This will hurt the number of "new" indie game giveaways a lot. Because you would always have to expect that they will be in a bundle sooner or later and so loose their value altogether after the fact.

I think it's a good idea. It's definitely better than the current situation so I say go for it, and we'll still have time to keep brainstorming afterwards.

Will this affect how many points it will take to enter one of these bundle giveaways?

Doesn't this mean that people will stop buying games that were a part of a bundle to give away on SteamGifts? If the system is just going to think you're giving away bundle keys, there's no point in doing giveaways of it.

I came up with something while I was bored this morning.

I didn't like how it could be unfair to those who don't abuse bundles yet still seeing their contributor values go down. I also don't like seeing how the community gets riled up about bundle games. It makes this place seem really hostile to people who are just giving away some games.

I made up a little example of maybe how we can use this new system but make it so that people can still give tradable bundle games without seeing their contributor values going down, and have people make bundle game giveaways and hopefully not be yelled at.

In this first image I made it so that bundle key is an option that you can use,and if selected will modify your value contributed based on cg's system above.

The second image shows the giveaway page. People can clearly see that it's from an indie bundle.

The third image shows the profile page. You can see both contributor values - the 'regular' one and one that's been adjusted for games from indie bundles.

Also, please have a CLEAR link to the FAQ in the front page or in the header bar. The one at the bottom of the screen is too small to really notice and the one in the forum is not that easy to get to, especially if you're very new to the site.

Edit: Maybe this won't work either I guess... forgot that it may be against the terms of service for those bundles to gift games separately. In which case individual bundle games probably shouldn't be gifted at all.

I like this idea, but how about Dungeon Defenders, Hacker Evolution: Duality? I got from IGN and later they had in bundles.
Same as Psychonauts, i bought on amazon and later was in bundle, so what's about these exceptions and similar?

I like that idea in general sign
Although like some already suggested I'd prefer the solution of not allowing individual bundle keys in the rules. Even though the site has no intention of assisting or helping someone breaking the TOS of his/her individual contract (if there is such a clause), I think we'd be on the legally saver site with that rule surviving the changes.

And just to make that clear: I don't live in an illusionary world where I honestly believe it's possible to control anything any more than the mods already do.
But just for example: If giving away individual bundle keys is against the agreements of the individual bundles contracts (and that would be something we could easily write into the rules and easily check), that means it is not explicitly allowed, we could still suspend people and delete such giveaways. If someone for example writes in the description that this key XY is from that bundle ABC and giving away such individual keys is not allowed by the TOS, why not try to prevent it at least.

DO IT DO IT DOIT DOIT ITDO IT DO

Very clever.

Seal of approval.

So I recently started to create giveaways and reached $24.97 in contributor value.
I bought a four pack of Horde from which i contributed two and Civ III complete in summer sale.
I was happy to finally enter contributor giveaways with more than these damn $9.95.
With the new system I drop to $5.99 and the +$10 contribute giveaways are now more than out of reach.
I think the winner should check if he got a gift or a key to differ between people who farm contributor points an people who bought a real gift-able copy. And the funny thing is, the longer you are on board and contributing, the more your contributor value decreases because more of your regular bought games will be in future giveaways.
So I guess I only give away AAA titles or DLC?
Just my two cents.

I think this is the best solution i've heard so far, but I think that games given away before they were in a bundle should still have the contributor value.

For example, I've given away Trauma, and 3 copies of Magicka. If Magicka were to be in a bundle now, It would mean I lose all my contributor credit ever, because it would think that I only ever gave away bundle keys.

I approve of it. :)

as a broader fix why not make the value for bundle(and select other, with appropriate notification to gifter of course) keys adjust based on current availability? first one listed gets priced at full value(5p at moment?) second at 4, 3rd at 3, etc, after 5 they're worth a penny, makes flooding the market with them rapidly pointless and spreads out the giveaways of sale games. this could be expanded a bit the other way, rare games that are in high demand, say borderlands 2 at the moment, get a 2 or 3x bonus, instead of being worth 60 they're worth 120. this greatly reduces the appeal of nuclear dawn and the ship also.

also and imo, group giveaways should not be valued at full price, leads to a situation where it'd be easy for a friend and i to simply buy games we want, give em to friend to group 'giveaway' here and get points for, i dont believe thats the intention, but until a group is over say, 10 real ppl its abuseable, hell right now with my tf2 idle accts and the above friends'(with another friend i can bump this to 30), i could make myself a group of 15 and only ever enter friend or myself in the giveaway. some reduction for private groups seems reasonable, if its intended to be given away to make someone happy a 25% or whatever ding in its value doesnt mean anything and makes the guys like moneyhypemike who do a ton of public giveaways actually get the credit they should.

in the end, as long as keys are allowed and the systems pricing of a game is unstable(how will retroactive additions to the 'bundled game' list work?), someone will abuse the system. the above mentioned scenario is even easier to abuse with nonsteam games like bf3, any sort of proof you ask for aside from literally logging into the acct(unreasonable) is fakeable.

Why not just remove the whole contributor only raffles?

That is really the only reason why people posted single keys from bundles to boost their value to get into restricted give-aways. I mean if this site is ment for giving games who cares about how much someone gave away its all picked via rng anyways.

This just seems like a quick fix for the contributor give-aways that should of not been put in anyways.

