Did you found similar people here on sg?
People who do that tends to get a swift hit with the ban-hammer when they're found out.
If one of them wins a giveaway from you, request a re-roll with that motivation, and moderators will find out about it. Otherwise just report them, it's not quite as swift a method to get them banned as requesting a re-roll, but they will get banned after a while.
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The point about affecting adversely the general SteamGifts experience and creating an atmosphere of general distrust, and in some cases even paranoia, which reflects negatively on both the site and its community, still stands, though.
Even if they get caught, eventually, they already managed to spread damage around and, regardless, these dynamics generate a sizable workload, and backlog, for what looked, last time I checked, like a team of unpaid volunteers with a tendency to burn out because of that state of affairs, and ultimately leave.
I believe that makes the case for a system that is resilient by design to the most obvious kinds of manipulation. However, I suspect that even if someone came up with such a system, or did it already, there would also be a hairy problem with deploying it, so that big givers and the general community don't get riled up by the changes?
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that's really short-sighted. they will get suspended and eventually banned, especially if they are in a closed group boosting cv.
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The rate of users breaking the rules and getting caught is unfortunately quite low, as most people do not bother to check their winners.
Checked some guys for unactivated wins last week. The record was a guy with 28 unactivated wins in over 2 years, another one hat 14 wins, 14 unactivated. Both are now perma suspended but it took way to much time. 😟
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They will get permanent bans on all their accounts if you report them and have proof they might belong to the same person.
Otherwise, small groups are not against the rules.
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as i said. they make fake giveaways within their friend group to boost their level without giving any game.
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I see. That's still a reason for getting permanent suspensions (feedback abuse). Report them when you see them.
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as far as I know the people marking as received without owning the game can and will get checked by the system and get punsihed - correct me if I'm wrong
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i think it is a system which needs to be activated manually. people i reported for this behaviour month ago still walk freely. They didnt get punished. at least for now which means it is not an automatic system.
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That's been happening around here since day one. Nothing new, really.
You introduce an incentive system, and some douche-nozzle is going to find a way to exploit it.
The only real way to curb it is to do away with the CV system altogether (and watch the rain of tears).
If you have any proof of it, send it to support and let them sort it out.
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It was the "most polite" phrase I could think of at the time.
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But at same time getting away with the CV system, unless it would be changed to some other system, would only make people do a dozen fake accounts and/or people who never share anything leeching away as wildfire.
And while I do believe in sharing for the pleasure of sharing, I've aways liked more sharing with people who are sharing too.
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before the CV system it was easy to check a random person, even group giveaways were transparent, now only the group members can access it, i used to bust such type of (terrorist) cells, but not anymore!
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Maybe we need a new system which will prevent this type of things in the future.
Only one way - removing cv and levels 💮
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i think the level system is really not needed. because thanks to sgtools we can make our custom rules which includes more than just levels. maybe they should implement sgtools into steamgifts so we dont need external websites.
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i dont like sgtools, cause all this parameters - number of sent, row cv and others could be abused in easy way
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in which way could it be abused? the giveaway creator can decide every single parameter and make it how he or she wants it.
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i already wrote in which way - u can get from level 0 to level 8 with spending 10-15$ or even less, u can get cheap keys for $0,01-0,02 to enrease your ratio.
Only one good thing in sgtools - Activated wins/Multiple wins checker. But Steam API ducks and sgtools is not 100% correct with checking
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u sure about that number? cause after 5 copies of same game it's sliding down, so getting level 8 with less than 10 bucks? even using those sites like dig or from russia is quite the challenge
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I didn't say less 10, i said 10-15$ or even less.
With viva bundle where u get $60 cv for $1, or russian stores with non-bundled trash for $0,01-0,02 its not that hard.
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Personally I never used or joined SGtools giveaways, can't even say it's for some greater reason, just don't want to have to log on another system. I'm on Steam Gifts, running Steam Gifts stuff, if I wanted to do in another way, I could go to another site.
Of couse just to eventual giveaways, mostly bundle stuff I had already have, so I can see why people who do giveaway frequently giving better stuff may want extra limits on it, but I never liked the sgtools idea anyway, the way it feel to be another community leeching of SG system. It's just how I feel and I'll not go blazing on anyone for using it instead of trying to make SG better, so I just don't use it.
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Its been quite some time since I wanted to see separation of public CV from group/private CV.
