Hello, i've a suggestion please : not being able to enter GA if you still have a GA to redeem.
It would be a simple solution to fix the autojoin issue ?
I mean, winners should have to log in manually once to redeem before entering more GA.
But they wouldn't be blocked from the other GA they already entered ofc it wouldn't be fair.

Maybe a lot of people already asked for it ? Well nevermind. Or please explain what problem would cause this solution ?

tseuqotcip/GylV6/yawaevig/moc.stfigmaets.www//:sptth
(just reverse text)
GA pictoquest (lvl0) / best day ever (lvl0)

1 week ago*

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It would be an easy solution to fix autojoiner ?

View Results
yes
no
patati patato

What if the key you get doesn't work?
What if you don't get a key, but the other guy still marked it as sent?

You would be punished for something that isn't your fault.

You see the flaws in your suggestion?

1 week ago
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Then, an alternative.
Yon won 2 games and didn't redeem, pof you can't enter more.
I think the probability to get 2 successive invalid keys (or 2 bad faith gifters in a row) is very low.

But i mean you're right that it could be a problem. Then maybe there are other solutions that i don't see.

1 week ago
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This will never work and should never be implemented. There are many times when they are many giveaways for example Christmas Day. Especially when you are in groups. You could win 10 - 20 games within one hour or less.

1 week ago
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Misunderstanding, the winner wouldn't be barred from taking part in draws he had already entered, just barred from taking part in new ones he hadn't already entered, and only once a game had been sent to him, so if he'd already entered 10 or 100 other draws at Christmas, it wouldn't make any difference to him, since he wouldn't be barred from taking part to the GA already entered.

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1 week ago
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This isn't a bad idea but whether or not a system like this should be implemented instead of, you know, targeting the big issue of autojoiners is a different thing entirely. I mean auto joiners would only lose some auto joining time (technically only lose out if there is enough of a delay they max out at 400P) every time they win a game (which isn't often if they are doing public only) so wouldn't impact the overall number of autojoiners per public giveaway. And there may be a lot of unintended consequences (and also time for implementation) for something that has not a lot of benefits. That's my $0.02.

1 week ago
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Yes i agree that they would lose not a lot of time, but if they autojoin, then probability is they win a lot, so a little constaint like that would slow them quite often, like an annoying captcha but less annoying than a captcha. XD
I mean i've seen some autojoiners winning once / 2-3 days, so it could really really slow them no ? (Dissuasion ?)

But it's because i searched a "simple solution" that wouldn't be hard to code (note that i know nothing about code)
but i supposed that coding something against the big issue would be much harder, and then the software used to autojoin would adapt quickly ?

Oh i thought hey i've a good idea, but maybe it's not. Then i'll close this thread tomorrow at the end of the GA.

1 week ago*
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Instead of punishing legit players for simple mistakes that don't hinder too much the autojoiners, there should be a way to check abnormal join rates. If someone is joining GAs 24/7 without showing signs of sleep or less than 1s delays then it should be a warning to report those accounts.
I think there's a team fortress raffle community called scrapTF that had this kind of problem and admins were really good at banning most autojoiners (They still plague the site, but they keep blocking scripts).

As for now, just stick to Invite-only, High-level or SGTools GAs to avoid bots.
This topic is not new and I'm not really active so surely there's been discussions where this has been talked throughout better than I did.

1 week ago
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I like your suggestion too (check join rate) but only CG could say if that would need a lot of work. And he usually doesn't answer about that.
Also, i fear that software would be adapted quickly for example to enter with a larger join rate, or an irregular join rate ?

1 week ago
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What if you win something and the gifter is on vacation, only returning five, six days after their giveaway has ended?! You wouldn't be able to enter anything, only because you didn't receive a key.
Or sometimes people do giveaways for games that are not released yet, and people wait months for their game. I had that once.
So it doesn't look like a good solution to me.

1 week ago
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What if you win something and the gifter is on vacation, only returning five, six days after their giveaway has ended?! You wouldn't be able to enter anything, only because you didn't receive a key.

Then you can still enter until the gifter has pushed the "sent" button ? The constraint starts after the "sent" button has been turned on ?

Or sometimes people do giveaways for games that are not released yet, and people wait months for their game.

Same solution : you can still enter until the gifter has pushed the "sent" button ?

1 week ago
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Oh, I missed this detail. Then it's not such a bad idea after all :)

1 week ago
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Excellent idea.

1 week ago
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On the surface this is reasonable, but it becomes very problematic when the GA creator sends a non-working (or wrongly identified) key and the issue takes time to resolve. In these cases, the winner would be prevented from entering any GAs for an indeterminate period of time, which would be very annoying.

