Here's how you prevent it happening. You report the giveaways with the nice shiny button on every one of them and, if necessary, message support about the giveaways.
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Sometimes you can get "confirmation" if all the other giveaways made by that person have been in bundles. That's enough for me to report them at least. Unless they can prove that it's not a key from a bundle.
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I reported a bunch of Ironclads and none of those were deleted. :\ Now those users have around $500 given away for giving out multiple Ironclads copies. Why can't those giveaways be deleted as they become completed if they were reported, removing their value from the total user contribution?
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Bean Bag Buccaneers is a two player children's game, the object of which is to pick up your treasure chest on the central island and sail back safely.
Each player has a giant sailing ship as their main game piece. Each ship has a removable sail, two trigger-action side panels, and a huge spring-driven cannon. Players take turns moving forward along a prescribed track and shooting bean bags at their opponent's ship. A hit on one of the side panels will force it to pop off and give the player a free shot at the other side; a hit forcing the sail off becalms the ship for a turn.
To add to the pirate flavor, each player also has an eye patch. Wearing these will slightly affect depth perception and add a marginal bit of sport to the shooting.
This game retailed for the somewhat impressive sum of $16 back in 1962. With its huge plastic ships (close to a foot long), giant vinyl play mat, and the eye patches, it may well stand as one of the more overproduced games of the early 1960s.
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Wouldn't it be easier to back out of the page, or open another tab, go to the forums, and type up a long post complaining about it?
I'm just waiting for the PSA from admins at this point. Smokey the bear. Only you can prevent fake contributor entries!
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Wait games from bundles aren't allowed to be put in giveaways???
I wasn't aware of this. May I ask why there not allowed?
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If you're not aware of this, maybe you should try and read the FAQ.
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I glanced over them but it never occurred to me to check them for something like this. I thought that one of the reasons for steam gifts was to be able to give people games that you don't want yourself. I bought the graduation bundle for the ship and the void but am not really interested in the other games so I thought I could give them to people here who actually want these games.
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You can give them via chat or by making a forum thread. That way you don't inflate points for other users and doesn't get a contribution feedback, which in your case would be a little unfair, when we compare contribution with people who actually bought a game for full price, not for few bucks in one package.
If you stated in post above your real purpose for giving away games, then you shouldn't had a problem with it.
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They haven't been allowed in quite some time.
Users may not submit individual gift from any bundle. This includes either keys for activating the entire bundle, parts of the bundle, or individual keys or giftable items/games. Please do not submit games from bundles while they are on sale to avoid confusion. These giveaways are subject to immediate removal. Members may only submit unused, giftable links of the bundle. Accounts that habitually violate this policy may be suspended until further notice.
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basically you purchase 1$ bundle and you make a giveaway that looks like you just gave community 50$ game (e.g. Ironclads at the very moment) and you get the credit for it and as a reward you can enter the contributors giveaway just like anyone else who purchased the game in full price (or with discount) and really contributed to the community.
also loko has a thread about this
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There's some explanation of this on this thread. The short of it is the very low price of the bundle vs. the value of the giveaway and the possibility of these games flooding the giveaway pages.
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I think we both know that it's not a possibility, it's a fact. ._.
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Right well considering that I can't delete my own giveaway and that the game im giving away is worth only $5 which is how much I paid for the bundle, I think it should be ok. Now I understand that it is somewhat unfair to the people who pay to gift games here that other people pay next to nothing and then make it seem as though they paid a lot of money. But at the same time I always liked the idea that you could take games that you maybe got as part of a bundle but that you know you wouldn't enjoy yourself and be able to give them to people that would enjoy them.
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1000 Amps is $4.99 and as I said I can't delete it, at least not as far as I can see. And anyway its not like its a $50 game and now that I know this im not planning to do it again. I'll just need to find other ways to get rid of unwanted games.
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Ok sent support a ticket to delete it.
So how do giveaways through the threads work? Is it first one to reply or what?