While what you described - marking as received for game that you do not own is bannable offense (and permaban at that i think). There are "legal" way to boost your CV, all groups that require you to give away as much as you win are basically it. Bit randomized trading that boost your CV at same time.
I tend to BL ppl that have created mostly 20-30ish entry group GA, and won a lot of similar ones. That is in no way contribution to community of this site.
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The thing is, some groups, like Playing Appreciated, Unlucky 7, etc. shouldn't - in my personal opinion - be subject to a different CV system from the public GAs. I'd argue that even invite-only GAs that are posted on public threads, as puzzles, for example, also would count as public giveaways.
Granted, it might just be me protecting my already feeble level, as a puzzle-creator and playing appreciated giver...
I pretty much only have invite only or group-only giveaways, but my rationale is that I want people to earn what they get (and it's a good way to avoid bots as well).
But yeah, I think that any system is bound to have people trying to abuse it.
Even if the minimum number of entries was to climb to 200 instead of 5, there would still be groups of 200 bots that would be generated to counter it.
It's the risk with the level system, and I think that for now the best defense we have is to report people who abuse the system, and try alternate ways to create giveaways, I'm thinking of SgTools, puzzles, trains, etc.
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Thing is, system can take into consideration only mechanics used to create GA, not GA intentions, so groups and kinds of private GA you mentioned look the same from system perspective.
I understand wanting to reward users that done something to earn GA entry, but its gray area... hell i do it myself with level restrictions.
Now I'm thinking that getting rid of CV might be best idea... If we could only have way to enforce rules so that no one goes unpunished.
Its funny thing that inevitability not severity of punishment makes for most of its effectiveness
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The CV system is just very complicated. It can't make everybody happy. But if they would get rid of the CV many people won't like it either because many people don't want to gift to double accounts/auto join bots etc.
It might be a good idea to increase the 5 minimum entries rule to gain CV. 5 is very low and can easily be abused. If they raise it to 50 (for example) for lvl1-5 giveaways then the small CV "cheating" groups won't gain CV for the small giveaways that don't contribute to the whole site. Private forum giveaways and big groups won't suffer because a low lvl giveaway generally still gets 50 entries.
I also think that the CV should be different with regional restricted giveaways. People abuse this too. They just buy cheap RU/CIS keys and get American (I think?) CV for them.
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As I already said, we need automatic ban system. If sgtools can check for game activations, steamgifts can too. There is even no need to gather a list of applications that can't be detected - sgtools have a list already.
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sgtools is not 100& accurate since steam API doesn't deliever all intel...
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whitelisted games list are there to avoid false positives. And 90% is still better than 0% we have now.
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these 10% would produce such an amount of extra work you wouldnt believe...
there's only one solution for above 50% of the problems here on SG... MORE STUFF MEMBERS... :)
EDIT: and we dont have 0% now...
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You don't understand. 10% of false negatives will only mean that it needs to be hamdled manually, an this will reduce load on mods ten times. And games whitelist will reduce false positives almost to zero. So, for example, right now we have:
0% automated, 100% load on mods.
with sgtools-like auto-check:
87% handled correctly, 10% whitelisted apps - handled old-way, 3% false-positives - needs to be added to whitelist manually. So, summary 13% load on mods.
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you can't auto suspend people without a human checking the results... it's dangerous to handle those systems...
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So, you just said that sgtools is impossible, even though it is exist? Faith is strong in you.
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automated system is a big nono - because even 10% of false positives mean 10% of people getting punished while being innocent and it's a crazy-high rate. What we need is not an autoban system, but rather auto-detect system, with punishment still being dealt by humans on case-to-case basis. Human will see patterns computer won't (for example recognize where this is simply non-activation worth of 5 days suspension, and where it is CV-fraud system worth of permaban), if human notices that suddenly today 2000 users got reported for not activating 'The Shovelware Simulator 2020' he will assume that most likelly it's a false positive, cause game got removed from Steam Store and will rather whitelist it than susp[ending 2k users. If human notices that suddenly whole userbase have non-activations he will assume there's a bug in Steam API not sending any games owned rather than automatically banning whole community including himself.
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0(or very close to it)а false-positives achieved easily. sgtools is whitelist-based, so it belives it works correctly unless game is in white list. But it can be done the other way - only ban for games from the black list, which is checked to be detected correctly. And filling of black list can be automated too - if user won a game not from the list, and after next sync game found on his account - it should be added to list. And using both black and white list can make it even more robust.
