And now someone should try to tell me that sg isn't dying....

I'm pretty sure Rockstar did something like that for GTA V Online. They would put all the cheaters in the same lobby and let them go wild on each other

Thanks for confirming the suspicion I had ever since I met "her" pretty much in my first days here. ^^

I've had this suspicion for a long time. Haha!

That's hilarious. =)

no i'm not but whatever - you always say what you want and do what you do

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYlJH81dSiw

that's really funny fact :D

I can understand members doing and saying random stuff but you are staff. Shouldn't you be a bit more professional? Or.. A lot? For real................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VxLQZPqI2M

Someone had to do it.

Can you clarify something for me? That former member still has his account but it's perma-suspended or was it deleted or is still active?

Or right click > inspect element for even easier shenanigans

View attached image.

Well, it's not a trick, that's my actual points.

By 2016, Steam had removed flash sales. This caused an initial decline in giveaways (relative to individual members) due to users no longer having the motivation to stockpile discounted games in their inventory. 2016 also saw the first wave of exodus of long-term, high-profile members, in part due to certain unpleasant site circumstances of that time; Perhaps most visible of those who made their departure, we saw the leavetaking of RachelLove (who was succeded in her role in tracking bundles and posting detailed informative threads on them by SensualShakti, who has impressively been keeping up with her volunteer efforts ever since).

2017 had far more substantial changes to Steam: Namely, no more storing gifts in inventory and a 10% currency restriction on gifting. [Read More]. This caused a lot of problems for SG- not only did it firmly decrease interest in gifting unbundled games, but the changes were, in part (along with staff policies of the time continuing to fail to handle site toxicity properly, along with other site issues), what led to a far more substantial exodus of long term, high-profile members.

This loss of members and loss of readily available "big name" gifts to top off events with caused a fairly substantial shift not only in the loss of many generous gifters, but also in the frequency and energy behind community-oriented posts (ie, leading to an early decline in non-major community puzzles, games, and events, which would continue and escalate through the next few years). This exodus of high-profile users would continue through 2018, only slowing to a more normal trickle later in that year.

2018 saw the final death throes [as they related to the bundling of games] of most remaining non-Humble, non-Fanatical bundle sites- perhaps most notably, bundle forerunner Groupees (which had already been in massive decline since around 2016). IIRC, during this period Steam introduced further restrictions on purchasing (eg, introducing new regions for restricted purchase locking), furthering the lack of interest in Steam Store purchases.

Moreover, broadly speaking, Steam Sales from this period onward were largely considered to be less interesting than in previous years, based on the fact that a shift in industry standards had led to <best sales> occuring in off-periods, with less desirable sales occuring during major Steam sales, with the implication that such a shift was occuring so as to take advantage of the purchasing impulse that such sales reliably put into customers (ie, a mindset of "previous stats show that they're probably going to buy during this period anyway, so why make the sale too good?").

Finally, this was the last year of many of the key promotional resources that had previously been available to us. Humble had weekly (ie, non-Monthly/Choice) bundles begin to cease during this period, the steady- and finally, dramatic- decline of which led to the most substantial lack of resources for regular bundled giveways.

This, added on to the lack of ready availability of unbundled games for giveaway and declining energy behind huge promotions in general (for example, in 2018 EA ceased their "On the House" program for Origin [not relevant to SG, just noting it for establishing trend], Chrono.gg ceased their promotional activities, TremorGames shut down, supplementary sites like OpiumPulses and GameHag started going off the rails, etc) led to a dramatic decline in consumer (and SG) interest in dedicatedly following sale promotions, and led to a severe shortage in available resources for giveaways.

[As an abberant point of note, Lootboy was actually established in 2018, though their contributions to keys have admittedly been fairly minimal, outside of specific Daedalic published games, as non-Daedalic, non-free, non-trashware games are exceptionally rare returns from Lootboy.]

At this point, the availabiliy of free and discounted games became comparatively miniscule, with Humble Monthly being our only real remaining resource for games, barring the rare Fanatical bundle, or the rare decent sale on various ever-less-stimulating storefronts. The only sites that really didn't decline on promotions during this period were GOG and the Humble Store, which both continued offering seasonal freebies to drum up interest in seasonal sales, with there even being an increase in the quantity of such offerings. Though, flip side, both storefronts substantially declined on offering historic lows on actual sales starting from this period, making it more a give-and-take than a true improvement.

