If you don't like private profiles, you could just make giveaways to closed groups that enforce always Public profiles... There are a lot of those, and with a lot of members, so you wouldn't be restricting too much if that is a concern with group giveaways.
People have many reasons to keep their profiles private. It can be for nefarious reasons, but a lot of the time it's just for privacy. I personally prefer keeping my game details Friends Only, and either temporarily add either temporarily set my profile Public if someone wants to check (eg. giveaway maker, group admin).
I however understand why people would be annoyed by the extra steps and/or be suspicious, hence my first paragraph. But, just because a winner has a Public profile doesn't mean you'll have to hunt the winner for 7 days and provide multiple evidence to Support to get a reroll... Just saying, you know.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, as you said yourself. The only solution to avoid the situation is by generating more hoops for the creator like group giveaways or similar.
I am just looking for ways to reduce the hoops. Though, I am aware that every solution has issues on its own. So, it is merely a suggestion. If the community reaction is mostly negative, I can accept that as well.
Comment has been collapsed.
Creating a group giveaway isn't an extra step (I mean, you just check boxes in a list), what I meant by extra steps was asking a winner with a private profile to add you/set their profile public.
Comment has been collapsed.
Recently I've got permanently banned for hiding some games I've won @ SG many years ago (I'm here for around ~12 years)
(So not entire profile, but only some cheap games I've won here were hidden)
I've instantly contacted support and told me that I can get my account back only after activating all wins & resync.
The reason for ban was not stated in rules as "non-allowed action"- however they justified penalty as "currently we can't be sure that you've activated those wins". And they totally ignored the fact that those were activated in period of 2012-2019 (I hid multiple games) and I had thousands of successful synchronizations in a row.
I guess this needs to be stated in rules somehow as well.
Comment has been collapsed.
I just took a moment to look over your account and your unsuspend ticket. With regards to the new "Private" feature on Steam, when you mark a game as "Private" it's private to everyone other than you, no one else can see it. So to anyone on SG including the support member who suspended you it looks like you didn't activate your wins. There's no auto check to see if you have the games you marked as received in your library, it has to be manually done regardless of if it was a week ago or 7 years ago. So no one "totally ignored the fact that those were activated in period of 2012-2019" for the reason I've mentioned.
For anyone reading this, make sure you don't mark any of your wins "Private" using the new Steam feature. This is not the same a "hiding" a game. When you "hide this game" it will still be viewable to others.
Also a "Ban" and a "Permanent Suspension" are two different things, you can appeal a suspension.
Comment has been collapsed.
Just a small addition: The thousands of successful synchronizations in a row are indeed meaningless as rules state that the game has to be activated and stay on your profile for all eternity.
Sometimes people get winners remorse and want to deleter old wins. This is not allowed which is why even the thousand and first synchrinzation has to be successful.
Comment has been collapsed.
I am torn on this.
There have been a couple of cases in the past that added a lot of work and time to some SG related task, due to a private profile. But there are good reasons to keep your profile private, that might impact your offline life. Thinking about this, makes me think, that if something on your Steam profile might have a major negative impact on your RL life, even setting your profile to public once a week for SG sync is kind of a great risk.
Making a private profile a reason for a re-roll might be something to test for a while. It might lead to a (major?) increase in support tickets, first by GA creators, then by disappointed winners.
Comment has been collapsed.
It'll just be a ton of unnecessary additional work for the moderation/support team for sure.
Comment has been collapsed.
I mean the suggestion is based on the assumption that most people don't care one way or another. I don't think many people would ask for re-roll, mostly for the games people "care" about. As for disappointed winners, they could be directed towards guideline by the creator himself. Though, I see confusion potential with the automated mail system.
Other than that: What kind of information could be on a gaming profile that it impacts your offline life? Or are we talking about the cases where offline life contacts could check your profile? Just curiousity because I have my name and country on their but I would be hard-pressed to find anything actually troubling.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you play any kind of game that is considered "inappropiate" in your country or by your family, e.g. sex/hentai games, games that might implicate your sexual orientation, your politics, your religion (or lack thereof), ...
Comment has been collapsed.
Yea okay, I guess these are the scenarios i did consider. Then again, you could privatize these on a singular basis (unless won on SG). As mentioned above, I am aware that every "solution" has its own issues. Especially to a problem, most might consider nil to begin with.
Comment has been collapsed.
As you're free to create as many Steam accounts as you want I find your argument rather weak. If you think you're compromising yourself by owning/playing "inadequate" games it would be an obvious choice to have those on an ALT-account and not on your main and keep your account ownership to yourself. If nation states with sufficient interest in you are involved hiding games wouldn't help you anyway.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sure, if a government gets involved, hiding games is pointless.
Creating an alt account might be difficult, if your funds are limited, e.g. you got a Steam gift card but no access to a credit card or so.
You might also have played some stuff in your youth, that you want to hide when you are older.