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What happens when Valve decides to ban a game and they disappear from profiles ? Especially that these games tend to have been in featured giveaways, do we have to deal with thousands of suspended users and their tickets ?
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If it's removed from steam - it can be easily detected with steamAPI (returns no data). Automatically put it to whitelist, problem solven, no bans dispatched.
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SGT is whitelist-based using community reports! so it's actually total opposite of what you are claiming, there are false-positives all the time! someone notices false-positive, reports it to knsys, knsys adds it to whitelist. system you propose would instantly ban everyone affected by such false-positive before anyone would be able to report it not to mention before some human being would be around to read the report and add it to whitelist. Also you cannot have games "checked to be detected correctly" for two reasons - first, even if game is currently detected correctly it says nothing - game may get removed from Steam and this very moment it will become false-positive. Steam API may bug and suddenly thousands of detected correctly games become false-positives until API gets fixed, second reason is sheer amount of games being added to Steam - Steam now has hundreds upo to over a thousand games added every single month, not to mention DLCs, movies, software etc. And your solution is to manually review and add all of this stuff? It would end up taking even more time and effort than a current system.
I repeat - as long as Steam API system is not a stable system (and we can guess it will never be cause Valve don't give two craps about it) a fully automated system handing out bans left and right based solely on API data is a big no-no. But nothing stops us from using said API to develop tools helping humans do their job in more efficient manner. But human oversight is still needed, especially in such extreme case like banning someone.
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Did you even read my previous comment? I suggest to automate adding games to the list, and described algorithm that will do it. And one comment above is my solution to games removed from steam. It all can be handled automatically. Trust me, I'm a programmer.
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No, I started writing reply then went cooking, didn't notice Tempete'sa comment, butr let's go:
@one comment above - SteamApi doesn't give any specific reply for removed game, SteamAPI bugs, first time SteamAPI bugs your solution would result in thousands false positives inserted into DB, cleaning the mess would take more time than current manual management.
@previous comment - same story, API bug results in false positive game being added to DB, and this time it doesn't even have to be big API buig like one which happened 2 years ago, affecting all games and users, it can be one specific account being bugged (happens quite often), good luck finding false DB entries with something like that.
"Trust me, I'm a programmer." - see, I used to be programmer myself, now I am Analyst and QA, thus my work is exactly this - showing programmers why their "'flawless, genious nad totally fault-free solutions" may actually have flaws, not taking everything into consideration, not work in all cases, or backfire, and what approach would be better to take. If automated system were to be used for data gathering only - I'd agree that even with all API flaws and potential problems it's worth an effort, because not big risk compared to big rise in cost-effectiveness, but if we are talking about automatic system based on API which is known to be flawed, full of false positives, errors, bugs, downtimes etc and this system being solely responsible for banning users - it's a terrible idea, especially as you can go just one step back from your idea and have much less flawed system yet still drastically improving cost-effectiveness. Doing what I just said - gathering data, but before pulling a trigger requiring human oversight. You are still removing 99% of work, finding all potential rulebreakers automatically, just 1% of work is remaining, human verifying one last step, after all data gathering and comparisons to determine if there was no some kind of error, which is a must if your system is based on another system which is known to not be too reliable.
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your solution would result in thousands false positives inserted into DB
There are solutions for that too, and more than one. Like, for example, not putting to whitelist at once, just don't ban users if we can't get game info, or, another example, re-check game availability from time to time and automatically remove game from whitelist once it become "checkable" again. No problem at all.
, thus my work is exactly this - showing programmers why their 'flawless, genious nad totally fault-free solutions" may actually have flaws
It's not flaws. It's just more points to be considered while making automation. Tell me, is Analyst's and QA work is to prove that product is impossible to do, or make it possible by pointing on possible errors/edge cases?
Doing what I just said - gathering data, but before pulling a trigger requiring human oversight.
That would be nice, but it have a major flaw - we don't have enough human power. And getting more is tricky, because they didn't get paid for that, and finding good moderators that will work for free is much harder than making auto-ban system without flaws. And, more of that - people are fallible. On big number of cases, this may end up in even more false-positives than good automated system.
You are still removing 99% of work,
No. You actually adding more work. For now, mods don't look for violations, just process tickets (well, maybe some of them do, but those must be super-humans). So, most of violations are just "hidden", and your suggestion will bring it to sight, but most of the result will be frustration of mods when they see how many work out there. My suggestion will free mods from this burden, instead giving them some other work (like handling possible false-positive/false-negatives/edge cases). Even if load on moderators will remain the same, it will result in 100% of work being done, instead of some minor part of it.