1 week ago
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If clicking "Not Received" lets a bot keep joining giveaways until the bot owner returns home to activate their win, and then they just click Received, then this won't accomplish anything.

Also bots can autoactivate keys. They just don't because they don't have to. If we force them to add autoactivation to their scripts, they will.

1 week ago
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This :(

1 week ago
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Sadly you are fully correct with your sentences.

1 week ago
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To combat bots:

  • Give to groups like Masafors, TalePlay, Playing Appreciated, Mini Jedi Training, or NVPG.
  • Increase the level requirement of your giveaway.
  • Increase the duration of your giveaway. 1-hour giveaways are catnip for bots. Increasing the duration helps drown them out with real users.
  • Give keys on the forum using simple puzzles. Autojoiners won't solve even the simplest of puzzles like your reversal one.
1 week ago
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Give to groups like Masafors, TalePlay, Playing Appreciated, Mini Jedi Training, or NVPG.

Thanks that you name our group too :o)

I would recommend to kick the Jedi group(s) from such a list.
I am not allowed to write more as "the leader don't care" or it could be seen as calling out.

1 week ago
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TBH, I don't care if people in groups use autojoiners. I make 7-day giveaways and you have to keep ratio in the group anyways. If I don't like someone's giveaways or behavior I could BL them (never have).

1 week ago
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Level increasing doesn't solve anything. I confirm many auto-joiners are level +5, even +7+8+9

It the duration is short, all the bots present participate, but also all those who are there for real; if the duration is long, it increases the number of legitimate users, but also the number of bots who only connect every 3 or 6 hours and who wouldn't have entered a 1-hour gift.

There are plenty of autojoiners in some groups, they join manually the groups and then autojoin.
But yes for sure puzzles is a radical solution.

1 week ago
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Also bots can autoactivate keys. They just don't because they don't have to. If we force them to add autoactivation to their scripts, they will.

Ok that's a really good reason, i didn't know about this one.

1 week ago
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That you thought about a solution and the solution itself is good.
But lext above show very well which result it would bring and in the end the real users would win nothing.

Besides the easy fact that cg could act against the autojoiners.

  • Why ? autojoiners have a 3 strike rule, which means they can recieve multiple suspensions for it before it is a permanent one.
  • Why cg don't activate 1x each, as example, 6 months the autojoiner detect script that he already used 7 years ago (for a few days) ? So the needed server power, bandwith, requests etc. aren't too high. That a constant check isn't possible is understandable.
  • Why is the suspension time so low for autojoining ?
  • Why is the thanks script, that is a part of the autojoiner program, allowed? It make it difficultier for the mods to catch the dumbest autjoiners that activate it and it spams + annoys the gifters (= real users!).
  • Why ? very detailed autojoiner user reports aren't handled for 1 year+. Most of the ones that report them gave up because of this.
  • Why ? are users with 300k entries not get a automatic check ? (Nearly?) all of them are, absolute easy to detect, autojoiners.
  • Why are known autojoiners (if the tickets to them would be looked at) able to come back after 1 year of "perma suspension" ? And when they are able because they """only""" don't activated their wins 4 or 5x before the perma suspension, and the team discuss about letting that user back into sg when he activate all missing wins [that he traded or bought -most likely for a lower price years after the wins...-], why none check for user report tickets with that name? Or react when users claim that this user is a [known] autojoiner?

I see as reason only one thing.

Because in one go 40% of the "active users" would be suspended.

I get with each day more frustrated about the autojoiner situation and that cg invite them to cheat. From my point of view it is a active support of this behavior.

1 week ago*
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I had an idea: we make 1-hour giveaways staggered every hour, so 24 hours and 24 giveaways. And then we see who enters all of them.

1 week ago
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We made partly GAs for DLCs that are included now in the base game and they were priced as 50p each.
It was written very clearly in the description and still hundreds entered the GAs and that added up to 200p if entered all.

We done 20 or 30 GAs that started and ended at the same time, checked the entries of users and shown how ultra fast they enter more as each human could be.
Results are tiny amounts of suspended bots but far from the majority of the ones we reported (nothing happens without reports...).
And many many many hours of work which isn't healthy for the ones that do the work, it isn't healthy for the mods that try to do something against the bots but have rules that let them fight with the hands bound on the back and of course it lets the helpers (users and mods) burn out.

To summarize:
It gave many cases were we already delivered absolute sure autojoiner evidences and cg still comes up with bullshit like "false positives are possible because of bottle neck in the system that let someone enter all in one go but he clicked much before" (and 20 other reasons why it could be a false positive).
Cg don't want to do something against them.
That's the only explanation for what he do since 6 years+ (too much work, not motivated or whatever could never explain 6 years+ and the "why it could be a false positive" statement that we got one time)

And i absolutely don't have a problem with writing it so direct, i stand to my words.

