To summarize.
The problem is not giving away the game, as it shouldn't matter for SG what you are doing with the game after you won it. That is my take on this.
The problem is when you can join other giveaways of the same game after winning it. Issue raises when there is no hard-coded stop sign for people who already won something and want to join same game again.
After this small patch it really shouldn't matter if you trade the game to a friend who doesn't have SG account. It is YOU who won it and your friend didn't affect the chances of other people in the giveaway by any means.
There is also second issue with getting high contribution count with won games. This one would actually be more tricky to solve, as you cannot block a person from giving away one exact game after they've won it (it is hard to verify if they are giving away won copy or bought one).
Still, this rule isn't there to stop me from giving away won game because nobody cares what I do with it unless I am trying to get it for the second time or to make another giveaway with it ON the site.
Am I missing something?
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As a community, we DO care what you do with the game. The spirit behind the site is that people who wish to share games can do so with people who will enjoy them. It's a small step from what you did to trading a game you receive, or straight up selling it for cash. Because like you say, we have no idea what you did with the game afterward.
The program may not "care", but I promise you that, in general, we DO.
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You're missing a lot of "something"s.
First is a matter of odds. As explained before, every time you enter a giveaway you lower the chance of everyone else winning it. This website is built on the idea that you have to select what you want to enter, based on which games you'd REALLY like to win, not enter everything. The whole "give it to a friend" thing means that there's suddenly 2 or more people running towards the same goal. You effectually raise your chance of winning by 100, 200, nx100%, while lowering everyone else's chances by just a little bit more.
You might say "well, I'm still the one entering, what does it matter?". Well, simply put, if people are allowed to give away gifts it allows people pooling resources and subverting the very nature of this "game". Get one friend and set it up so you both enter giveaways for certain key titles. You've now doubled your chances of each of you winning the titles you wanted. This gets worse the more people are added into the "group".
You're probably thinking, that it doesn't matter in giveaways with roughly +3k people. It does. Sure your odds aren't fantastic, but they're a hell of a lot better than anyone else's. 0.067% chance to win might not seem like a big deal, till you realize everyone else's is 0,033%, roughly HALF of yours. Now imagine what happens when that number grows.
Second, there's an issue that people usually donate games through this site so people can enjoy the game they're giving away. That's what they get out of this. How shitty would you feel if you gave a gift someone only for them to turn around and re-gift it to someone else the next second? Exactly.
This is to say nothing of how muddy things would get as people would simply start trading away gifts.
The site shouldn't have to baby sit you. Your complaint that "the site let me enter!" is a shameless attempt to redirect guilt/causality locus. "I didn't fuck up, the site let me fuck up! It's the site's fault!". You can't say you weren't aware that you had already entered and won a DotA 2 key. You clearly were. You didn't slip and accidentally give the first DotA2 away, then accidentally fall into more DotA2 giveaways.
In short, you fucked up. Man up.
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You see, what I wrote was naive in the fact I neglected abusive use of won gifts. I am just like this, always full of optimism for people's behavior.
What you have written is probably more close to being true though, as many people in this world are rotten fruits.
The state I am right now is I did it because I was going with the feeling I am not doing anything wrong.
Now, I understand almost all of your points, especially the one about me trying to "redirect guilt". And I know it will continue to look like this, but it is not.
What I am trying to do is getting overall feel of how stuff works here, and why it works like this. And to be honest, you are helping a lot.
The only thing is not valid is you going for this "doubling chances" explanation. I will fall back to fair use of your gift, no setups. If you are the only one attempting to get the game, it will not increase your chances by any means if you give the game to close friend of yours. No way, agree?
The thing with this site is all about making people happy, basically. You put a game out, someone who wants it wins it.
If you give your game to the winner, you are happy by giving it away. You will be sad if one of these happens:
The most though is what people lack, not the site and I can get it (thus this specific rule).
On the end, what I did wrong was entering Dota 2 giveaways after winning and giving away the first one. The fact I tried to get another copy was bad, not the fact I gave away the first one to a person not even related to the site.