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No problem at all.Yes problem at all ;p Because each of these solutions still will require either human overlook or can be flawed. Don't ban users if we can't get game info? In most cases we will not be getting game info. Because for example real positive happens only when someone really cheats the system, one user may generate real positive, yet ig game stops being reported by API (for any reason from ones mentioned above) means ALL users who ever won it gets false positive. So your brilliant 'solution' in reality covers as much as my data-gathering solution.
That would be nice, but it have a major flaw - we don't have enough human power.It's not a flaw, it would be a flaw if this system would mean we get even less human power than we get now. It does not. It means that the same human power we have now can do the same work they are doing now, but with much higher cost-effectiveness, without any real risks or costs, because final step is still being oversight by real person. would fully automated system be even more effective? Yes but at cost of higher risk, and risk in a very sensitive point, contrary I am proposing a system that is ALMOST as effective (aka getting rid of most of work actually required) but with incomparably lower risk. This is where analytics come into work - designing most effective system is not always the best way, especially if relativelly small rise in effectiveness comes at the relatively high cost in stability or flawlessness.
No. You actually adding more work. For now, mods don't look for violations, just process ticketsWrong base assumptions on your part. I am not talking about mods alone, I am talking about whole system. Now the system relies not only on mods, but on all userbase, requiring a vast majority of work required on userbase, while in return providing very small cover of all data needed to be analyzed (most users don't check winners, noone is checking all users hunting for rulebreakers), I am proposing replacement of system that gets small cover with low effectiveness for a system that gets 100% cover with much higher effectiveness. Also as for work-load - currently a lot of work is worthless job. One rulebreaker can be reported infinite numbers of time, just for mods to reply each and every time that 'he already served suspension', each new rulebreaker just adds to the endless pile of this work. System I propose removes all of this, because again - the fact if someone was suspended already or not happens at data validation phase, it happens before 'suspension decision' phase, so all false-positives in form we are getting them now in user reports could be avoided, unloading support work in this aspect, and again - all this without any risk factors that your proposition introduces.
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So your brilliant 'solution' in reality covers as much as my data-gathering solution.
No. It covers all "clear" cases, which are most common, saving human time. Also, all other cases are as much hard for humans (if steam API does not return game data - how do we check if user really redeemed game manually?)
It's not a flaw, it would be a flaw if this system would mean we get even less human power than we get now. It does not
It does. It will bring up more work, so it will be less human power per task.
would fully automated system be even more effective? Yes but at cost of higher risk,
Well, if it would be like 100x times more effective and risk will be 1,01x times higher, will you consider this option? Because that's the case we discussing now.
I am proposing a system that is ALMOST as effective
How come? My solution suggest 100% work done with no extra load on human (and probably reduce of load), and your solution suggests great increase of load on humans. That's not even nearly as effective.
the fact if someone was suspended already or not happens at data validation phase, it happens before 'suspension decision' phase, so all false-positives in form we are getting them now in user reports could be avoided,
Nice idea. But it can be implemented with automatic system too, so it's not advantage of your solution, it's an additional feature.
all this without any risk factors that your proposition introduces.
Can you name at least one risk factor we didn't discussed yet? Because all we discussed already can be handled and thus avoided, I already showed it above. Are we talking about real risk factors or imaginary?
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@1 so does my solution - it covers al clear and common cases with a bonus of not falsely banning shitload of users whenever something beyond your control (aka API) goes wrong. And no - other cases are not so hard for humans as I explained there:
Human will see patterns computer won't (for example recognize where this is simply non-activation worth of 5 days suspension, and where it is CV-fraud system worth of permaban), if human notices that suddenly today 2000 users got reported for not activating 'The Shovelware Simulator 2020' he will assume that most likelly it's a false positive, cause game got removed from Steam Store and will rather whitelist it than susp[ending 2k users. If human notices that suddenly whole userbase have non-activations he will assume there's a bug in Steam API not sending any games owned rather than automatically banning whole community including himself.Note these are just examples, I know that for a specific example you can program a way around, but for how broken API is these are just common ones, even if you program against them it's bound that soooner or later API fucks up in a way you didn't predict. If API bugs were so predictable as yopu assume I guess cg wqould program against them in these 6-7 years SG is already around, he haven't because API is freaking broken and fucks up not in just one single way but in all kinds of ways.