2019 saw the introduction of Choice (in place of Monthly), which introduced a higher price tag for Monthly, along with blabberghasting, consumer-unfriendly, estoeric plan differences and promotional approaches. This saw a decline in those who used Monthly/Choice regularly (ie, avoiding on-the-fence bundles and long-term plan subscriptions that they had previously been open towards), due to the unreliable, less pleasant purchasing experience.

While consumer interest in bundles had been declining over several years, leading to smaller quantities of purchasers per any given bundle (in large part due to much of the consumer base now having overflowing libraries, with those most eager for additional games being those most likely to impulse buy games when they were still new), this period saw a sort of added disillusionment with bundles due to IGN's mismanagement of promotions and poor treatment of customers.

To absolutely hammer in the declining circumstances starting in 2018 that Humble's escalating mismanagement had peaked, December of 2018 saw the introduction of the Epic store. While this didn't have immediate negative impact during the month of its introduction, 2019 saw an ever increasing frequency of promoed Steam content being introduced free or at better discount on Epic within minimal timeframes- sometimes even only a month or two after they had been in a Humble promotion!

While Choice had been intended to take away from the general consumer disillusionment in promotions that the previous, surprise post-purchase reveal Monthly bundles were further pushing, this benefit was quickly overshadowed by Epic's freebie spam. This near-guarantee of being screwed over on a bundle purchase thanks to Epic following up with something better right after, took the disillusionment consumers had with bundles and other sales for Steam games, and pushed it into overdrive.

Now, disgusted with being ripped off on a regular basis, consumers began to be far more careful and less impulsive on game purchase. In the context of SG, this led to many gifters no longer purchasing Monthly->Choice bundles for the sake of gifting or sharing, with the sentiment that their efforts would too likely be undermined shortly thereafter, substantially lessening the benefit they were trying to pass on to others.

Unless a Choice bundle massively appealed to the individual themself (at which point leftovers could be justified for gifting on the fact that they were leftovers) they- with their increased price, increased uncertainty, dramatic shift in expectations towards Humble support, and declining amount of giftable [ie, Steam-based] games- simply weren't an appealing thing to purchase for any but those who could easily justify $15 a month without concern, either to the cost or to the value of the purchase.

(Which is to say, some users who had higher incomes did still find Choice appealing based on the mindset of "for $15 I can get a lot of good games to gift and whatever comes, comes, it's only $15" [this as stated by certain users], a mindset that certainly came across quite foreign to those with more strict budgets and more inflated considerations towards the value of $15.) (Though with Humble Bundles being more consistently around $8 after discounts for a long time now, that consideration has since admittedly become a bit more broadly accessible.)

As the final step on our highlight tour of declining gifting circumstances, 2020 saw the introduction of Covid- and anyone who relates purchasing patterns from before covid to those following covid without making proper accountance for the shift in purchasing patterns is a raging incompetent of the highest order, full stop.

When i look into your comment and your stats i see that you aren't a part of the problem.
You can communicate and read + use the discussions, you don't use a autojoiner, you made GAs.

So don't think much about that.

Strangely I agree.. (except the backfire and bored to trade part xD)

I see asshole etc. insults as not something that lead to something positive, for the people and for the site. And sg is the only site that allow/don't care for such stuff, so i am surprised because the members that they educate, over time, with this will be, for sure, not better/easier/less(er) stressfull ones. I don't see the advantage of allowing such stuff (but sometimes it is better not to think about cgs rules...).

It's hard to see two different ways of treating two persons doing the same thing in one thread. And only difference was that one of them was in bad terms with certain mod.

Yes, thats bad and shouldn't happen.

There was golden (pete) era where reroll tickets were solved in less than one day. Then were days where you had to wait more than week for a re-roll

Yes, a few mods (i would say 3) have and/or had a much bigger impact as other ones.

The, a bit, funny thing is that i see in this thread now more mods as i seen on sg in the last half year (community train excluded).
And only one of the ones that work(ed) a lot.
Which reminds me a bit on my thread https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/nrsW7/need-feedback-from-the-moderators-about-spam-comments where i wanted reactions of the mods and only one Junior Mod reacted and the rest avoided it. Let's say now, where i give a fuck, it is funny :-D ... but before i would have seen it very different (= the mods that do nothing for 6 months+ should step back).

I'm less and less interested in "discussions". I'm afraid to write anything actually.

