Remove/Adjust CV from Group Giveaways

I'd be fine not getting CV for whatever group/whitelist giveaways I make. If I'm going to limit the number of people who can enter to that degree, I really don't expect anything back from it. However, you're going to get a lot of crying and excuses from the circle-jerk trading groups.

CV based on number of entries (as suggested elsewhere in the thread) is a much better solution, and would actually reward people who cater to a wider audience, and with better quality games.

I'm not terribly concerned. If I'm giving away a game, it's gone for me regardless of who wins it. But another possible solution would be to have CV decrease by a very small percentage or fixed value per day. This would require people to continue to give to maintain higher levels.

There are a lot of good comments on this thread, but one I didn't see is to make the group name public. Currently if you see a group giveaway, you cannot even identify the nature of the group to make a decision about the type of community. For example, someone said unlucky 7 or playing appreciated. If you're not a member, you can't tell the giveaways a user made was for them. Why were groups given this anonymity?

The solution to your problem is using sgtools to create a private ga that filters by group cv vs public cv

I don't see what's so bad about having CV in groups. Many group owners/moderators use them to actively monitor members to keep track of whom is actually following the rules and contributing. Personally I like having it around as it helps me keep track of how many GA's I've made to the group(s) - and have won as well. Otherwise, the only thing that annoys me is when a member from a small group has over a thousand games and doesn't bother saying "thank you" for winning a game they will likely farm the cards from, but never play.

My approach is to try not to care too much about how others use the site. I used to check ratios and blacklist lots of people and get upset at the people who seem to be "cheating" the system. But then I cleared my blacklist for a community train, and after that I just decided to stop paying too much attention to the negative stuff and focus more on the good stuff.

Totally get your point. But there are still people, who wouldn't fall into that roster. Even in groups you find people with 1000+ wins and much less given games. I think most of the winners are just pretty lucky. If I like their GA-balance or not, it's still something I can't be angry about (luck). On the other hand there is a bad feeling towards how etical (don't know, if it is the right word to use) it is to win and win and win, without balancing it with doing own GAs. Another point would be, if it is "good", if people won about 2000 games even though they gave 2500. I mean we all know, that there is not enough lifetime to play all the wins. Should there be a question of: How many wins anyone should get?
I would like to keep the CV with the group CV, because that's one way for me to filter people like you discribed them (even though they're also existing in groups). Since I know my beginnigs here, every now and then there gotta be a game for all members with the risk of giving it to a no-giving-just-taking-person. Blueheart and Blocklists are the things I use to seperate members I hold precious and those, I don't want to give anything to.
Not sure, if this makes sense to you at all, just wanted to share some thought.
Have a good one :)

I think you're trying to solve a nonexistent/made-up problem, by creating a real one.

I will explain:
First of all:
There is no epidemic of 5-6 member groups, "all gifting each other games to increase their level" on SteamGifts.
In my 4 years on the site, I've only seen 1 such group, which had all the members permabanned soon after I reported it.
So the problem you're trying to solve - simply doesn't exist.

On the other hand, your solution, beyond the inate instability any large scale change will inevitably introduce, causes some obvious issues.
For example my group QGG has had around 80-100 members since it was created in 2017.
Some people leave, others join, but the whole size doesn't change much.
So most giveaways in the group don't get 30+ or 20+ entries.
Many don't even get 5 entries, and people still make them.
So will this (useless) change or removing CV from group giveaways prevent me from making giveaways in my group - no.
But it will definitely impact on the number of games currently given away in the group, and will definitely make recruitment to the group harder. And it's hard as is.

And finally:
I don't think I need to convince anyone I'm not a leecher.
I've been on this site enough time, and plenty of people know me here.
And even though my main motivation is not gaining CV or levels.. I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it.
It's like a mini-game that let's you collect points and level up - it's fun.
I don't think I ever won a giveaway that required a high level in SG, so there's little to no benefit from it, but gaining the levels is fun...
Like some people like to gain 100% achievements in games, or have as many achievements as they can, or own as many games as they can on Steam...

i stopped doing public giveaways years ago and i have solid reasons
1st - 99% of my wins are group and whitelist giveaways. without those kind people my wins would be less than 20 or so. my last win from public giveaway was 3 months ago and that was level 8 with 59 entries.
what u give u get back. i just cant ignore my sg mates so i decided to share my giveaways with these nice people only. its my gratitude.

and 2nd and its my only personal reason . im tired of doing rerolls. i believe when people enter giveaways it means that they really interested to win. so why do i have to wait for 7 days when they claim their win.its even more annoying seing these guys online here and just ingoring. most of the people in my blacklist for this reason.

the 3rd one which is not that important as previous but still..... i dont like leeches. sharing is caring.
. so i stopped doing public GAs.
i have my personal list of 300 nice guys. who's always thankful and happy to win from me.