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you can make a puzzle and whoever solves it fastest, gets the key, or first one get the key, X number of post gets the key, funniest/saddest story gets the key, you post the key with one symbol missing and let the fastest person find it........
just use your imagination :)
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First of all, it's not pointless. People who give games are still giving away games, regardless of what they cost them. Steam Gifts allow giving away games you got for free, so games you actually paid something for are certainly not a bad thing.
There's still the matter of value, but hopefully this will be addressed.
That's not to say that I think contributor giveaways are a great thing, but considering the existing limitations of the site regarding price paid vs. value I don't think that bundle games break their concept.
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There should be a little text on the main page, saying that giving away separate bundle keys is not allowed. Maybe this will make the people who didn't read the FAQ realize that what they do is against the rules.
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Keep in mind, the contributor giveaways have been live for less than 24 hours for everyone. It's no surprise users are trying to submit bundles in an attempt to join more giveaways, and I think everyone knew that would happen. However, I don't believe that's a reason to hold back the new feature. We come across challenges every single day, and we work through them based on community feedback. If you've been around the site for a while, you know we're constantly releasing updates. Feel free to post suggestions, and we'll start addressing the issues with the contributor giveaways.
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If you can set that giveaways with 1 entry do not count towards contribution score, could you set that all games that were in bundles also do not count? They would ask for 10-20-50 points to enter, as usual, but person gifting those games would receive nothing on his/hers contributor score.
That would enable some people to get the games, because - those games will always be posted, no matter what the rules are, and there will always be ppl who want them - but would keep the game fair.
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It's possible, and definitely one option. However, bundles seem to be released at an exponential rate, meaning more and more games will be given a zero value. For example, look at Amnesia, there were 65 giveaways prior to the bundle, and now the value should be removed for all those previous contributions? You could say only list games with a zero value after their bundle release date, however, this still means all valid Amnesia giveaways from this moment on will have no value, along with the dozens of other bundle games. It's not a perfect solution, but then again, I don't know if one exists. Another idea, bundle games can only contribute to 10% of a users value, or something along those lines. This might help to lower the value of those contributing only bundles, while giving users with variety the benefit of the doubt.
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The only automatic system solution I see is hardlock games that were in a bundle to a mandatory steam inventory check via Steam API. 3rd party stores that sell cd-keys would suffer from that, though. Maybe a requirement of a screenshot of a receipt for 3rd party store cd-keys would be enough a ward against scammers.
As a temporary solution, make all bundle games have a minimal allowed time to run to 24 hours, that should be enough to report and delete it.
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A rather good solution. It could be something like this:
"WARNING: The game you selected is a bundle title. The game's price will NOT be added to your total contribution value once completed. If you have this game as a gift on Steam and want the game's price to be added to your total contribution value, please make sure your Steam inventory is set to public and click here to perform your Steam inventory check."
Will require quite a lot of programming though.
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Well that sucks. Will have to do a parser then :I
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You could say only list games with a zero value after their bundle release date That's what I meant, with the little message, when you select that game from the list, that you'll receive no contribution points or just 10% or something like that (except if you can contact support with a screenshot of the game in your inventory - maybe?).
I'm sure that, if someone wants to give away gift of a game that was in a bundle, he/she will not stop just because that game will not give them back contribution points. If they do - then they were giving it away just for the points, that is trying to cheat, and problem solved.
Another solution could be a modification of "contributor" group in a way that when someone has $50 contributions, that person is queued for a membership/privileges - but admin/mod has to check all the submissions before approving them. That would mean no "4.99 contributor" or "100 contributor" in a way that we have today... But there could be more than one group... 50, 100, 200, ...500... Just saying.
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The thing is, what if someone bought the game or got it outside a bundle? Once a bundle is over, people have to buy these games elsewhere. For example, do you give a value of zero to Dungeons of Dredmor because it was in a Humble Bundle?
Sure that might not stop people from giving away the game. If it does, they were giving it away just for the points, right? So follow this line of thinking, and just get rid of the points and the contributor giveaways.
