This is SPARTA.... I mean... yeah all it does is hurt Indie Devs, people will be less likely to give out Indie games now that they did not aquire from bundles.
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Only if it goes into a bundle, or has been given out for free ever in the past or any time in the future.
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There are tons of indie bundles, odds are 90%+ of indie games will be or have been in bundles at some point. I just don't understand why you would get punished for giving an indie game, especially when the bundle isn't even live anymore, or doesn't exist yet. Is Psychonauts a terrible game that is not worth giving to someone because it was tainted by the Humble Bundle? Of course not, it is a game everyone should have a chance to play, even if they can't afford to buy it themself, or missed the Humble Bundle. If you give it to someone, and you have not given away over $100 worth of AAA titles, it will hurt you... does that seem fair, a slap in the face for being kind? Should it really matter where you got something you are giving away? As long as you didn't hold up a store at gunpoint, odds are you paid something for it. What is next? Banning all games that have gone on a Steam Sale?
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No, this is just a work in progress. The rules are still the same for now.
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What if you bought a game off of a game that was in a bundle, what would you do then? could you incorporate some pile of coding to tell that it was purchased off steam?
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That's what I thought the intention was, but the current plan will affect giveaways of tradable copies of games if they were in bundles. That doesn't seem right to me. There ought to be a distinction between the two types of giveaways since one is OK and the other isn't.
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Same here. My giveaways were all tradable copies, but since they (apparently) appeared in bundles, they're being treated as if they were bundle key giveaways, and the new plan gives me $0 credit for my contributions. I can appreciate what they're trying to do here, but there needs to be a way to distinguish the not allowed bundle key giveaways from the allowed tradable game giveaways of games that happen to be in bundles also. And I agree with you -- if this change goes through as is, I'm going to reconsider what to do with extra copies of games I have/get, too.
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Wait... Has there EVER been a bundle where you could get a key JUST for Amnesia? The only bundle I know that had Amnesia in it was the HiB V and HiBs don't contain single keys but a key for the whole bundle. That means that people can't give away only Amnesia. Why do you call it a bundle key then?
IMO you shouldn't count bundle games as those when they were given away before the game was in a bundle. That is good for everyone that definitely hasn't got the game from a bundle. For everyone else it means that they just shouldn't give away the game when it was in a bundle or free.
Just wait until Skyrim is in a bundle trollface
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This is a decent enough idea but it doesn't take into account those who owned bundle games in the form of a steam gift before they were in a bundle. For example, I have given away 3 games that (I think?) have been in a bundle but were steam gifts sitting in my inventory for half a year. I'm not denying the fact that I obtained 2 of them freely from steam but why isn't there some sort of distinction? That just seems totally shortsighted, cheers.
e: GuenniKurti just reminded me that I actually still have a copy of Amnesia http://puu.sh/Mvaw in my inventory which has been there since early 2011 that I never got around to giving away.. but now is there really any point doing so? since you can get it for a few tf2 reclaimed metal (or less) and it's not 'worth' anything here either now. So what do?
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I think even if you owned the games as tradable Steam gifts after they appeared in bundles, you shouldn't be penalized for giving it away since it wasn't a bundle key. That sort of distinction, regardless of when the giveaway was made, is what I think a solution needs. As for what to do, I'm kind of wondering about that, too. Maybe try to trade the games instead?
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I'm ambivalent about this. I started writing a response a couple of times, but there are too many things for and against, and a couple that make it not matter to me that much. I like that it's a simple solution and that it allows more games to be given on Steam Gifts.
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You, sir, get it. It's not a perfect fit, as there is no perfect fit. But it's a good fit.
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None of my games I gave away were Keys from indie bundles.
Despite that my contributor value would drop by 21$ to 33 from 54. I never broke any rules and still get punished.
It's a horrible idea.
Just verify gifts through the inventory. If it is not in the inventory, it is a key and no contributor value is given.
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It is the best way without punishing people that buy a game now on Steam that is in a bundle later.
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Same here, but my drop's worse. I lose all $55 of my contribution credit and go to $0 under the current proposed solution. I do think that verifying gifts through the inventory would help though -- if it's an inventory item, it's clearly not a bundle key. In cases like yours and mine, showing our histories with the games coming out of our inventories ought to allow us to get full credit for them. I don't think you can say that everything that's not an inventory item should get zero credit though. That seems to be going a bit too far.
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It'd probably be perfect if you could factor in time into the equation (if before x date: ignore. if == or >: apply factor). That way it wouldn't devalue those that gave games before they were in bundles. However, it's most likely more complicated than that and this is a viable option in my opinion.
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I understand why you guys don't want to allow indie bundle games to count towards your contribution value: you don't have to pay much for it. But what about the Steam sales and other actions from Steam, GMG, GameFly, GamersGate, etc? I see no difference between them and the bundles. Remember all the trains? Well... you got the point! Aren't they "cheats" too? What's the difference?
Why are you guys making gifting away so difficult? What is the problem with the fact that a game is from bundle? Why can't I gift it away in the usual way? Ok, there may be a flood from bundle games... But that's exactly the sale with the Steam sales and others. So, what's the problem?