Same for me but with a other reason.
I realize each day more how many time are wasted with reading stuff from idiots (and sg have a lot of them).
I focused the last months more and more on work and other reallife stuff and it is great. The ""bad"" side of it is the fact that i see clearer how bad it is here (a part of the mods are great, a part of the users are great but the majority isn't and cg is a absolute zero as only admin and programmer -he have skills but use it for the site each blue moon 1x [+ when his income get lower and need a boost...]-)

If sgtools would close the gates, then would be sg fucked because the longtime, friendly, generous gifters couldn't check their winners and would create, much, lower amounts of GAs (at least the public ones). Would be a Domino Effect.

Like mass suspensions for even little bit of zalgo font during last winter

I am not 100% sure it were the same time but i seen in the forum, not in "hidden" invite only GAs, the use of zalgo and it was extremely annoying because 20 people done it -in different threads (or GA comments?)- and it were difficult and partly impossible to read the description from the OP (or gifter?) + the comments from other ones that don't used zalgo.
So i were fully ok with that the people got punished at some point where a "stop" sentence wasn't followed.
They got a 2 days suspension, which wasn't ultra hard or something like that.

Maybe i don't seen all or not the thing you mean and it gave more times with zalgo, i am not sure.

If a mod done it and not got reminded on the rules (intern in the mod area), it wouldn't be fair ... but that they not openly sacrifice a other mod shouldn't be suprise someone.

I believe that some people stopped doing events thanks to that.

I reduced my activity as example because creating a Cakeday Thread brought me always 15 - 25 BL (and much lesser WL).
As "thanks" for all the work and spend money.
Wasn't motivating and i regreted it direct this year as i done one after 2 years without.
Not only because of the BL but because of 3 of 5 winners were black sheeps (BL material).

And you see the aggressive reactions on my thread here. Some people can't handle a opinion that isn't theirs and this weaklings (i try not to use the word snowflakes because it gets used in combination of political stuff and i don't want to mix politic stuff in it) are overpresent (over the normal = average amount).

No more buying games or bundles to make giveaways.

I bought complete bundles to give them away on sg but i stopped with this 2 or 3 years ago after realizing that the most of the winners only idled the games to sell cards for maybe 5 - 10 cents and not touched the games for the next 3 years+.

And when i do nowadays GAs i prefer to give to my group and WL where i have the control if there are black sheeps and where i can set it to level 0 without the risk to get trillions of abusive users as winners.
The feeling in the gifting process is complete different and the workload besides that much lower too (no hunting of the winner that he please please please take the win, no making and waiting on reroll requests etc.).

YOU do though. And that invites scrutiny. Under YOUR OWN metric you fall short.

It is what you see.

But of course, for yourself you see the positivest possibility and for others (in this case me) you see the negativest possibility.

I can say it short, you read bullshit into my intentions, what i expect etc. but i will not educate you, as i said before, i give a fuck and i am not more so connected with this site since i stopped the hunt on the black sheeps and stopped with the reports to help the site to make it more fair for all and lower the amount of cheaters, exploited games etc..

What is your point here? What were you trying to draw attention to?

Maybe you aren't the brightest candle on the cake or you are sleepy.... there is really not much text in the OP message and the header (so i don't expected that someone don't get it).
I repeat: "The site is dying"
That was my message. No discussions needed about it.

Ah you made the same experience :D

From which clique did you speak ?

You, and everyone else, know that i would see it as correct to set the games from Lootboy, the feudalife ones, the tremor games etc. to the free list.
A part of the mods see it the same way but the majority (or only the higher ones?) don't support that handling.

So nothing/not more happens in this cases. At least not now.
Maybe in the future.

But not my problem anymore...

I can sit back and "watch how the house burns down" :-D

I didn't bother reading anything. Just noticed boloxer was trying to use logic to aruge/discuss topics. Was providing a reason why they shouldn't.

Yeah............. I can see........... You just read everything and keep tabs..... Makes soooo much sense... Regardless, this has become boring. Next time try to find something that makes actual sense and not just for you

I don't believe that the site is dying, not in the way of we'll ever reach 0 ga's anyway.

Oh i never said it will reach 0 GAs.
But the direction is very visible with the stats.

To me this shows a lot more than your graph does.. And the comments in general

As you seen and see by yourself...
The direction is clear in that part too.

nobody can truly predict the future :P

Lower quantity and quality of GAs, higher quantity of accounts that are autojoiners and multiaccounters, lower quality of real people.
A Admin and only programmer that don't care for anything besides the income.
I don't think that it needs much to see the chances for a bad or a good future. And which chance is, much, higher.