And to top that, the person I knew at the time was even more happy with the gift than I would ever be. Isn't this exactly what this site is about? I guess you've even said this. I will address it directly:
"Second, there's an issue that people usually donate games through this site so people can enjoy the game they're giving away. That's what they get out of this. How shitty would you feel if you gave a gift someone only for them to turn around and re-gift it to someone else the next second? Exactly."
You see, I don't have problem with person giving the game to close friend of his, because all I care about is for the game to go into good hands who whats it and who's better in judging if not friend itself.
It is absolutely valid. How it looked for me I was quite without the fate but still with strong will to play the game. But on the exact moment I won I was all about doing something nice. So I gave it away to a friend spontaneously and I still don't care about rules on the SG, as there is a difference in real life and internet life. And I didn't abuse anything by doing so.
The thing I failed at is going for second copy (because obviously I wanted to play with my friend after all). This was not okay but on the other hand could be fixed VERY easily. And this is what I care about.
I can be banned for the cost of these fixes making its appearance here on SG.
I hate excusing myself because I know what matters in life. Most of the time I am right in my choices but sometimes everyone will fail at something. And what I do when it happens to me is trying to get proper knowledge out of it and most definitely not trying to just excuse myself.
I cannot care less about being banned on the internet site if in the process I can even make it better.
tl;dr - nope, read it ; )
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You're still missing the point. The reason the community expects the winner of a giveaway to actually claim it is because in the past there have been people with multiple accounts entering for giveaways thus creating many entries and being unfair to others. What I understand from this is that you entered the giveaway, won and gave it to a "friend". Regardless if the friend is a person or just another account, its still unfair to the 643 other people who entered the giveaway. I don't think an exception should be made since its easy to come up with a reason of why the game isn't on your account and thus it can be exploited. It would be lucrative, but still possible to undermine the rules.
I'm sorry if this did in fact happen and you did give the game to a friend. However, you've been a member for 9 months and should know the rules by now. You should also see that your argument can be used by others to exploit the system.
TL;DR Should've read the rules. I have zero tolerance for not claiming gifts, regardless of the reason.
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The issue here is trust. If everyone was allowed to pass on games they've won to friends who would enjoy it more, how could this be verified? While you may be a very trusting person, a lot of people are not and there are a lot of people willing to deliberately abuse the system. I do believe that you did give your game to a friend, but exempting you from the rule would only be a precedent for future incidents.
The most important thing to remember is that gifters of this site are not forced to give away games, they do it from their generousity. So if you are going to participate in a giveaway, you should follow all the rules (even if you think they are crazy) or otherwise just not enter at all. You don't lose anything by not entering.
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Giveaways Entered
1,129
Gifts Won
0
You are my hero, your persistence is top notch!
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I care. How do we know he didn't just trade it away and re-enter? Take his word on it?
This is why it's a rule that you must redeem any game you win.
Edit: Not saying thats a reason to be harsh to the man about it... Just that your comment is like saying "fuck the law, as long as you don't get caught" when in reality it affects everyone else.
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Actually, even I will not agree with you ; )
Winning same game twice is abuse which I failed to realize.
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First of all, that kind of behaviour is very disrespectful to the gifter(s) and why would you even enter a giveaway for a game you're not interested in? Give someone else a chance instead, someone who would actually play it.
Btw two of my winners traded away their games and now they're banned, i have zero tolerance when it comes to this
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I wrote pretty long post slightly above that explains it.
I will make short version for you.
SG is about making people happy.
Now, I am joining giveaways on the internet giveaway site that cares about games going to right hands.
I will only join game giveaways I know I am interested in (as I always did, because I wanted Dota 2 pretty badly).
And after like three months of waiting I won it, I was happy. But I have strange character, I like to be nice and I know my friend wants this game even more than I do. I didn't think about internet site rules when it came to real life. Who would do this? I just gave it away and I know it went into good hands.
