TL;DR - guy buys 100 bundles for $1 total, gives away, gets about 100 times higher chances of winning great gifts on SG.

(Discussion about this in the according Sticky thread would get buried by countless "thanks" so I bring it here separately.)


So, everyone has surely noticed the new cool feature "Contributor giveaway". If everything goes well, many giveaways like that will start popping up soon. So far so good...

Now imagine the following: a new Humble Bundle goes live. A SG user buys 100 of those bundles for a single dollar in total (EDIT: Humble is out of question now, others are still exploitable in this way). Gives them away, which adds about $500 value of gifted games to his statistics. Suddenly he can enter nearly any Contributor giveaway - his winning odds skyrocket.

Now AFAIK this action doesn't violate any present rules of SG (gifting a bundle that comes with no Steam keys is not forbidden). I think this is horribly wrong. But believe me many people will do the simple math and find this strategy extremely viable.

Question for you is: do you think that this is wrong? If so, how would you solve this situation before Contributor giveaways go fully live?


EDIT:

  • According to some users linking to a user profile violates the rules, so I removed the link to the profile. In case somebody is interested in a real example, search for "Humble Voxatron Debut" giveaway, most likely you'll stumble upon a bundle farmer pretty soon.
  • Note: Here I'm presenting brand new way of massive abuse/exploitation which is completely uncovered by present rules. Quoting FAQ and arguing that this is perfectly fine by the rules = didn't understand my main point.
  • Giving away individual keys sure is a problem, but it's a known issue. I'm trying to point out that the new type of giveaway will highly encourage a new type of abuse that's not covered by present rules.
12 years ago*

Comment has been collapsed.

Every single bundle that has steam reedemable keys require a $1 purchase to get the keys.

12 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

not sure about IndieGala for example

12 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Greetings, Pyta.

We haven't even discussed "security" for contributor giveaways and stated multiple times that we will update accordingly when this isn't just a work in progress. There is no reason to raise your pitchforks and torches, we are obviously fully aware of giveaway history and we are fully prepared to deal with this in future "updates" of this feature. Only two exist now and both were created by cg, and this feature is many weeks from going live.

Yet, you want hyperbole and drama in your thread to match. Not cool. Next time, please, come into chat and PM me first instead of creating a thread trying to raise panic.

12 years ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Closed 12 years ago by Pyta.