@2 I already explained, while it will bring up more work in one aspect it will annihilate all work already required in another. But you seem to ignore whatever part of my comment does not fit your idea so let me quote again:
currently a lot of work is worthless job. One rulebreaker can be reported infinite numbers of time, just for mods to reply each and every time that 'he already served suspension', each new rulebreaker just adds to the endless pile of this work. System I propose removes all of this, because again - the fact if someone was suspended already or not happens at data validation phase, it happens before 'suspension decision' phase, so all false-positives in form we are getting them now in user reports could be avoided, unloading support work in this aspect, and again - all this without any risk factors that your proposition introduces.as for "it would be like 100x times more effective and risk will be 1,01x times higher" - bull-fucking-shit, you put numbers out of your arse, I already presented numerous analitic arguments why 'decision of suspension' is hardly a majority of process, you ignore it and come up with an argumewnt that even without any data any analitic would throw away. You know why? Because even most effective companies in the freaking world, like let's say Alphabet, does not EVER get such efficiency, getting efficiency on the level of 0.4 boost with all algoriths already developed is seemed as an ingenious invention, yet here we have you claiming out of nowhere without any data to back it up that your solution suddenly boosts effciency by 10000% with 0.01% risk - fucking bullshit, and makes me really wonder if you really are a programmer (meaning working in factual project, having analytics, QA, managers etc working with you, not just being some bedroom coder)
@4 your solution suggest not just 100% work done automatically, but also a shitload of errors. If you really do know programming methodology then you should know that covering 100% with high-as-fuck error efficiency is worth pretty much as much as covering 25-55% (depending on exponential complexity of how deep system is dependant) without a flaws. One of the most basic rules in programming methodology is that it's better to have less optimized system that is flawless than having a system that can malfunction in even small minority of circumstances. You're being taught it on the very first semester at university.
@5 nope, because in your system it would result with people first being banned then you going 'sorry, it was a system error, good luck next time, I hope you didn't waste 20h solving a puzzle that ended right at the time when my shitty system caused you to be wrongfully syspended'
@6 Like I said above, I gave examples, so many examples clearly prove that Steam API itself is buggy as fck, if you are a programmer, you should know that you can NEVER predict each and every malfunction, especially with a system which is already infamous for being totally broken. I gave you shitload of examples, you don't come up with a general idea to fix and avoid every bug, all you can come up with are specific fixes for each and every error, which means that every time any error you didn't come up with occurs you gotta rework your whole system again (you cannot just add new functionality, because without regression testing you cannot be sure that your new solkution will not affect all previous solutions for other problems you came up with). So not only you are proposing a system that is vulnerable to all kinds of errors, you are also proposing a system that based on these glitches can do collosal damage (banning innocent user is a collosal damage, contrary user temporary losing 1% of CV is minor damage), and all you have to say in defense of this system is that after it causes a collosal damage you can tweak it so that one particular problem never occurs again, but anjother slightly different problem will occur in the future and 'sorry all people affected, we will fix it now'. All of this just in the name of skipping one final step which should be like any drastic measure oversight by a human being. Even biggest companies like google with YT or FB having all machine-learning capabilities, gathering data on levels of complexity we cannot imagine, they still have this one last barrier, where someone has to validate something strange didn't happen, yet you are wiser than the biggest tech companies in the world and you don't need that for sth as drastic as BANNING USER.
Ok, enough with walls of text, let me just say, that with all much of my liking of you, I really find you as a stereotypical worst kind of programmer one can work with. Someone that will ignore all arguments, just because he knows better and can make code 1% more efficient, no matter how it will fuck everyone else. That being said I already see I won't change your mind, as your opinion seems to be set in stone. Luckilly I am not professionally involved with you and your coding attitude, thus it doesn't really bother me beside this discussion. I just really really pity your project manager if you really do professionally work as a programmer and you show this koind of 'I must always be right' attitude in your work enviroment. I know that if I've had a dev so deaf to all kinds of arguments simply because he cannot be wrong in any aspect, I'd let him go, no matter how skilled he was.
For me end of topic.
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@1 so does my solution - it covers al clear and common cases with a bonus of not falsely banning shitload of users whenever something beyond your control (aka API) goes wrong.