ill make a few ideas of what i read here.

first, if you are trying to make "the whole system" more "fair", we need, as a comunity, to reach the "ideal of fair first", and that Is something that wont happends easy, basically becouse there are to many points of view of what its suppose to be fair.

the system abuse, its a problem if you find those "5 guys group", but if you look at small group of, for example 100 people, that just 100 people giving away, i dont think they are to much wondering about the cv at all, its true that they dont give to the whole community, but maybe they are tired of leachers, bots, re.rolls, etc.

my best idea it to separate games values, like, unbundled, and bundled* and trash**, literaly there are 10 point value games, that if you just look at them anyone can see they are "quick assets games" and at the same time there are great games that cost 10 point, that Is something unfair for me, maybe make a category where this games gives 5% cv instead of 15% as any normal bundled game.

other thing Is the "lots of bots", i dont know if its something easy to do, but there must be a way to "find and block" this kind of account, so, i just think that maybe sg win something from the existence of them, like they count for the page views or ads, and that why ist a "necesary evil"

apart from that, the system is well done, and every person has a different reality, im from a "poor country" and i do my best to giveaway games (bundled) when i can., but someone can look at my profile and think im a leacher, there Is not a lineal way to see everyone behaivor

*sorry for my basic english, hope you understand what i mean

Removing CV from groups completely would the wrong way in my opinion. A better way would be a graduated value of CV based on the group size OR based on it if it's a public or closed group and if it's a public group, everyone should be able to see for which group the GA was created (if I don't know for which group it was created, I can't even know which one I have to enter).

+1

But then I see users for example on lvl 6 or 10 who have only whitelist/group giveaways created... and hundreds or thousands even games won from non group giveaways.

I don't doubt there are exceptions to everything but I honestly doubt that's a statistic reality. I have entered quite a few giveaways and most of my wins are from groups and whitelists. I don't see how someone making GAs in groups and entering GAs in those groups could have won more public giveaways than group giveaways, considering the odds in public giveaways and the ratio by level Masafor was showing earlier.

First thing people should care about when making proposals is how to increase contribution to the site. If anything, removing CV may do the exact opposite.

But I agree that some measures should be taken against those who

• do nothing (except entering GAs) for a long time
• mostly do group/WL/region restricted etc GAs

As an option consider this. Let's assume the community agree on criteria for marking such users as 'not active' or whatever you call it. When such a user wins a GA, the GA creator gets notified and presented with the choice to send the key or re-roll the winner immediately. This way, their chances to win will be reduced, but they won't lose any CV for doing something they have had every right to do, because it has always been allowed.

Leave my group giveaways alone, i got tired of giving away to leechers.

I got 2 "unreceived giveaways" due to gifting public, that WONT happen in a private group.

anyways, you wouldnt understand it...

I like the system as it is, no matter what gets done someone will find a way around it. The current system has its flaws, but there is a point where restrictions will discourage people from giving away games

I personally do group giveaways for a couple of reasons, the main one is that most of my keys are a year or so old (going through folders of old emails) so I give them away in groups that specifically take this into account, as in if'n they they don't work I don't have to replace them with brand new keys and the giveaway gets deleted

If the keys are fairly recent then i will probably do a general giveaway, I used to do general giveaways with a note on it saying "these are older keys, if it doesn't work please let me delete it", but a number of people seem to get upset by that, or at least there where a number of threads in discussion about it a while back.

CV is meaningless because regional pricing.

I understand your concern, and it's a valid concern, but I think removing or reducing group CV is the wrong approach. I think in the process of trying to solve a small issue it would create a much bigger issue.

As a counter-argument, most of my giveaways recently have been for groups, but 94% of my wins have come from groups or private giveaways, and I want to give back to the groups from which I benefited and stay in the groups which I've worked to join. Most of the groups I'm in are designed to do exactly what you're trying to do - ensure that those eligible for the giveaways are going to generous users who contribute to SG. I'm not abusing any system to gain CV - heck, many of my giveaways don't even earn enough entries to earn CV - so why should I be punished for those that do abuse the systems?

How do you punish those that abuse the system without punishing those that don't?

And what even qualifies as abuse? Is the person who gives away the $1 bundle with $240 worth of games abusing the system or contributing and being generous?

And how is making a level 6 restricted giveaway any different from making a private group giveaway? Either way you're limiting access to a subset of SG users.

Again, I think you have a valid concern, but these are complicated issues and a knee-jerk solution is likely to be worse than doing nothing. For now, using SG Tools is one possible solution - you could create a giveaway that requires a certain ratio and giveaways within the past year. But then you're using a third-party tool and creating invite only giveaways, and that introduces its own issues and implications.