And it is exactly what this site cares about, nothing else.
Rules are to drive you through the site but honesty is where they don't even need to exist. I agree there is lots of corruption in life and you need rules. But any smart man on earth will not fail to realize rules are only a guidance for honest people and punishment for rotten fruits.
The thing about me is I am extremely honest. This whole topic is the outcome of it. When I don't understand something I just ask. And I do not escape from possible outcome. The worst that could happen I could be banned from internet site and I will gain some knowledge on the way there. Damn, I could even help make this site even better, so I will go for it.
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If this flies, we'll see more threads like this. How'd we know if someone was lying and won with a dummy account?
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People have discussed the possible rule-based application of this at length, but I think your self-victimizing attitude needs to be taken down a peg on the moral side side of things.
If you were as extremely honest as you claim, you would not have disrespected the gifter and taken advantage of his generosity. In life, when someone gives you a present, you keep it because it meant something to them as well when they gave it to you. You did this fully knowing that they would remain ignorant of this 'transaction', not having the very decency to at least TELL them of this. But of course, you wouldn't do them even that kindness, would you? It's your gift now, you're entitled to do what you want with it, right?
We like to think of steamgifts as this generous charity machine that gifts complete strangers games they would otherwise not be able to play, but that's not completely true. See, it's still a community at the end of the day, and being a part of that community means something to everyone to. Exploiting its kindness by giving its fruits to outsiders, i.e people who might not share that sentiment at all, is a breach of trust that this community's members share with each other.
I don't know you or your friend, but I'll always have that inherent trust that someone on this site who gives games away out of nothing but kindness for others is a good person. Someone who gives out of other's pockets is a leech who feeds on their kindness and claims it for their own. You very well denied the original gifter of even the small solace of knowing the person who received their gift was thankful. That the person may not have felt entitled to this game simply as an extension of your friendship, but overjoyed that a stranger cared enough to make another person in the world just a little bit happier.
Did you do the gifter the honor of even conveying this thanks to him, or did you simply think that would stupidly draw attention to the rules too?
You say you're honest, but everything you've said so far seems to contradict that. Perhaps if you'd have called yourself dishonest, I might have been more inclined to believe you.
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Very well said, JustOrdinary.
In his (LoginError's) favor, though, you must admit that he was honest enough to expose this issue to us before actually getting banned or receiving any sort of warning, so I'm guessing he noticed his mistake and willingly claimed it to the SG community. I wouldn't go as far as blaming him to be dishonest but, as you said, self-victimizing? Absolutely.
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Xarabas, you are a SG hero in many ways and I would vote for you to be President for the honor of you sharing your wisdom to the world.
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I got Portal 2 during the xmass crafting craze... traded it for Dota 2 and gave it away to a "friend"(one of those guys you got on your friendlist but you dont really talk to) because I had promised him I would get him the game when he saw I had the beta.
2 days later Valve gave me a beta key on my 2nd account. I traded it for Trine 2 and Xotic, 2 games I was really interested in... And then I noticed Trine 2 ran 10 times worse than the 1st one and I had to uninstall both of them because they were unplayable on my PC :(
Karma is a bitch.
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If your friend wanted Dota 2 so badly, he could've easily made an SG account. I know you didn't have malicious intentions, but I wouldn't side with you in this case.
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I have brought this up before. For (at least) my giveaways, if the games are legitimately used for those who want it than I couldn't care less. For instance, if someone won one of my games, and decided his/her girlfriend/boyfriend would enjoy it more, I see no problem in gifting it to them, I am happy my gift went to someone who wanted it. Now it is different if they trade it for something else, that is just disrespectful and tells me you only did as a means to an end and did not care at all about the game I bought and gave away.
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At (unfornately) 32, I have experienced some things that make me question my trust about people. My experiences however have not yet swayed my inherent trust of people. Retail has destroyed my belief that they (the human race) are considerate, caring, and that they believe everyone should have an equal chance and nobody is better than anyone else.