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People will not stop giving games that do not add contributor points. If they would give only games for points, this website would never existed in the first place. Damned points were introduced not 5 days ago, and people are selflessly giving gifts for a year now.
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I completely understand that the CG (contributor giveaways, nothing to do with your nickname :)) are live for a very short period of time and people are already trying to take advantage of it, thats basically the reason why I created this thread in first place - to get some suggestions from the community :)
I also understand that its quite a lot of work and the community seems to be only complaining but trust me - we all appreciate your effort :)
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Just my small opinion about it:
Dont make bundles/bundlegames count for contributor giveaway value. Just a little thought. If you think this is bad idea please dont start insulting me, just gimme some reasons why you think my idea is not good.
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It is a bad idea because people who bought a game as a gift and gave it away here and this game gets added in a bundle will have less value on their profile.
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Yeah, then I get 50-100$ less value onto my account, too. But for me this is fine when the damn leechers get a punch in their leeching face. Some ppl who act with the rules have to bleed when others abuse the rules, too. Sad but true. :/
Imo this is the most fair option atm.
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That's what I'm asking. So what? What if these people paid just $1 and you paid $10? Does it make all your gifting suddenly worthless? Did you give all that away just so one day you might be able to get a reward? If not, then why does it matter?
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No, just remove value, keep the point system to limit how many giveaways people can enter (so they have to pick which ones they want).
And yes, I find it okay that most people don't give back. There was no direct incentive to give back until now and the system looked okay to me.
Edit: As I said on the Handling Bundle Keys threads, an alternative would be to use the lowest sale price of any game as its value. This will imply that bundle keys will have very low value, but also mean that any game every given for free will have zero value, and for example Deus Ex HR will have a value of $6. The only games with high value will be those not discounted, or not by much.
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that's best idea. but i don't think they would do that because that would be unfair for people who does honest giveaways. like somebody buy skyrim for 60 or 20 usd and makes gaveaway and next day bundle comes which contains skyrim for 5 and then skyrim goes to lower value that would be unfair to honest contributors. this contributor thing is great idea but this indie 5 made problems for it, couple of days later those people who cheated will be banned and value removed i hope so. and then everything will go back to normal.
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i wont lost anything but some will lose like you lost. it's not fair they can gave 100000 contribution but we have groups. that's just don't worth it. people will know who is honest contributor and who is not :) that's what to respect, anyway they will get banned.
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Sorry, I thought you meant you couldn't tell Keys purchased vs. bundle keys. If the key from the unauthorized reseller gets revoked, you then contact support and the giveaway credit gets removed and/or the submitter gets banned. It's an after-the-fact solution, but there's literally no way to police this, except by forcing people to take screenshots of where the key is from (i.e. keys from Amazon would be allowed, keys from superfungamescheapcdkeysforyou would not). Whereas it is much easier to police the bundle key problem. Key from a bundle game > Giveaway gets removed.
Also, key resellers do not have terms of use that forbid you from giving them away. Some (if not all?) of the indie bundles have TOS that say you cannot split up your bundle. All the keys must be used by you, or if you gift the bundle, they must all be used by the person you gift to.
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Steam has a list of approved key sellers. I'd say: use that one
But yea, that isn't really my suggestion. That was just a passing mention of the only real way to police that problem before-the-fact. I'm happy with the current policies on submitting keys as giveaways.
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On the steam forums apparently. Looks like Valve is being coy with the actual list, because that'd be too useful. Granted I only spent like 5 minutes googling, since this is NOT my actual suggestion, and I don't recommend we go in that direction at all. It's mentioned in the Subscriber Agreement though (in section 4).
