I am sure this suggestion has been made, but I could not find anything when I searched.

At times, I like to give "more" of an experience for a game. Perhaps the base game and also some DLCs (which are not included with the base game and so have their own key codes). Or perhaps I want to give 2 or 3 games in a series together (say, Syberia 1, Syberia 2 and Syberia 3) in the same giveaway. In essence a "bundle" created by the giver.

My current method of doing this is to privately send the additional keys to the winner after the giveaways end. It would be so much easier if SteamGifts had a mechanism for this built in. Functionally, it would be multiple giveaways all going to single winner.

This, then, is my suggestion: A mechanism (perhaps a check box) is added to the giveaway creation screen - something like "Create bundle" or "Create multi-game". If selected, the "Select Game" option would repeat... Enter one game / key combo... another "Select game" option would appear. This would repeat until the gifter clicked, "No more games to add" or something like that.

2 years ago

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Great suggestion, if cg were ever to start adding new features to the site :)

Another method to include additional keys for bonus games is to post them in the description of the giveaway with some of the digits/letters hidden and only decodable by someone who knows the main key.

For example, you could post this in the description.

DLC key = 7%0H6-0P8?W-XJ&4G

% = 4th digit/letter of main key
? = 10th digit/letter of main key
& = 1st digit/letter of main key

2 years ago
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If ever.... one can always hope... :)

2 years ago
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And someone can just bruteforce it

2 years ago
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With 3 hidden positions, they would have to bruteforce 36^3 = 46,656 combinations.
Since they can only test 10 keys per hour due to Steam timeouts, it would take them up to 194 days of non-stop bruteforcing!

2 years ago
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It looks like you know nothing about bot farms ;)

2 years ago
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No, I don't. Maybe I'm underestimating what they can do.

As a challenge to the bot farm owners, here's an actual working key with 4 of the characters hidden.
If they can figure it out, I'll be very impressed. I'll check back in a few months to see if the key is still valid.
%AJ%Y-R%BMA-6E%J9

2 years ago
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!remindmelater

2 years ago
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2 years ago
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I actually... Like a lot your suggestion. For example a giveaway of a game AND a DLC, so both go to the same person, as you wrote

I like your idea a lot

What I used to do was to create a giveaway of the base game and just communicate to the winner and give him the DLC in person. Anyway I like your idea.

2 years ago
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That would be great actually. I don't know how many times I have won giveaways when the gifter also made GAs for (rare) DLC separately that ended at the same time and I regretted not at least being able to enter for the DLC.

2 years ago
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This has happened to me as well! So there could be benefit in both giving and receiving! :)

2 years ago
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not ideal but still something...

re-use the key field

2 years ago
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2 years ago
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complication. say a user already owns the main title then want to enter for the dlcs included. Upon winning, would then not be able to activate the base game or any dlc's owned already, hence going against the site rules of 'not activating that key'. if the gifter then try to log a ticket to reroll winner so someone else could get the main key, what happens to all the dlc codes the user already activated by winner? or what if one of the dlc codes dont work? cant split /delete half a giveaway - think it would be too frustrating a mess for the site admins to handle. Think the current methods of smaller separate giveaways is much easier to handle should one need be deleted etc. not to mention all the coding involved to have a database link multiple game, images, codes etc into one db entry.

2 years ago*
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Solution - only allow people who do not own any of the gifted items to enter?

2 years ago
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your talking about even more work for the devs there in having to implement checks for each dlc. jury-rigging a system to implement new features it was never designed for. which all could lead to slower processing time and site/database instability. Look, while it sounds like a cool feature, dont think its 'practical'. I have some programming background and saw a db crash once, and complete systems go down permanent, not fun. advise caution.

2 years ago*
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Yeah, I don't know much about programming or dbs. It just made sense to me since the site currently already checks if you own a game or not (as far as I understand) and prevents you from entering. For me it was as simple as extending this check to every game in the "bundle", but probably it's more complicated than what I'm thinking

2 years ago
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I have had to pick up the pieces after a db crash a time or two. That's a great way to ruin several days of one's life!