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When you join a community, whether it be a country, a job, or a web site, you accept their rules of conduct, whether you agree with them or not. Your ignorance of the rules is irrelevant. Once you join a community it is pressumed you have informed yourself with those rules. If those were the country rules, you can be put to jail, beheaded or whatever, because YOU joined the community and therefor YOU are subject to their rules. Not knowing the rules is dissrespectful to anyone in that community you have joined. Conclusion, your action is against the rules of this community, the penalty is ban. Nothing more, nothing less. I am not in favour of this rule. I'd love to win some games for my younger brother and sister. But I can't and I wont, because it is against the rules.
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Lots of good points given already. I would also add that by giving away your wins, you will bypass any requirements to that giveaway. For example a giveaway that is aimed for contributors. By winning this and giving it away to someone else, who do not meet the requirements, one is disregarding the wish of the giver to give a game for particular type of people.
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Since the site is free to use, it makes no sense for your mate not to use it. Meaning he could have won the DoTA2 first hand rather than via you.
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Another wave of great points here.
I guess it is easy to prove on individual basics who got the game (as I can provide my friend's profile and I believe there is a history of his account which would match the day or day after I won the first giveaway).
Damn, I can even invite you guys to talk on TeamSpeak (but my spoken english is a bit worse, just saying ; ), as we often hang out there.
The point somebody mentioned though is for it to be easy to check on massive scale. That's probably a lot harder, and now I get why you are all telling me it wouldn't be possible and thus the rule.
The other thing lots of people mention is "he could just join the site". Yes, but as I said it was spontaneous by me so it is not the case here, alright? He didn't know the site, he didn't join same giveaway to double the chances, he is just playing this game...
Now couple words to @3VIPER13.
How I take on it is a bit more harsh, but thats only because I just woke up ; )
I know about following rules, but these are not orders. As you said and I will agree with it, every kind of action you take which involves other people may yield in appropriate consequences.
Now, if you happen to brake a rule, you can choose one of two sides. You can try to hide or openly admit something went wrong. If you do the latter most of the time you will get i.e. shorter sentence.
And we are talking about jail time for serious stuff in real life, not mistake on the internet giveaway community based site.
Here you can get one of three solutions. I will be either completely excused, denied access to SG temporarily or permanently. Which one I think is appropriate? Probably the second one, as excusing my action would (as someone mention) be used as some kind of precedent. On the other hand permanently banning someone who is sincerely trying to make SG better is bad choice (this is my opinion).
I think I am done, as I guess I got wide enough spectrum of opinions via this topic to just let go and simply wait for outcome.
On the side note
It was kinda funny to listen to all of you, as some are very harsh in their "follow the rules" thing.
To them I will tell that life is never black and white and believe it or not, following something without second thought yielded in WW2 back in the day.
Actually, same goes for people who believed me without any proof.
Life is also a corrupted place and you have to constantly question controversial topics.
You need to ask for proofs to properly judge individual case and so far both sides of this wide spectrum of opinions failed to realize. But that is the internet and I knew it when I started this topic.
Thanks for this discussion anyway, I will be going now.
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Life generally is black and white. The only reason you don't see it as such is because you clearly find it acceptable to bend the rules to see you fit. Rules are there to stop people abusing systems which happens frequently and left unchecked would go crazy because people are greedy. You knew the rules signing to the site. You could have invited your friend to join SG and bid on the games he wanted to win just like you and you shouldn't even THINK of entering games without wanting to play the game because to be frank, you're simply just sticking up 2 fingers to everyone else entering and the giver by wanting it for greed or to pass along.
As for coming forward and admitting something.. Here in UK people admit to crimes for a lesser sentance, not because they saw their actions were wrong and it seems to me this is all you have done. Not that i mean to be harsh towards you or hostile, but please don't try go for the sympathetic route when some of these people you could have screwed out of the chance of winning.
My boyfriend does the giveaways, we have seperate accounts and bid on games we want on our own accounts and not for each other. It's not exactly difficult.