I also understand the main idea about the contributor giveaways. But why willing to keep so elite-like by disallowing a bunch of games? If you can't check which key is from a bundle, you shouldn't disallow them all. There are people who gift away 'legit' bought copies of them too.
BTW, there are plenty of indie game bundles. When you guys keep blocking them, it will be impossible to give away any indie game in the near future...
In my opinion, you guys are making the main idea of this site (gifting games) way to complicated.
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Only difference between bundles and sales (beside that bundles shouldn't be cut into few pieces, which was the reason why those keys were forbidden) is that bundles are even cheaper then sales. Bundle usually means games worth 20, 30, or even more then what you pay, while in case of sales it means difference from 3, 4 times to maybe 10 (if gift was being bought in Russia), beside few exceptions (like those Trains, some franchise or publisher bundles).
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I can bring you tons of reasons, but the main one is that you are not supposed to separate the bundle into individual games. Many indie bundles specify this rule on their websites; and Steamgifts has been nice enough to support indie bundles by re-enforcing the same rule on this site as well.
Be nice. Support indies!
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is a nice idea, but people will still bitch about it.
this is a good solution for this "problem" of bundle keys (actually, the problem is the people, but what ever), with this the guys who complain about others winning more contributor status (the real problem, people bitching) had to shut up their mouths...
sadly this is going to be a problem for those who whant to gift those games by the "legit" way, but at least is something...
this is a good idea, maybe combined with something that check the inventory of "legit" gifters for the game, and if it is there, that giveaway get full price?, but that is probably hard to make...
sorry the crappy english
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So I pre-ordered Nuclear Dawn, and as a result they later gave me a free copy that I decided to give away here, and now I will lose all my contributor $$$ because it was part of a bundle at one time? I didn't even know it was part of a bundle till I checked my profile, then had to google it.
I don't have a lot of extra $ to be giving away free games, but to be punished like this is disheartening.
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You will not lose all your contributor "$$$". You just don't get any new "$$$" for that particular giveaway. Later, if you happen to give away some non-bundled games; you'll get some extra "$$$", retroactively.
Someone would probably comment, that you got the game for free and you are giving it away for free. Sounds fair to me.
Many people use the word "punished". Someone explain to me the image you are trying to convey with that word.
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Thinking about it some more, I remembered the idea posted on the forum to have the contribution value be unrelated to the price of the games. I suggested "brownie points" at the time, and I still think it's a good idea. It's having the money listed as contributor value which is causing the problem, especially when it goes down depending on fluctuating prices and game appearance in bundles. A value which represents how desirable a game is would work better, and giving away 0 brownie points when there are already dozens of giveaways of the same game will auto-regulate such floods. If the desire is to have more varied giveaways and give away games which are more highly desired, then a value based on these measures will work better. I think that people will have less trouble with such a system when the value isn't represented by dollars.
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Hey everyone, it's no surprise we've been struggling with bundle keys lately, and we're bouncing a lot of ideas back and forth. One suggestion is below, and we're curious to hear what people have to think.
Proposed changes to contributor values
Bundle games, and those freely available at one time or another (Ex. Shadowgrounds), will only add a maximum of 20% to a user's non-bundle contributor value. For example, if a user has submitted $50.00 in non-bundle games, they would have a cap of $10.00 (20% of $50.00) for any bundle games submitted. Therefore, if they submit $10.00 or $10,000.00 in bundles, their contributor value would reach a maximum of $60.00. To further demonstrate, a few scenarios are below.
User #1
Previous value: $119.95. New value: $119.95. They receive full value for Amnesia due to the amount of non-bundle games they have contributed.
User #2
Previous value: $39.98. New value: $23.99. The value of Amnesia drops from $19.99 to the max of $4.00 (20% of the Counter-Strike value) since their non-bundle contributions are quite low.
User #3
Old value: $69.95. New value: $23.99. Same as the above, the max of 20% is reached, so it cannot increase any further through bundle games.
User #4
Old value: $29.98. New value: $0.00. With zero contributions not from bundles, their contributor value remains at zero.
How will this affect your contributor value
Add /update to the end of your profile URL, and you'll see a new contributor value in brackets, next to your existing one. This reflects the updated value, limiting bundle giveaways to 20%. This will have no affect on the vast majority of our users, and only begins to adjust values on those that have submitted a higher than usual amount of bundle games.
Proposed changes to what can be submitted
Lately, the rules are difficult to understand. Certain bundles can only be submitted at given times, and there are over 100 individual bundle games. Users submitting individual bundle keys, whether on accident or on purpose get a bad reputation, and it's the cause of countless arguments. It creates a lot of confusion and brings a negative feel to the entire community, which completely goes against what we're trying to accomplish. The above changes would mean anything can be submitted at any time, and the site will automatically keep contributor values in line. If someone enters a $120 contributor giveaway, you know a minimum of $100 is coming from non-bundle games.
Feedback
No changes have taken place yet. At the moment we're looking for feedback from the community to decide on a fair approach. Please post your thoughts below. Thanks!
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