Community banned for gifting giveaway winner.

Either add them on Steam without leaving any comment on their profile and hope that they realize why you're adding them, or if you really need to first drop a comment try to avoid using the word "gift". There's been quite a few reports recently of users getting banned for mentioning Steamgifts or gifts, most likely an automated filter.

Maybe you can refer this post

https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/V7bZI/banned-for-14-years-no-biggie

You can reach out to Steam support with careful explanation of what happened and your intentions. There was this thread recently where this did help someone to lift the ban
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/V7bZI/banned-for-14-years-no-biggie

For the future, it's generally advised against mentioning the fact of winning giveaways or anything of the kind, as Steam support often considers this as an act of malevolence in an attempt to steal an account or inventory items

I would also add a comment in the GA which you create, that "the winner would need to accept a friend request in order to get the gift..."

Contact Steam Support and explain the situation and you should get unbanned within a day, after you get unbanned don't comment stuff a scammer might say (eg. i have a gift for you) on other people's profiles because Steam has a anti-scam filter that automatically bans people.
You can alert the giveaway winner by adding his friends and asking them to let him know that he won a giveaway

I would recommend setting the giveaway here to region restricted if the key is region restricted (Option 5 on the giveaway settings).

If someone wins a game from you and they are in a region which has that key as invalid (Say, Russia for example) then the GA won't occur. They could access the key but not use it. This means that the system here can't validate that they have the game on their account.

It gets messy for those who run the boards here and can lead to all sorts of silliness.

As for giving a key personally. I have given keys and received keys via direct message on Steam. An alternative is to friend someone and then gift it directly to them from a Steam purchase.

The best option is to use the boards here and to make sure keys aren't region restricted. That keeps everyone in the loop and stops any exploitation from all the various means that people try.

Don't be disheartened and I am sure you will get your account back once it has been reviewed.

It's hard to be nice and give away games sometimes due to troublesome people, but many games will find a good home.

You could try things like sgtools or a riddle or game to make sure that bots don't try to get your games.

It's a whole new world of exploration if you are up for it :)

Gifting games via Steam is nearly always a bit problematic as people don't read description and/or the time intervall a product is on a sale on Steam doesn't coincide with time delays stipulated by SteamGifts gifting rules.
As Steam swings the ban hammer quite often (until 2038 eh? They lost their sense for adequacy completely) I'd never contact a winner on Steam if it can be avoided. Try to contact them by commenting on a giveway of theirs (if they made any) or use their e-mail provided in their SG account. If you really have no choice but commenting on their Steam profile avoid any key word that might trigger Steam's stupid algorithm.

yes this has happened to others as well, there have been some discussions about it.
you are new here so it is reasonable to not have known about it.
apparently key words like won, gift, giveaway and even steamgifts are flagged automatically by steam, some people write something like "space cat has visited you" or something similar to let the person know about their win here.

As others have said, it’s best to leave a comment on one of their previous giveaways - something along the lines of, “Hey, congrats on winning, sending you a friend request on steam for your gift” - and avoid commenting directly on their profile. In the unlikely event that they don’t have any accessible GAs (group/whitelist only, etc) you could either send them a request without comment or say something like “This is [Name] from SG”. I think as long as you don’t use the words gift/giveaway/won directly, you should be good.

The Steam bot thinks it's spam for sure.

had the same issue and i provided with ss's from this site and they removed

My procedure is leave a comment in a random available giveaway from the winner that says "Adding you on Steam so I can gift you your win!" According to staff, you should specify the name of the game that was won here.
Then I leave a comment on Steam's profile comments like "Adding you from SG!" and keep it that vague. SG Staff says you should include the name of the game that was won, but I don't want to be banned. If there's no comment section open on Steam, some users leave comments on screenshots and such, but I avoid doing that, that's scammer behavior.
That's as much as you can do, unless you also want to send them an email, which I don't do because I am not sure it's legit or not. If they don't accept your friend request within a week, you can ask for a reroll. It only happened to me once with a botter user.

Hope it allows goes well for you and everything gets back to normal soon.

Well, this will make me rethink all my strategies going forward if I decide to do some giveaways where I deliver the prize directly via Steam.

Also, gifting directly via Steam make it's easier for you to level up on SG, provided that the game is not on sale the moment you start and finish the giveaway.