1 week ago
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Genius lol !
And here the only insomniac guy with a full 24h dedication get ban. ;)

1 week ago*
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Because in one go 40% of the "active users" would be suspended.

It's true that it would make a void lol !
Also sigh but you're right that if CG wanted to solve the issue, he would have already done long ago. I mean he probably already have seen so many users complaining about that in the past.

1 week ago*
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Others have answered the problem with your suggestion.
But I will ask - is your problem with the autojoiners, or is it with people who take ages to activate their wins?

1 week ago
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Because I had the same thought as the OP, when someone who used autojoiner won one of my giveaways, the answer is the first one. It was annoying to see the winner log in every 30 minutes just to increase their number of entries and only manage to activate the key after 5 days.
I had thought that where you click to enter instead of saying "Enter Giveaway" or "Previously Won", it would say something like "You have a key to activate". But that's not a solution either...

1 week ago
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Hopefully it wasn't me -- I often enter GAs using the mobile app, but I can't activate them there. Even if I could, I like to activate won keys in my desktop computer, where I can properly "process them" -- getting them into Playnite, into BacklogAssassins, categorize them in Steam, etc.

If it was me, I apologize for the annoyance. :D

Cheers!

1 week ago
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Oh, no man.
And maybe it was unfair that I put him on my very small blacklist (the only practical solution regarding this issue), even if I had seen additional red flags, the main reason however was to avoid future similar stress. I feel awful until I make sure everything went well.

1 week ago
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Yes but you, you don't play on steam every day ignoring steamgifts while still entering all GA.
Also i mean i've seen people who do this almost systematically, it's not an accident. It's just "i don't care" situation.

1 week ago
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Gotcha, makes sense. And I can see how this can be irritating, yes.

Cheers!

1 week ago
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I often enter GAs using the mobile app, but I can't activate them ther

https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey :P

1 week ago
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Just when it's both at same time. As s4k1s explains, i've 0 issue with people who are absent for 1 week and activate after 1 week. There are plenty of good reasons someone can be absent for 1 week or 1 month or 1 year.
Nah my issue is just with people who are present every 3h on the website and can't take 30sec to activate their wins. People who are legitimely absent are just normal.
But in general if the full autojoin problem was solved, it would just be more fair for all of those who enter manually.

1 week ago
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Would be nice. I am now waiting for guy who won 3 giveaways from me to reedem, so I know I haven't messed up keys. He came up online every day to join new giveaways :/

1 week ago
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You're unlucky that the same guy won 3 GA from you at the same time, how low probability ! :(

1 week ago
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It was in my bday train, so there is always chance to have multiwinners.
Would be nice if the site started give some capatcha or math questions to answer at each giveaway entering if user has unclaimed wins (after sent keys) maybe. It would be still possible use site if key is bad or if you just "can't" redeem keys on mobile, but it would be annoying for user to extend that recieved time on purpose.
Edit: and on fails maybe forced log outs, so we get rid of bots?

1 week ago
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Ah that explains that sorry for you eh !

Force log out is a good idea, but someone answered once that bots will always be faster than real users to solve captchas.

1 week ago
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Tbh I doubt bots will be ever officially solved, cause they generate traffics for advertisement.
But yeah, that solving of capatcha or maths is nowadays easy task for bots.
Unless we make math examples aka derivation of sin(5x²) and ban bots these scripts calculate it right 🤔
I am out of uni for some time, but I think result would be 5x/2 • cos(5x²)?

1 week ago
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I didn't study math in high school, was in the other branch. With a simple derivative calculation you could already get me out.

Tbh I doubt bots will be ever officially solved, cause they generate traffics for advertisement.

Didn't dare to think that ;)

1 week ago
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Oh, yeah, as mechanical engineer I had like 8 different maths subjects, so I would get banned first day most likely, unless they would use a Laplace transform, which still makes 0 sense to me and I refuse remember decode chart for something that is absolutely useless.

1 week ago
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You talk chinese to me ! 😱

1 week ago
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There should be captcha or jigidi to enter each giveaway, the more complex the better :)

1 week ago
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Puzzlegifts

1 week ago
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This will never work and should never be implemented. There are many times when they are many giveaways for example Christmas Day. Especially when you are in groups. You could win 10 - 20 games within one hour or less.

1 week ago
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Winning 20 giveaways per hour? How many do you have to enter for that 👀👀👀

1 week ago
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Closed 1 week ago by coleypollockfilet.