I realize that, without knowing the structure of the database, we are only speculating, but if each of the items in the giveaway treated as an (normal) individual giveaway under the hood with some mechanism to tie them together, I don't think it would cause instability. I also don't think it would create much more overhead in comparison to the gifter creating individual giveways for each product he or she would have placed into this giveaway. Of course if the database is not cleanly structured in its current state, any "little" change could be the "straw that broke the camel's back" and bring it all down. :)

2 years ago
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Valid point.

When Steam bundles that include more than one product - where the winner might already own one or more of the them, Steam simply eats the extra keys and sends back a "registered" for the bundle. In my suggested case, Steamgifts would have to wade thru that.

I am thinking out loud here...

Structure: If the SG database were a multi-dimensional database like I used to work with, this could be done easily in a single record with minimal extra code needed. I am assuming this is not such an animal. Even so, I don't know that everything would need to be linked in a single database record. If each product in the giveaway were treated functionally at the database level as actual individual giveaways, each with (mostly, normally) the same winner, I think this becomes less convoluted and there would be no need to file all into a single record.

But certainly some new capability/data storage would need to added. Perhaps the capability to write the same giveaway code in more than one record (and it seems pretty clear that this would not be a good idea for a couple of reasons that I can think of)... or (sigh) add another field to the database that would allow the individual games to be tied together... or perhaps if the system would allow it, an optional extra digit addendum to the existing giveaway id that if existent would indicate that it is a part of a multi-giveaway. And yes there is some coding involved there certainly!

Function: Steam gifts could do something similar to what Steam does... stipulate that the first game listed must be a base game and then simply check that first game for activation. I think this creates other problems. It would prevent any DLC only bundles. It would open a door for some abuse from the winners in not activating any keys but the first. It would also prevent anyone who already owned that base game from entering the contest (since it is what is being checked for activation). I personally often set up such giveaways that way - where I only offer the base game in the giveaway and then send the other keys afterwards. Others however might have different wishes here.

The same idea a little more general would remove the "base game" requirement and simply require that the first item list is the one that would be checked for activation on Steam.

A more refined version of the same idea would be to check all the games (going my my original comment where I was thinking this could actually be multiple giveaways houses in a single event all going to the same winner. If there were 5 items in the giveaway and the winner owned 2 of them, he or she would simply get the 3 remaining keys and the other two would be returned to the gifter (that is automatically cancelled without action by an admin needed)... or a re-roll for those 2 keys could be automatically rerolled (no admin action required).

A further refinement would be to allow the gifter to decide which or how many keys had to be new for the winner. For example, out of 5 products... if a user owns game #1 OR game #3, entry is denied. This would allow the "individual contests" mechanism to continue to function although coding would clearly be necessary to so that if games (in this example) games #2, #4 or #5 were already owned the contest could still be entered.

This is clearly not as trivial as it might have seemed at first thought! And I realize the odds of it coming to fruition are very small, but at least some of can derive a bit of pleasure in talking about it. I know I am. :)

2 years ago
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Cool idea, especialy for main game + dlcs in separate keys. In this case main game would be checked if you can enter.

But it can be also complicated to implement (don't know how much). And this is question: how complicated it is VS how limited use it will has (I think it would not be used very often).

Anyway if it would be added it should be also decided what would be a mechanism to check if someone has game or games. Ideal would be checkbox/checklist upon creating GA which one ot ones should be checked. If not, second solution would be the first game would be threated as "main" game (and it would be easier to implement i think) . Of course third solution, not recommended, would be not checking at all.

2 years ago
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that's actually a really cool idea. i've had times when i made giveaways for a game and some of its dlc.. what i do is set the end time of the dlc giveaway(s) to 2-3 days after the main one ends so the winner has a chance to enter as well. if given the choice, i think i'd prefer to include the dlc with the base game giveaway.