I am not sure that we (Adelion, you and I), from a German point of view, can change our PoV to someone in an oppressive culture. I for sure can not.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you're a commoner, chances are low the government is going to check your hidden games, even in some oppressive countries (not making it a general rule).
However - I have some IRL/online friends that live in very homophobic countries (homosexuality not only being illegal, but risking death etc). Owning a game that is "pro-gay" (or has a storyline revolving around LGBTQ+ characters, or even just having those themes shown in a way that suggests being homosexual isn't wrong - thinking of Life is Strange for example, one of said friends couldn't even get Tell Me Why because it was disabled in their country) and having it displayed on their profile can be risky. Not because the government is going to have a look at their profile, but if someone sees it on their profile and "reports" it (to the authorities or just to people in the neighborhood), then they can be in a real physical danger, not just shunned online (not saying that the latter is nothing).
Now I know it's a very specific case, but since the two of you suggested a "hiding games because of the government" scenario, this is one I can easily think of.
Comment has been collapsed.
That kind of thing was what I was thinking of in my first two comments.
Comment has been collapsed.
With the new private feature you can just mark those particular games as private without making the whole profile private. Also since you don't want people to know you probably are not getting those games through giveaways so there would be no problem marking those games as private.
Comment has been collapsed.
I can understand, cause I also hate it when I face private profile and can't check if user has activated all wins. But enforcing it wpould piss a lot of people. I can't really imagine stuff that sensitive that it has to be hidden. So for me it is more like a red flag - can be friended multiaaccounts, hiddenn wins or completely fake steam profile.
Comment has been collapsed.
If the Steam Profile is set to Private (or there is reasonable suspicion that parts of the library are hidden), the giveaway creator is allowed to re-roll for a new winner. No questions asked.
That would go against SG's previous point that people aren't required to have their profiles be public.
A only proposal that would work is having the requirement that profiles always be set to public (if users wish to win games).
Only IF that is a requirement, or that clause be put into place, and only then, I believe your proposal would be considered reasonable and valid/inarguable. You can't "compromise" to enforce a rule for gifters, while there is a statement in place that doesn't enforce a rule for users/winners. But as others, and even you yourself, have said, there are legit reasons for why some choose a private profile.
Comment has been collapsed.
These points are not mutually exclusive in my opinion. It would give choice to the giveaway creator. I assume most people wouldn't care for the winners of their giveaways, especially in the public giveaways.
So, even if they have the profile private, most time they win, creators wouldnt check and care. It is only adressing the rare cases where the creator cares and winner has it private.
Obviously, I have no numbers on this. So, it is mostly speculations.
Comment has been collapsed.
That you need to read the rules AND the FAQ to know all rules is bullshit.
But it is in this status since years, so better not expect that something changes.
If a winner have a privat profile, and i don't know him very good, i write a reroll ticket. Because the mods can check private profiles too.
Not my job to hunt the winner that he make his profil public.
Not my problem that cg don't offer the support members and us a better way.
If the mods aren't happy about the extra work, they need to talk with cg about it. They can, maybe, do there more as normal members.
Around 20 - 30% of the winners with private profiles get then suspended for unactivated wins.
So i would say a lot use the private profile to hide that they don't activate (some) wins.
Comment has been collapsed.
i dont think this is the way to go, though i understand where youre coming from.
I'd suggest ... if the gifter cant check the profile of a winner due to it being private, the gifter can request on one of their GAs for their profile to be set to public so they can check. if the winner doesnt react within a week or denies the request, then the gifter can re-roll.
i know you would like to make it completely hassle-free for gifters, but as long as SG allows for private profiles, i'd say this suggestion is too extreme.
Comment has been collapsed.
Lord, I'm just struggling with this issue
In my case it's mostly related to the fact that I've given away a bundle and Steamgifts thanks to Steam API can't handle recognizing ownership of packages and DLCs. So in those cases you have to manually check your winner!
Comment has been collapsed.
TL;DR version To quote AiKirika above: "i dont think this is the way to go, though i understand where youre coming from.".
Also, read the last paragraph below.
If the Steam Profile is set to Private (or there is reasonable suspicion that parts of the library are hidden), the giveaway creator is allowed to re-roll for a new winner. No questions asked.
This way, people can still have their private profiles in exchange for a reasonable risk of getting a win re-rolled. Again, it is unreasonable to expect the people making the site work, jumping through additional loops.
This logic only works if this is a hole in security, or an excessive effort.
Since there's plenty of ways to spoof ownership already- the only semi-secure way of giving a key is to give it through Steam, get confirmation of activation, and then imnmediately activate it yourself, and even then that only stops resale not activating on a secondary account- there's no benefit to security for having constant access to someone's library (especially since you'd need to jump through hoops for DLC content anyway, due to the limitations of Steam's API). As such, we can't say this improves reliability of avoiding exploitation in any way.