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If i can tell my opinion,this whole contributors giveaway should belong ONLY to admins as a REWARD for big donators and not extend it to everyone.And what about those people that can't afford to gift that much?They wont be able to join anything soon since a lot of donators are putting the "contributors" on it...But i'm just giving away my opinion,i know many people wont agree with me but,ehi,everyone have the right to disagree and say its own opinions (unless they are offensive) :)
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Right now is something else than half a year. When you create a giveaway and you have 2000+entries, 100 comments and then someone with 1000+ entries, 10 comments, 0$ Value and won't even say "thanks" or play the game, then something is wrong. This new feature, contributors giveaway, won't eliminate those free and public ones.
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There have been a countless number of Steam groups created lately, where only users with $x in contributions are allowed to join. This means there's a big group of users trying to create contributor giveaways, and they're forced to use Steam groups as a work around. We're better off providing them with the tools they need to do it properly. In the end, it's their gift, they need to be happy with who wins, and the only way that happens is by some control over who can enter. If we try to force users to create a certain type of giveaway, they'll simply stop gifting.
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The way I see it :)
I believe majority of users don't read FAQ and they don't know specific rules about individual keys, betas, white-listed betas, etc. My proposal is, put these rules on the same page with "Create Giveaway". Something along the lines: Individual keys (doesn't apply to Steam gifts) from bundles are not allowed same as betas (exceptions are Dota 2 and CS:GO). By creating giveaway you agree to these rules and breaking them might result in temporary or permanent ban.
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yeah, this coulod help...
but people dont read a single fuck... and if someone is doing that kind of things just for "winning" the title of contributor, rule or no rule they are going to do the same, because people SUCKS
but yes, this is a good idea
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I'm pretty new here and I gotta say I love this site. I tried to give away a single key from a bundle I'd purchased and the giveaway got removed. So I went and did some reading and found out that they aren't allowed... and I was a bit baffled by that. At the time I didn't understand the benefits that contributors get so I really couldn't see the harm. I simply had a key for a game I wasn't going to play and I wanted some one else to use it.
So I'll make a suggestion - when creating a give away how about a check box for "bundle game" that would reduce the give away to a $1 value? Yes I realize people could abuse this (by not using it), but at least it would give legit users like myself a way to give away games we're not going to use without inflating game prices and it would reduce the amount of work themods have to do.
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Most of the groups that sell these bundles have it stated in their rules that the bundles are BUNDLES and are not meant to be broken up. So, by gifting keys of individual games you're likely breaking the rules of both steamgifts and the bundle merchants.
In short, dick move, bro.
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I could do that, you are right. In fact that's exactly what I used to do. Rather than let a game sit unused in my inventory I'd go on Steam or SA forums and give the thing away. Then I found SteamGifts and the give away mechanic is so great that I thought I'd give my extra copies away here to give a little back to what I thought was a great community. I'm not looking for this lame contributor credit you guys are all raging about... check my profile, I have none. I'm not one of the people trying to scam contributor status by spamming 1 hour give aways with cheap crap and yet when I try to make productive comments all I get is lame retorts like the one TheEgo posted. So be it - I'll gift my game elsewhere.
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Point taken. I just think comments like that don't actually add anything of value to the discussion. Every one threw out canned sarcastic responses about splitting up a bundle, but one one commented on my suggestion to allow people manually opt out of receiving contributor credit for a give away.
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Most of the groups that sell these bundles have it stated in their rules that the bundles are BUNDLES and are not meant to be broken up. So, by gifting keys of individual games you're likely breaking the rules of both steamgifts and the bundle merchants.
It's not sarcasm, it's the fucking rules.
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One of the games I'd like to gift is from Groupees BAB. I just read through their Terms and I didn't see any mention of not being able to split a bundle. Says I can't give out my account info or re-sell the products, but nothing about gifting individual keys that I could find. I'll admit I could easily have missed something, but I honestly didn't see anything along those lines. And please know I'm not trying to start some kind of internet fued with you... I'm just trying to help add to the conversation.
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That might be the case but when one is using Steamgifts, one must obey its rules. It does not matter even if bundle merchant gives one right to separate keys if that is forbidden here.