Keys are likely to reduce your leveling value, as only Steam might be an accurate way for SG, to count full contributor level value.

If it's a key and it has been on sale or was part of a bundle, then it unlikely it will be counted as full value.

In fact, it may only count as 15% levelling value (even if you paid full price for it).

That is, if it was part of a bundle or was on sale before.

That's it.

The "you've won my giveaway" and things like that often are used in scams so it's best not leave comments like that on someone's Steam profile, especially a link as what happened to you does occur. If it's a game you delivering to the winner via steam it's best to state it in the giveaway description of your giveaway. If you send them a friends request on Steam and you want to let them know who you are it's best to leave a comment on one of their giveaways they created saying something like "Hey you won my giveaway, I just sent you a friends request on Steam so I can deliver the win to you". Then when they get back on SG they'll see it.

Steam support will help you but I would advise you refraining on using those words on someone's profile. Valve us using some kind of AI now it seems to ban and lock accounts. Steam Support should help you out. So that you know how bad it is right now, Dota 2 Players are getting banned for Upvoting Dota 2 Guides. YES. hitting that thumbs up on that Guide you used IN-GAME in Dota 2. got them banned.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/1ir90jw/got_steam_account_ban_for_apparently_for_an/

I'm not a veteran and I'm not entirely sure how it works but recently one member had the same problem as you and it's not that someone reported the comment but the word "givaway" is the problem so it's better not to write it he also wrote a ticket and they unbanned him so they'll probably unban you too

The best thing you can do is comment on someone else's old giveaway. If they have none, hope they have a comment on a giveaway they won that could could reply to. With either option they will get a new notification with the info about the friend request.

Steam will always flag external sites because it can't prove it's not a scam, it's better to simply write "adding you for a gift".

Yeah, gifting directly can definitely become a hassle at times especially if the winner hits the trifecta of not having any GAs created on SG, not accepting your friend request and not responding to you in anyway.

If you want to gift games using the Steam transfer method, you just need to add the person who won the game to you on Steam and wait 7 days. If the person who won your game does not contact you and ignores you for seven days, you should contact the site's support team to change the winner or delete the game. If you're being ignored on Steam, there are other ways to let people know who won your games. You can add a link to your giveaway in their giveaways that they run. Now I'm talking exclusively about the winners who also ran draws on this site. And if you plan to hold raffles with game keys, just add the key of the desired game when creating a raffle on the site. When the giveaway is over, send the key to the winner's email using the "Send Gift" command. If the person did not go to the site and check their winnings, although this is unlikely, then your key will not have an eye symbol, which means that the winner has not yet seen the game key. Conversely, if your giveaway has an eye symbol, it means that the person clicked and saw the key to the game. I say all this also because there are unscrupulous people who saw the key, activated it and did not note that they received the game from you. You can contact the support service, they will check you and your draw and put a tag instead of the winner. Although there is a possibility that you will have to wait 7 days again until the winner does it himself. Also, I don't recommend you create low level sweepstakes on this site because there are a lot of bots here, so be careful.
Also, never send strangers links to other sites on Steam. Because there are already too many cheaters on the Steam platform. Other people lose their money and game items because of them. Therefore, any links on Steam are now considered spam. Especially if you do it often. For example, sending the same message to different people.
I almost forgot to add that there are quite a few people who use software to automatically enter your sweepstakes. Of course it's not allowed, but I see people continue to ignore this rule. This is probably why they don't know what they won from you and continue to ignore the person who adds them to Steam. And all this despite the fact that they are usually online all the time.

Didn't know that's a thing, seems like I dodged a bullet once. I should read the discussion threads more often

I want to add something else, you're gifting the games directly through Steam, right?
You may not know - If you gift a game to a winner that lives in a country with a different currency where the game is more than 10% pricier than it is in your currency, Steam might not allow you to gift it to that person. I have a friend from Switzerland and I cannot gift most games because of that rule
You may want to keep that in mind. At least you can find that information on SteamDB easier than finding out if a game key is region restricted or not

to be honest, that looks like a generic scam message xD

You should buy keys to raffle, another way is to place in the giveaway, which you will add to the winner and you will contact him.

Sorry to hear that, I hope your problem gets resolved

Your account now appears to be working properly.
welcome back.