As far as excessive effort, there's already requirements for contacting the user (admittedly, a bit curtailed recently) and of a seven day grace period. One could argue that if it exceeds the seven day margin it's already covered by that margin's exclusion (ie, you'll get a reroll either way, since it's past seven days), while if it's within that margin you have plenty of time to check the winner or get staff to check them for you (which, yes, they can do, so long as it's not for DLCs). As such, we can say there's no excessive effort being required by the existing rule.
While I'm firmly in favor of a gifter-fixated mentality for what the rules should be favoring, you're neither establishing a concrete issue (especially as the rule of the site is that any special circumstances should be constrained to scripts and groups when possible, and if it can be constrained to those, then it's fine to just leave them at that, as that best lets people use the site in whichever way they're most comfortable with; meaning that your perspective directly conflicts with the core design mentality of the site to date) nor offering a meaningful solution (favoring one side would require the other side to have an unfair advantage to begin with, but private profile users are already required to provide access to their profile, or risk losing access to the site or their won giveaways. Unless one can establish that the implementation of privacy itself is wrong or that there's an actual additional stress caused by the use of privacy, then a solution'd need to improve circumstances without unfairly disadvantaging one side).
In short, this thread is more "I don't like this, I want it changed" than it is "This is a real issue, and here's how to fix it". I mean, I'm in favor of the change- in fact, I'm in favor of any change that lets me decide who does and doesn't get my games- but there's no reasonable justification in this thread for the change, nor even an explanation as to why groups (or SGT, etc) can't be used to cover this matter, just as they cover all other existing matters- including ones far more exploitative and frustrating and inherently problematic and legitimately concerning than what this topic covers.
It'd honestly be rather odd if you're more concerned about a lack-of-additional-effort bit of privacy finangling than checking through users for rule violations, massively one sided (eg, 2000:0) win ratios, absurd CV exploitation (there's quite a few users who made it all the way to level 10 just by spamming trashware or content they exploitated from developers under the guise of advertising for them, despite not doing such, and indeed acting so poorly themself that it even turned users off some games), toxic bigotry and harassment and stalking and bullying and so forth [officially, the only thing the site punishes is direct threats, though as an exception it is worth noting that you are allowed to freely reroll on a user if their behavior during the giveaway gifting process is harassing], and so many other major issues that groups succesfully cover.
Well, again, you really need to establish a good justification or foundation for it. I'm in favor of the change, but I just can't see any rational way to justify it, without making a broader change to some other policy (eg, establishing other restrictions in site usage- which, I mean, heavily in favor of that, if it restricts toxic and abusive users- or allowing other justifications for not delivering games based on personal preferences alone) or by establishing some reason why it's an unnecessary stress, despite the fact that it's currently fully covered by staff involvement and the seven day grace period.
Well, if staff isn't active enough to respond within seven days, you could probably use that, but all that'd do is push for cg to add more staff members as a response. ...actually, yes, please push that. >.>
But, anyway, here's one final, really notable consideration that really highlights the conceptual problem within this thread:
You need to put in a a reroll ticket to check private profiles anyway, the same thing you'd be putting in ANYWAY even if you could reroll on them by justification of private profile. So you're literally not putting in any additional work, in present circumstances, to begin with. :/
Thus, if you wanted to actually change something, you'd need to ban private profile users from entering entirely, or you'll just get the same outcome with or without the proposed change.
Comment has been collapsed.
40 Comments - Last post 22 minutes ago by devotee
8 Comments - Last post 43 minutes ago by BargainSeeker
109 Comments - Last post 2 hours ago by LoGic17
192 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by pb1
1,276 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by FranckCastle
1,473 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by devotee
108 Comments - Last post 7 hours ago by MeguminShiro
48 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by Filipousis
7,677 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by vigaristti
5 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by OmegaRozenkreuz
245 Comments - Last post 2 hours ago by Utamy
2 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by DeadKanekiNote
579 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by DeadKanekiNote
107 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by thundercats47
Greetings,
first of all, the guidelines should be updated to include the information about privacy settings on Steam profiles. Right now, it can only be found in the FAQ section. It would probably not be a FAQ IF it was actually included in the guidelines. It fits in the Giveaway - Entering section in my opinion.
Right now, according to FAQ, SG users don't need to have a public profile aside from the registering process as well as the once-a-week synchronisation. This makes it obvious that this is a conscious choice on SGs side. However, the site only functions as long as there are people giving away games. And as such, the site should not make the process more annoying/difficult than necessary. Here are my thoughts in short:
Personally, I would be totally okay with making Steam profiles public mandatory as we all are here to get stuff for free and some concessions for this would be fair. However, I try to be .... reasonable and suggest a compromise. The current regulation stays at it is. However, an additional guideline is added under Giveaways - Winning:
This way, people can still have their private profiles in exchange for a reasonable risk of getting a win re-rolled. Again, it is unreasonable to expect the people making the site work, jumping through additional loops.
Comment has been collapsed.