Your solution - is like an automated unit to press some button. Only it needs a button on that unit to be pressed first. In other words, it does nothing without humans. And in case of sg it means it will do nothing in most of the cases, because of lack of mods.
currently a lot of work is worthless job. One rulebreaker can be reported infinite numbers of time, just for mods to reply each and every time that 'he already served suspension', each new rulebreaker just adds to the endless pile of this work. System I propose removes all of this
You are so wrong that I'm even surprised. Are you sure you ever was a programmer? If something can be handled by logic - then computer will always be better than human. Humans are only better in illogical things - like, communicating with other users. You say that your system will handle reports? Haha, that's funny. I'd like to see that system that can read custom text user wrote (possibly with errors) and analyze attached screenshots/chat logs/other possible proofs. That's actually the task that only humans can handle.
covering 100% with high-as-fuck error efficiency is worth pretty much as much as covering 25-55% (depending on exponential complexity of how deep system is dependant) without a flaws.
But that's exactly what I propose - handle all that CAN be handled automatically, an leave rest to humans. It will give 100% in total, because it will be much less work for humans, and humans will have a chance to do it all. If we do it your way - it will be too much work for humans, so not a single chance they will handle it.
I gave you shitload of examples, you don't come up with a general idea to fix and avoid every bug, all you can come up with are specific fixes for each and every error
Now I'm sure you didn't read what I wrote. Let's see, what can go wrong:
1) Steam shows that user don't have the game, while user actually have.
Oh. It seems nothing else can give false positive, right? So, how to check if this is a bug? Easy.
1) Check that game is still available on steam. If not - don't ban user, it's a steam bug, needs to be handled manually. This check can be automated.
2) If game is still on steam - check winners of other giveaways with same game, if they lost game too - don't ban user, it's a steam bug, needs to be handled manually. This check can be automated.
Even with those two checks it still can be glitch with user profile, but guess what? In your solution user will still gets banned, because if game is not displayed in his profile - mods will decide it's not activated. So, with just two checks we have accuracy equal to the accuracy of your solution, but done automatically, and freeing mod's time.
Even biggest companies like google with YT or FB
Have false positive bans, shitload of it. Did you really never read stories about that cases? For example, there is a way to trigger automatic ban of any user on Skype (is microsoft big enough company for you?). This ban can't be lifted even through support, and it's there for years! It's much, much worse than what I suggest, but still biggest company have it. Your argument is totally invalid.
I just really really pity your project manager if you really do professionally work as a programmer and you show this koind of 'I must always be right' attitude in your work enviroment.
I never been in such situations before, actually. It's always "do that thing automatic" tasks, and I never seen a manager that will tell me "You don't need to code that, our huge stuff of paid support professionals will handle that". If it will ever happen - I will be VERY surprised, but I'll probably agree, because he is project manager, after all. And you are not my project manager, and still think that your authority is enough argument in discussion, even without any logical arguments to support it.
Ok, enough with walls of text
With that I can agree. Not because I don't like to communicate with you - even despite having different option your comments are very helpful in the case my system will be developed. But problem is - I doubt it ever be. So, we are discussing some system that cg even don't consider to implement, and so whole discussion is futile.
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This will remain an issue as long as suspensions are not automated, at least up to a certain degree. Depending on people to report someone, so that he can get banned, is in no way an effective approach to an issue that's been around since ever.
Nowadays, it seems like a utopia compared to what it once used to be.
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Why can't the admin put a SYNC check for unactivated wins just like how our account is getting SYNCED with steam after every few hour? This will solve almost all problems that the OP has said.
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No, it won't. Beyond the issues with the Steam API, an automated system does not take the distinct situation of each user into account. That is why human beings---who are able to process and analyze countless variables---are required to determine appropriate action, and even we sometimes get it wrong.
SteamGifts has, however, made various adjustments to make things more difficult for the "cheaters" and easier for the Mods. Additional features continue to be added to the site as we are able to work out the details.
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I understand but If I were an admin, I would first suspend all the users who have unactivated wins automatically even with the Steam API flaws. Then in case of user reports who have wrongly been banned, I would create exceptions for the cases where Steam API isn't working the way it should.
It seems to me that the mods would lose in this situation as the report count would increase dramatically and as Steam API keeps making new changes, it would be tough to implement exceptions.
I can only wish for good luck to all the mods and admins.
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you would kill your community very fast as admin... ;)
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I prefer to implement this when there were no users so the rules are strict already. But I believe its too late for what I suggested.
