With this option, what if I just wanted to, let's say, be generous and give a game to everyone, then do I need to add everyone as my friends or what? because I'm not going to go through the trouble of adding a bunch of people just to give away a game.

So if this is the solution I think I'll move on.

I don't really see the connection with removing contributor status. I mean sure it is an interesting feature, but on its own. Removing contributor status as an option still holds, just this community popularity contest thing sounds like a feature separate of bundle keys issue/contributor giveaways. That would faciliate many things, but I probably wouldn't want it to be a very prominent feature. It's mostly for building some group you want to gift to on the fly, without having to resort to creation of steam group and inviting people in.

EDIT: For the note, I didn't say I agree with removing contributor status system, as a matter of fact I don't think it's a good idea. I say it holds as an option but I don't agreee with that option. It would obviously solve all the problems created by the system, problems I can't say I didn't foresee, but in principles the contributor system has good roots and should stay imho, or should have never been introduced. Since obviously the latter holds, I don't think you should remove it now just like that.

Also, I like expansion of this 'friends' idea to various circles, as people suggest. So the site directly supports that without resorting to Steam groups (one thing I miss is multi-group giveaway option btw without having to resort to priv giveaway with special rules). But yeah, it's a separate feature outside of scope of contributor system methinks.

i stick with option 1 :)

In any case, I'd really like to see this option being added together with anything else that "passes", and that you can include "friends" in other giveaways, for example, you create a public cont giveaway, but you can check "friends" option too, regardless if they've contributed enough.

I LIKE IT

So basicly, instead of being a member on one site and participating in that set of forums and having your friends there, now you need to kiss ass on here to make more "friends" just to get into a giveaway and have people to give things away to? Yeah, this doesn't sound like a good idea at all.

This is the worst option in my view. It will make the site more cliquey, making giveaways will be more time consuming (checking off the friends one by one), and I think it will make it more difficult for newcomers to participate in the site. Users who make lots of contributions will get lots of friend requests, but newcomers will find it more difficult to make friends. I feel it encourages people to judge others.
Prefer option 1.

I like this idea as well as idea 3, favoring this one.

Give away what you want, without restrictions just for the sake of gifting, without thoughts behind it. Good system!

I know i´ve been harsh and upset in some of my latest comments, sorry for that ;)

Nice to see you guys aren´t just saying "eat this" and there is no discussion possible.

Anyway: great system/idea. Hope this one will make it so the purpose of gifting gets back as main idea and not the amount of gifts!

(I would still favor a system without any inclusions / exclusions at all but i can live with this one)

Friends to fiends to trends to lends. Yes, me like.

I like this one.

don't liek this one.. Option 1 is the one i'm rooting for

it sounds half good..., If someone wants to make a giveaway for people who have, for example, an 'honest' contributed value of $100. Then he's going to have a bad time adding 10.000 friends manually, not even mentioning he wants to check if they are honest contributors or abusers of the contribution system as it is right now...

edit: an option to blacklist people as Deiru suggested would solve this problem if he's going to check every entry of his giveaway...

Honestly, I like this idea not necessarily for a solution to bundle keys/contributor, but simply to implement on its own.

Why cant you have all 3?

This is a horrible idea. Option #1 was better. I don't have the time to waste going into people's profiles to add friends.

For what it's worth, I hate this idea. There are tons of non-contributor giveaways for non-contributors to enter. The contributor giveaways they can't enter are motivation to gift a game themselves so they too can enter these giveaways with generally more favorable odds. Most contributor games are less than $25 dollars anyway. Plenty of :$25" games go on sale legitimately for under $5 on a near daily basis. If you realllllllly just have to enter contributor-only giveaways, throw down $5 and ta-da, you're in 90% of them! If you genuinely don't have $5, then you can still enter the hundreds of regular giveaways offered and have the same chance to win as anyone else, contributor or not. This site and other users owe you (and me) nothing, it's a charity, be happy you can enter at all. Maybe that's callous, but it's a completely optional giveaway method like groups and privates, no one is forced to be part of the contributor system to enter for or to giveaway any game.

I also like knowing that I am gifting games to other people who have gifted, and not just random leechers or dummy accounts. (Before outrage ensues: this is NOT to say all non-contributors are leechers by any means, there are PLENTY of nice, yet broke, non-gifting SGers, but at least by making it contributor only, I know ALL the people that entered also gave away something) Even if it's a bundle key, which is obviously cheating the system and definitely sketchy, it still seems better than giving away nothing in my eyes :/ It just seems like if something undesirable has to be done, a much better compromise should be nerfing the value of bundle games as they come out. Yes, it's a bummer for people who bought the game individually before or after the bundle not getting full contributor value, but these are largely indie games with a generally low steam value anyway, and the people that are trying to gift legit bundle games after they've gone bundle is likely a very small number compared to the entire SG population. We shouldn't all be punished for a few bad eggs. There's gotta be another way. /rant

I don't agree, please do not remove contributor system, it just need some tweak so people can't abuse it anymore.

Ok this is another interesting option for making giveaways and I like the idea and I would love to play around with those options. But I thought the whole purpose was to find a solution on how to deal with the bundle keys being given away? I like this idea alot because you can basically pick those who you want to participate in your giveaway individually (even if this option isn't picked I would love to see this feature added as an option to giveaway games), but it seems that this option is deviating from the true goal and its more like ignoring the true issue that is trying to be dealt with.

Hm, removing contribution is one way of doing it, I guess(second part of this idea isn't exactly necessary). However, it's kind of sad that it was put up with so much enthusiasm a while back and is now causing problems due to abuse. Sure, this option would work, but removing contribution should be a last resort in case everything else fails- it would sort of just feel like giving up and letting the abusers think people are powerless to stop them. :/

I don't like this option. I don't really have any friends on this site, so basically, it'll be the same as if contributor giveaways just disappeared.

I prefer the first option, but reduce it even more to 5% instead of 20%. I like the contributor option because it gives an incentive to give something away.

I like group and private giveaways, but I'm not not sure about about this friends thing. At that point it just becomes a popularity contest and people bugging others to add them as their friend just so they can enter. I don't see why you can't remove the contributor system, and just have public, private, and group giveaways. From what I've heard that worked fine before the contributor system was put in place. The exploitation for contributor value would no longer be an issue.

As I've mentioned before, if people still want their pat on the back for being a contributor, then there are other ideas such as marking them as contributor yes or no ( contributor giveaways can only require that you have given away something, regardless of value). Or perhaps you could reward them with bonus entry points when they give something away. That way they can enter more giveaways, and thus have a better chance to win something than non contributors...but the non contributors will still be able to enter too.

If people want to lock down their giveaways to certain people then there are already options for that.

This is better than the first proposal, because it won't hurt indie games so much. But I think most of the gifters here really wouldn't want to click "Add friend" at a lot of people. So these giveaways for friends would stay inside a really really small audience. I'm not sure if that is intended.

This is very similar to an idea I suggested, so yeah, it gets my vote :) I didn't see it necessarily as a means to fix the contributor system, just make it easier to have "groups" without having to manage a group.

I'd like the ability to create giveaways for a subset of friends but that's not that important in the grand scheme.

Although I like this friend list idea, I still think the 1st solution was better. Just needed to take some date range into account.