff's sake, and for the sake of being respectful to the other party, always communicate when an issue pops up.
To be clear, the dick comments aren't directed at you, just toward site behaviors in general.
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+1 for lawls.
But this is a serious post; thank you for the very detailed response to better explain my point <3
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You just made double negation on "don't be a dick"? So it should be true? :thinking:
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Double negation occurs when two negatives are multiplied against one another.
In this situation, the separated lines indicate addition, and the statements in question are absences rather than negations.
To put that more clearly:
Be a dick: X [Positive]
Don't be a dick: 0*X [Absence]
Be the opposite of a dick: -X [Negative]
Removing a property doesn't necessarily entail that the opposing property will take that property's place- which is to say, someone not being a dick (let's say, responding to a question you asked by insulting you) doesn't mean they're going to do something positive by default (like offer you a constructive response to your question).
Ergo, no double-negation. Just repeatedly multiplying dickery by zero in the hopes that one of the attempts will actually stick.
And now, before you cover me in fire for ruining your jest, I offer you this:
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I will forgive you. This time
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just contact the giveaway creator by writing a comment stating your problem in the correpoding giveaway.
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Contact the guy and remember to take screenshots, if he refuses to give you a new key or talk it out then contact support with the screenshots as proof.
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True, you can just mark as "not reiceved" and don't have to contact support, less headaches for both you and support.
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But the polite thing to do would be contacting the GA creator, maybe he/she made a typo with the key, you wouldnt know untill you ask...
Had it a few weeks ago, key didnt work, contacted creator, and he saw that there was a mistake within the key,
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Wow so many answers in so little time, thank you all^^
So I'll just send a friend request to the guy and wait
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I'll second that. Putting it in a comment in their giveaway is a bit less intrusive, and support can instantly see what's going on too if they get involved.
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This, if you work with steam chat you need to make screenshots from the entire conversation, upload and provide links to support.
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Comment in the giveaway instead, as others have said.
Always comment first. Its already kinda tacky and invasive going directly to the gifter with a friend request (or commenting on their profile) to put the issue right on their doorstep, as if their intended kind-gesture requires such urgent remedy.
Moreso, it comes off pretty sketchy trying to communicate something so simple in private---as if there's some sort of negotiating or bartering to be done at that point, and rushing any examination. It's already way more convenient and less imposing to post in the relevant giveawa'sy comments---which are simultaneously visible to the public, yet effectively private since only interested parties bother checking (you, gifter, mods, others asked for input).
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Also, if you marked the GA as "received" be sure to remove that, but don't mark as "not received" until the 7-day wait period has expired.
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ideally it shouldn't have been marked yet, because you are supposed to do it after activation, not that everyone does that...
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Ideally, yes. But some mark "received" because they received a key. I put in a suggestion once about changing the column name to "activated". I think it's much more descriptive.
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Same thing happened to me and it's my first time winning a GA q.q. I contacted the guy and waiting for his response.
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this is the correct thing to do, had last a ga that didnt work either, contacted creator that he maybe made a typo, he looked at it again and I was right :)
Wish you good luck with resolving the issue !
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Adding a GA creator on Steam, unless it becomes an absolutely necessary last-ditch effort to contact them (ie, because they haven't been on the site at all since the giveaway ended, and the 7 days have passed), or they've explicitly told you you should, is an action that is considered by many users to be very rude and intrusive [think of it like circling someone's house, banging on their windows, when they don't answer the door. If you don't have an urgent need to do that, maybe don't do that].
In any case, your best bet is always to leave a comment in the giveaway- that's generally the best place to contact GA creators, and it's generally the first place staff looks when reviewing the circumstances of a giveaway. Staff can't really do anything about the matter, so there's really no need to contact them unless you've gotten blacklisted (and thus can't leave staff an indication of the situation by commenting on the giveaway). After the 7 days, if you still haven't gotten a response, then you can try leaving a message on their steam profile or attempting to add them as a Steam friend, without needing to be worried about it coming across as rude.
Mostly, just be patient and respectful and direct, and don't stress. Most of the time, key issues are just honest mistakes which are easily resolved.