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Members could report these kind of users for moderators that can take action if seemed necessary. Thousands pairs of eyes can filter quite effectively.
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But if a giveaway is only up for 1 hour the chance that a mod is here in time is really low.
Maybe some trusted members could get the ability to freeze giveaways until a mod is online.
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This kind of activity is abusing rules. You can ban people for it and this can be done afterwards even if the giveaway is over. After a week or two people getting banned they start to learn and obey.
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We can mass report, but I think for normal users keeping the list up to date would be nice, ie. I want to give away a graduation bundle and HIB V, but there is no way in hell I'm going to make the games their own giveaway considering I paid $12 for them, but idiots don't realize its wrong and succumb to greed. But the system is flawed in its own way even without bundle keys, people buy a lot of games on sale and then are granted full price contribution, wouldn't that be kinda the same thing? but on a slightly smaller scale as it is less abusable.
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Buying on sale and getting full price credit is a LEGITIMATE means of boosting your contributions.
Most of the groups that sell these bundles have it stated in their rules that the bundles are BUNDLES and are not meant to be broken up. So, by gifting keys of individual games you're likely breaking the rules of both steamgifts and the bundle merchants.
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mmmm i just seeing troubles with this new feature lately... it born just like the best of the ideas, for saying thanks to those who contribute, and blablabla, but people have twisted those concepts.
side B, just a few read the rules of the site, and even if you put the rules rigth in front of their faces, they probably dont read it, and just smash a button with the "ok" in it and go on...
and for those who are asking to remove the value of the bundles for prevent this, what about the ones that really payed the full price for every bundle?, or what about the free games that you win in the great steam events? (coal, summer camp, etc) you dont pay for those games, they where prices, but they still count as payed for the value, and that is ok... so what now?
we should divide the community in contributors, and non-contributors? (yes, i know that i dont give-away nothig [well actually a few codes from unused game-bundles in the forums, because i READ THE FUCKING RULES]), and then what? divide it again in small contributors and super awesome contributors?...
this problem if no one find a solution, probably will breack the comunity, the idea of this iste is great, is about being GENEROUS, giving things expecting nothing in return, but that concep is starting to disolve... and that is sad
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+1
Agree on every level, even though my words aren't worth much.
Everyone cheats the system to some degree anyways. Using -75 % sales on steam or Gamersgate to buy the game cheap and then get full price value in here by constributing. Not saying it is a bad thing in any way, but I just think this value restriction isn't that great or useful feature to distinguish contributers.
Fear how this system will sway the giveaways. Wish more emphasis would be given on Steam Groups than Constributers.
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I think that the argument "nobody will read the rules even if they're in big bold letters" is stupid. Sure, some people might ignore them, but a lot more people are likely to notice something if it's big and it's right there than if it's deep down in some big FAQ. I went today to look for a rule I knew should be there, and even so I managed to miss it. It could easily happen to anyone.
If a rule is important enough, for heaven's sake, treat it as such. If you put it down some out of the way place, don't complain that people don't know about it. When someone creates a giveaway, there's an "important" note at the top. It doesn't even link to the guidelines, How many people do you think would go out of their way to search for something which obviously isn't important (or it would have been there, under "important")?
Why not put a note there (preferably in a slightly bigger font) that says: "Note that submitting individual keys from bundles is not allowed. Such giveaways will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned. See here for more details."
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So with all the new bundles there's hundreds of new bundle-key giveaways which are not allowed. Mods remove these giveaways when they're still on but once it ends, nothing apparently happens anymore as the person who made giveaway gets his "feedback" and amount of $$$ in created giveaways.
I just saw a profile of a guy who made clearly only bundle keys giveaways and now has over 100$ credit for contributors giveaways and there's nothing to do with it.
I understand that mods have sh*tloads of work in here and they do it for free but is there any way this can be maybe prevented? Otherwise - this great "contributors giveaway" idea would become completely pointless.
Any ideas?
Btw. sorry for whining about it, I just wanted to say what's on my mind right now ☺
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