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In the meantime - if you check yourself in sg tools you will have some false positives under:
Steam API has problems identifying some owned DLCs, so the following ones are probably activated!
and
Games that cannot be verified as "Marked as Received" by the winner
Automatic system would ban you without asking questions that support member would.
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I'm curious how a half-automated system would work - automated sweep through the userbase but at the end it only dumps the filtered users into a list, for someone to manually sort it out. Full automation shouldn't be a thing like ever, I don't know why people still want that after the shitstorm that's on youtube with the automated copyright / demonetization system.
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yes, i think too that behind most automated systems always humans should do the final steps...
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What still can't be dealt with is making giveaways for the games the other ppl bought/are planning on buying themselves. That is an obvious way to avoid suspensions and bans.
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Personally I think that group closed GAs maybe should not be included for CL or at least have a way reduced value, and I'm sure I'll have a few person cursing me for even saying that, but it's not rare see people that do 99% or close to that of giveaways made just for groups. Not even telling that every of those is cheating, but if the person only share with a group of friends or on his giveaway groups, I don't see why he/she would have a CL benefit for public giveaways.
And yeah, this discussion is almost as old as SG I guess. But just throwing my penny there.
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I was about to comment on this thread but you put it into words perfectly, I'll just say I agree. Benefitting for public giveaways should be tied to doing public giveaways.
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I get what you mean and I agree with that. Personally, I think it'd be useful for the normal SG Tools rules (no VAC, no multiple wins and activating all received gifts) to be implemented in the normal SteamGifts site. I mean, if by the time your account synchronizes with your Steam account, you didn't pass those requeriments, you automatically be banned to join new GAs by the site itself. Or at least the multiple wins/activating gifts, since it is clearly agains SG rules.
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I agree that no multiple wins, and activating all reveived gifts should be mandatory to win a game (needed to check and sync steam account only if they win or try to redeem won game, not every time they enter giveaway), otherwise won key can not be redeemed.
Let´s say he got week to sort it out, I don´t know how much time is needed to mark as not received for example, but around same duration.
Other way would be to check it everytime someone enters giveaway, but I believe it would be expensive for server resources.
What would technicaly happen is, all "cheaters" could have level 10 account here on SG, but they can never win and redeem a game they won, well, to be fair, I mean they can not win games except first game they win and do not activate on their steam account. But even to be able to register on SG is conditioned by 100 usd value on their steam account, so no newly registered account flood is coming.
This would, IMO, prevent dissapoitment of all fair users here on SG.
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Just report them for multiple nonactivated wins and enjoy watching them getting smashed by the Ban hammer
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This is why I never liked the idea of whitelist GA... every GA should need a minimum of 50 entires to be valid.
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how can you give away DLCs if you put a minimum of entries? there are tons of dlcs that get 10 entries even if level 0+ and 2 week of time.. and tons of dlcs are given away here
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Whatever system one comes up with there are always people who will try to abuse it.
As with the last ban wave it shows we always perceive it to be way worse than it actually is. That being said: best is when you bump into these things: report and blacklist. Let staff take care of it, eventually they will get removed.
It's also important to not be overly harsh just to catch a small group of repeat offenders, this way people can still make mistakes or learn from their bad behaviour.
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He can do it anonymously on another platform. i.e. Pastebin, and post the link here, no? No sense in discussing without specifics.
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yes such people are bad but the, at least, 3k autojoiners are not nice too.
Before nothing is done against them (only words from cg help no one) steamgifts is not very interesting for the normal users.
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WOW, why I didn't think of this before? It's a really good strategy...
...jk
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Hello guys, i sometimes check new users and found many different patterns in which they try to boost their level or in general troll users on sg.
Everyone knows the new users who create exorbitant valued giveaways which they will never deliver.
But now i found groups of people who do high valued giveaways of new games in a group of their own and boost this way their level.
For example they make whitlist giveaways only within their friend group which i ckecked on steam.
They never give the mentioned game or even own it themselves and the other user marks it as received. Of course also not owning it.
I think this way they can get their hands on high level giveaways without really doing anything or they just think this is fun.
This gets really out of hand i think and they destroy the experience of normal sg users who just want to give away games to strangers and make them happy and people who win this fake giveaways.
Maybe we need a new system which will prevent this type of things in the future. I think many people on steam get more and more aware of steamgifts.com and they will flood sg with this.
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