Don't abuse the system further please, it's not fair to.. anyone really.
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= Success?
LET'S FIND OUT.
P.S. - They should make you read the rules before you can do anything. (Or maybe they already do and people still don't read the rules.)
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Rules are put there by people. Rules are arbitrarily made by someone, and said to be correct. A really random example, incest. It is horribly frowned upon, it is Illegal, and there is no absolute good rule about it. It has been proven that it does not in any way increase the likelihood of genetic defects. Bye this, I would argue that nothing is only black and white.
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I'm sure there's grey area somewhere that can be found, but this is fairly cut and dry. Relating this to the larger problems of subjective morality is out of the scope of this discussion, especially when comparing following a site's rules with following tyrannical governments to world wars. I mean, you might as well be invoking Goodwin's Law.
Btw, pleased to be explaining as to what you mean, very specifically by "It has been proven that it does not in any way increase the likelihood of genetic defects. "
Also, did you mean to reply to the person above me? The person who said life was black and white?
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TL;DR: Won DoTA 2, gave to friend (against site rules). Won DoTA2 again. Asking why is it against rules to give away the 1st DoTA2.
TL;DR for TL;DR : Won DoTA2. Broke rules. Won DoTA2
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so many still want dota 2 steam should release it sooner
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how do u expect them to know that u didnt trade it instead of giving it "away"
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I will go with the majority on this one.. If you do the Crime you have to do the Time.. Send him to Jail as a good start of the Month!
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There is one thing that I forgot to write in my post on first page.
In case this guy does not get banned by admins, this will be a message to everyone, saying rules are there just for fun and you are welcome to do whatever you want (if you can do this then you can have multicounts, trade won, gift fake, gift bundle keys, etc.). Just be sure to open a thread in the forums explaining your situation and saying you did something wrong, but that it is not important that you did something wrong since you didn't mean anything bad by breaking the rules and you even haven't read the rules in the first place. Then explain how you didn't break the rules at all, and that the rules are wrong, giving you unjustice.
By doing this, you don't get banned and everyone can happily live everafter in the community of SteamAnarchy...I mean SteamGifts. (the bad definition of anarchy of course)
I hope the admins are smart on this one.
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Hmm interesting. Summary:
This guy's thread is open for 2 days. Mods alraedy replied to it and the guy is still not banned. And I mean: I friend of mine is instant banned for logging in with his girlsfriends account (well deserved, if you're dumb, you need a punishment :b) & he sais that the mods don't even reply anymore. But this here is much to suspicious to be a normal banhammer thread....
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Hi.
To start this of, I am a nice and kind person. I like to help people and I think of myself as of very reasonable guy.
I was highly interested in Dota 2 invite, so lately I entered Dota 2 giveaway and my arguable luck gave me the win, thus the game.
What's the case then? Well, I gave it away to my friend who had friends to play with because I figured I had like two other games to finish and wouldn't have time to focus on Dota 2 right now (but I still wanted to play the game in the future, so I was joining Dota 2 giveaways to get another one). And also, he is a big fan of these types of games so I made him a nice surprise by doing so. And he was very happy too.
What happened today though is what I would call the Karma. I won another Dota 2 key, this one was supposed to be mine so I can join my friend and play together with him.
But I suddenly realized it is against the rules of SG. So my question is why exactly, as I'm failing to understand why would it be. I mean, I am not abusing the site. This guy - my friend - is a busy man with passion for gaming and I am not seeing any case of abuse by making him happy without any kind of profit for me (except for private satisfaction so common for true member of SteamGift community).
Anyway, this is my story. I would like to hear some valid explanation of this practice being destructive for the site.
To top that off, I won't do this again just because I still want to be the good guy going by the rules.
EDIT.
There is lots of interesting points in this topic and I tried to keep up with answering best I could to lots of them. But for now I need some sleep, so maybe we will continue tomorrow (or maybe not, because I will be banned ; )
Cheers.
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