2 years ago
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2 years ago*
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That would certainly work! It even is more "correct", I'd say. But I think my not wanting to do any more work than necessary would win out over my liking of doing things the right / better / more elegant way in this case. I can almost always leave the extra keys in one of the winner's previous giveaways with less effort. In cases where there are no giveaways that I have access to, I will almost certainly do this! :)

2 years ago
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I've done giveaways of games, and included a comment to say that they winner could have the extra DLCs as well, if they just ask me for them. It's surprising how many people actually don't care to read or ask though.
I end up just flicking the DLCs into public giveaways instead, and they could end up anywhere.

In saying that, the feature you're asking for implementation seems rather convoluted, and with so few mods actually doing any work here on SG, the issue of things going wrong seems imminent.

2 years ago
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I have done the same thing and have had the same result as you had. I have contacted a winner who was surprised to know that there was more to the gift. It is frustrating when that happens!

If no one is adding features... nothing can go wrong with a feature that is not added. 😉

If someone is coding to make a feature work, one would hope that it was thoroughly tested before making it available to all of Steamgifts.

In either case, there is no harm in discussing it and how it might be implemented. 😀

2 years ago
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I don't do DLC giveaways anymore because re-rolls are painful. I always give the DLC key to the winner of the base game GA. But the mechanics are a bit clunky -- send a Steam friend request, wait for response, then deliver the DLC keys via Steam chat message. It works but it's certainly not the most efficient process.

If there was a relatively easy way to allow the inclusion of multiple keys (for different products) into a single giveaway, I would absolutely use that feature.

2 years ago
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I normally use ended giveaways from the winner to pass the keys.

Veebles (as he often does) provided another neat way to do it. Create a private giveaway for each of the DLCs and then give the winner the link to those. It gives you the opportunity to check if the winner already owns the dlc before sending it and it then counts (or maybe it doesn't with only a single entry?) towards your leveling up.

2 years ago
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No, single entry private giveaways don't give any CV, or else people would abuse it.

2 years ago
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Ah, I thought as much. Thank you!

2 years ago
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As a makeshift, if you trust your winner to read your giveaway description (wherein you'd indicate what you're trying to do), you can use a humble link format (since anything following the humble url shouldn't be blocked by SG) to both include your key and any subsequent keys as one batch. It's been a long while since I've done it myself, but I suppose it'd be something like https://www.humblebundle.com/gift?key=TheseAreSteamKeysNotHumbleKeysEnjoy+123ABC-123ABC-123ABC++ABC123-ABC123-ABC123

You may have to fiddle around and see what SG is willing to accept but, I do recall it basically allowing anything so long as https://humblebundle.com/gift was the prefacing context.

It's messy, but I do recall doing it in the past and it working out just fine. But I mean, we're talking years ago, so between possible formatting changes from cg and my rapidly dulling memory, it's still a bit of an uncertain thing. So do let me know what your results are, if you end up trying it. ^.^

2 years ago
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Very interesting idea! Like you, I have a similarly rapidly dulling memory. I guess we've got dueling rapidly dulling memories. I like the idea. I like the use of language. :)

2 years ago
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Though I agree this would be a neat feature, one obstacle would be that although the site could check if all base games are not owned yet, there is no way to check for DLCs due to limitations of Steam's API. If someone wins and already has the DLC, SG has no way to validate that, and the giveaway creator would have to check themselves, potentially with no recourse if someone makes off with DLC keys for games they already have.

2 years ago
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Valid point.

The counter point would be that this is no different than the current situation (without the benefit of having the feature built-in to SG). SG does not validate and any checking (for example of DLCs after gifting the base game) is done by the gifter. I know I have given DLCs and wondered if the winner activated them or not and sighed and hoped that my gift was not simply taken advantage of.

2 years ago
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Too rare case to implement something that complex. Send all games you want to email and call it a day. Actually, I still remember the days of SGv1 when email was primary way of contacting winner, and it worked just fine.

2 years ago
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+1

2 years ago
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