It's very strange for me.
My $145 transform to $55
i'm pretty sure that i'll stop giving away here any games which already was in bundles. Cause some of my games were in keys and it could be from bundles. But some of my games was steam-gifts, but it still counted as bundle keys. I'm disappointed.
If it's possible i suggest to create bot (such as PlayBlinks). And if i has steam-gift, i could send it to him and he will send it to winner.
And at least one my game was given away BEFORE it come in bundle. It's PAM. I'm pretty sure, cause i bought it as 3-pack and still has 1 copy in my inventory. And it's not count as full-price game.

nice work cg :)

I don't like the idea. I never gave any games I received from bundles, only a few IGN Prime keys and giftable copys. I prefer to play (and giveaway) indie games, but with this idea I would risk that any indie game I'll submit will be later on a bundle and lose its value on this website :/

I still think the entire contributor system should be scrapped, or made a flag. I would have gave away for the sake of giving away still, the contributor status was a nice bonus... but now I feel as if I am being punished for a crime I didn't commit (I gave away non-bundle keys, either inventory items [had in inventory since before the Bundle with it], or a key bought from indie dev and an extra I had kicking about from a giveaway) The new system has now prevented me from putting up the giveaways I had intended to do. (I bought Carmageddon: Reincarnation 4 pack ($100) with the intention of giving away 3 of them...but now it goes into a bundle in 2013 [Stainless is an Indie Dev], I am suddenly a monster? I can't afford Skyrim for myself, let alone giving away a copy, and I didn't want to exploit the Contributor system by flooding Trains (like others did), but now I see I should have. 1 Copy of trains and I would still be a good contributor, even though my Indie spending value was higher than the non-indie.... I really would like to support indie devs more than other big namers like EA...oh wait EA did an Indie Bundle.... simply because the little known games are often great little gems of games, that others may miss out because they don't have big flashy ads like Diablo III. The system seems to support AAA or Bust...but still not even that is safe... like I said EA did an Indie Bundle, THQ is in one now, Double Fine is Indie again, Stainless is indie again, Plus there have been cases where AAA games have been given out. Will IGN Prime givers be punished now too? What if you get a free copy of the old game when the new one comes out (Re: Torchlight 2) would everyone who gave Torchlight 1 out in the past be punished (because out of fairness, those that gave away these new Torchlight 1's are no better than those giving out a spare bundle key when they already had the game. (For example The Void has been in two bundles, I am sitting on a spare key for it, because I didn't want to break the rules... but how is that different than getting a spare copy of Torchlight, neither did you pay extra for, both are spare games? This site is about giving and sharing, but is turning into an a playground for those with deep pockets... where the well off get more of the pie than those less fortunate who likely really need it more. Like the contributor giveaways that have values of over $1000 to enter... pretty sure, assuming they didn't exploit some system, such as buying extra low on steam {re:trains), or asking devs for keys (re:Secret of the Magic Crystals), etc. are all people who could have easily got the game for themself rather than taking it away from someone who couldn't afford it themself. Those usually only have a couple entires in it <20. On that note, I can even see a massive flaw with the new system. Private and Group giveaways. If Person X bought a 4 pack (Say Borderlands 2), that person X and their friends intended to share with each other (perhaps even went in on together. All they have to do is make a private group giveaway, have the other 3 friends enter it, and suddenly, Person X now have over $100 in Contributor value. The only real way I can see to fix that problem is to set the entry limit to say 500 entires for it to count to your total. This however would cause there to be no advantage to high contributor value giveaways as anything over $100 tends not to make it to 500 entires that often... so why bother having a dollar value assigned to contributor status at all. If you wanted to encourage people to keep doing giveaways #1) Stop punishing those that do giveaways (re:indie games) #2) Don't use a full price value for giveaways. Why not just add contributor flags. You could always make flags expire after a set period of time, say 30 or 60 days, so then you would have to give away again to get your status back. If you really wanted to hurt indie game devs, like you are now with this system, you could always make it so you can build up flags on your account, and you can only enter as many contributor give aways as you have flags for (they are refunded when the giveaway is over until they expire) have it be a limit of 1 flag on your account for l indie/exploited games. So there is no advantage to spamming Shadowgrounds.
Edit: Sorry for the long rant .

This.

Sounds good

Hi guys, I have a suggestion: see this reply to other thread. (original topic here, end of first page).

If you think my idea it's not good, maybe can we "add" it to cg's idea?
I want to see opinions from other users.

Amnesia was featured in a bundle, but it was tied to other games on the same key, in my opinion it should be whitelisted (just like other games in the same situation, like psychonauts, rush, super meat boy, etc).

You use Amnesia as an example, but wasn't that part of one key? You couldn't possibly give Amnesia away on Steam as a bundle key. A lot of Humble Bundles have used combined keys, and you ought to make sure the new system excludes ones that can't be given away alone. Also, I assume this won't apply to giving away a complete bundle gift URL? And what about bundle games that were legitimately purchased? It would obviously be hard to moderate/implement, but ideally there would be a way to distinguish between giving keys and giving gifts. I assume trading history isn't something the Steam API exposes though. Also, what happens when, say, someone gives away a large number of games that later become bundle games? Does the site remember the value they were given at the time of gifting, or does it still apply the new system? And what if someone gives a bunch of bundle games, but later gives enough legitimate games to get the full value from them?