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reply in the giveaway and let the guy know the key is bad, easier than friending.
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Sometimes I really wonder what the thought process is.
"Hey, the key I got is not good. Now, there is a comment section for the concerned giveaway, where the creator will see my message thanks to SteamGifts's message alert system. Or, I can just use a completely different site, try to make a contact there out of the blue, and tell them my woes in a chat system that does not save any logs for future reference. Yep, totally going for the second route."
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just two give my two cents from the creator side:
In one of my first GAs i gave away the same game multiple times and how it later turned out, I sent out the same key twice due not checking after copy&pasting in the creation process.
Anyway, the second winner was not able to redeem the (duplicate) key but never contacted me about the issue (no contact, no friendrequest, nothing). After a couple days of me having seen him to have looked at the key i tried to get in touch with him and kindly asked why he didn't mark it as received or if there's an issue.
Only then he told me that it was a duplicate key, i checked with the other GA's, saw he was right and sent him the left over (unused) key and excused myself for this mishap.
I think he would have marked it not received after the 7 day period, but I think we're all people and sometimes mishaps just happen. Just give him the chance to straighten the issue out and drop him a little comment in the GA so he knows that something is not right.
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Another opinion - try to put yourself on a place of the giveaway creator. You just want to do good, so you share something with the community, and it just happens so one of your keys doesn't work. And instead of having a good and noble time of sharing (even if it's 1$ bundled games), you have to go through "GIVE ME WHAT'S MINE FOR FREE OTHERWISE YOU GET SUSPECTED" hell. How would you feel about this whole situation? Would you ever want to take a risk and contribute anything ever again? It sucks, and there's no good way out for everybody, so when this happened to me, I just picked the lesser evil and agreed for the giveaway to be removed. Once again - doing "bad" for someone's good intentions might ruin the community.
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I just picked the lesser evil and agreed for the giveaway to be removed.
But to do that the GA creator must know that the key was duped and ask for the GA to be deleted... So you have to contact him never the less.
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Yes, that's exactly what happened. I added him on steam and we sorted it out in favor of removing the giveaway. I wrote something like "I'm agree for this giveaway to be deleted" on the giveaway page. The point is - he didn't know that the key was already used, no one in this world creates such giveaway, no one wants problems, it's always like 3rd party problem, which as I said, if handled poorly - will be problmes, hate and lost nerves for everyone. Just let it go.
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I don't want to be rude at all, I just don't know what to do in this situation.
The first thing I did was to send a friend request to the giveaway creator on Steam, he was online here on steamgifts and on steam so he should have seen the friend request immediately (at least, I would have seen it) but in three days he hasn't accepted yet. I also have sent another friend request yesterday but still no response, maybe he just refuse any random friend request (as many steam users do, we all hate the fake scammer profile) and I don't want to spam the request (don't even know if the friend request pop up if someone ignore it after the first time) so after some comments on this post I even wrote on the giveaway page (I would never have thought about it, thanks to who suggested it ^^ ) but still no response :c
I don't want to write a comment on his profile until the very last day, it seems a really intrusive and angry thing to do, this would really appear as something like "hey you MUST give me the game I WON THAT >:C" (like you said), I'm really grateful to that guy but I really don't know what to do so I'll just wait 4 more days
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Trust me - I know how you feel. The first time, I believe, is always the same for everybody. I was lucky to have a quick response in time, maybe that was the thing, that really made it work out between us - the giveaway creator was concerned about the whole thing even more than I was.
Yes, I see - your case is a bit different, no response is probably the worst, coz it's making you think about it everytime you visit steamgift. Ouch. Yeah, maybe my way of friendly settling it down doesn't really apply here.
Honestly, I don't know what should be done in this lack of communication case. That's really sucks. I can only wish you to not stress too much about it, and good luck!
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sometime when we get a key from websites they give us bad keys so support will change the key less then 2 hour this is happend to me b4
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I just won a giveaway but the key I was given has already been used, what should I do now?
I have to contact the guy who send me the key? The support? 🤔
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