Let's do something about this! Hop in everyone! Can we reach 1 million supporters?
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You have my swor... i mean my mouse =D, signed! ;)
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Or not. When a petition is phrased worse than a 3rd grader's homework, nobody will take it the least bit seriously.
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Basically you can not gift a game to anyone from a country with a higher price on Steam with a margin of about 10%.
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Or, in other words, you may not be able to gift games to people living in the UK or in Western and Central Europe, as we tend to have now a roughly 50-50 chance to have a higher enough price to warrant a lockout on gifts.
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Or switch to Humble Store, GamersGate, and the like.
By the way, didn't you used to have like 4 pages of Barbie™ games in that inventory a few weeks back? o.0
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It was only 2 pages
A casual amount!
after what happened with me and their support
Do you have a thread on that for moar info? :3
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GamersGate
Do they still sell anything? I haven't bought a single thing there in decades.
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Yep, their inventory is actually nice. They even support quite a few currencies. Although the old problem is still there, where it is difficult to tell apart Steam and non-Steam games.
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Are they selling region lock games now? some game has my regional prices while the other aren't.
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No, it is the same as on Steam: the publisher can set prices in any currency that the store supports; when they don't, it defaults to the USD/EUR one.
I think they do sell region-specific keys, but those are usually marked with a warning.
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I guess so, I checked and try which ever i choose (ROW prices or Regional prices) i always get a warning that the game can only be activate in my country also notice that they're asking address now on payment page, it's been 2 years since my last purchase but i can remember that the last time they didn't ask it.
I think the most reliable source games to gift or giveaway are from bundles now.
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Or any store with ROW prices only as they sell ROW keys. WinGameStore, even Humble, IndieGala Store (I know,people tend to forget there is a store, even though it has a few historical low prices on games that cost more than 5 dollars), DLGamer, SilaGames, GamesBillet, GamesPlanet can all play. And for non-Steam, there is always FireFlower, GOG, some Humble ones, and even GamersGate and WinGameStore has a few.
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It's a bad sign,it would means who Steam prevents resellers for selling it's games in a near future u.u
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It's quite sad to see such feature considering me and many others buy and store as gift until giveaway is over.
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So I logged onto Steam Gifts and looked at discussions after a shitty day hoping to see a topic about some great new bundle with 5 games from my wishlist for $1 and instead I see this shit. I hope Gaben has some kind of a prolapse.
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It isn't doing it for me, definitely not enough to make up for all this..
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I'm pretty sure you'll see a 1$ bundle with 5 games from your wishlist anytime soon.
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Look on the bright side: Lots of money saved in your future from not buying on Steam. Look at all the possibilities for that cash!
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I can understand the need to stop some people from accumulating gifts to make a profit out of reselling them.
But why prevent friends in (what used to be) the same region from gifting each other games?
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It's just collateral damage. I'm assuming this is going to be the start of a crackdown on the likes of G2A and other resellers that are getting to big to ignore and the next phase will be restrictions on keys. Steam users are either going to have to complain enough to make Steam back down or eat it.
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theyre... well, WE i mean, are going to have to eat it. This has been a long term strategy by valve... theyre not going to back down like they did over paid mods, which was more of an experiment (and will make a return before long anyway). Valve have made it clear they want steam to not only be the dominant platform for pc game sales, but they also want us in nice, neat little lines, paying the prices and in the manner that valve dictate. Valves customers have shown how compliant they are at every step of the way, and this will be no different. This new change will bring about a week... probably less... of people complaining, and then die out and then it'll be business as usual. The exact same thing will happen with whatever changes come next as well.
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People don't HAVE to eat it - Valve still needs customers. But yeah, I'm absolutely expecting that Valve are going to be resolved enough on this to power through the relatively limited moaning. The gaming media stacked up against paid Skyrim mods which had a large part in the (temporary) back down - but the gaming media mostly seem to be reporting this as a 'good' thing somehow...
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i can only 100% agree to that post.
unfortunately, most ppl are just too stupid to see it. or they don't care and simply queue...
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I will add: This is a very dumb move. If you want to punish low level buyers, that get their games from resellers, you'll not force them to pay full price, they'll be back into the dark waters of piracy again.
This is complete bullshit. Scammers will continue with their scams, resellers will resell another thing (keys, potatos, whatever), and rightful users are fucked. I'll start to improve my GOG library, they deserve my money better.
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This is sad, most of my giveaways were from gifts. Currently with the crisis here, it was already difficult to be able to do a giviaway, so it will worsen, it may never be possible to draw 10, 20 copies anymore (without having a good headache).
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Looks like i was right to quit steam 3 years ago when they fucked the trading. Just keeps getting worse
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1st Bring market restrictions then this
End of trading era.
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Actually, no- because in your situation, there are stricter involvement terms, and far less strict long-term enforcement.
This is more akin to going into a furniture store, having to tell them in detail the individual you're delivering the furniture to, then having them take the furniture to the address, confirm the homeowner, and then bolt the furniture down into the floor with proprietary locks that only they can remove.
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Huh. Found this:
New gift notification
Clicking on "1 new gift" will take you to the following screen where you must click either Accept Gift or Decline Gift. Once you click Accept Gift you will have the option to add the game directly to your Library or to your Steam Inventory
So you could just send it to an alt account, then send it back to your main one, I think.
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you have to add a gift to your library...no more "add to inventory"...only accept or decline
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So the only options are to accept it and activate it at the same time or decline? Is it not possible to gift it away immediately to someone else via e-mail or steam? (I guess it's not, because of this refund thingy).
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E-mail is disabled, only Steam (and if on friendslist).
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I mean if A buys the game to B, can B send it to C immediately?
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no, B only has the option to accept it straight to library or decline.. decline will immediately refund A with the funds they spent on it rather then returning it to A's inventory.
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If you decline it with your alt account you will get a refund. There's no workaround I'm afraid.
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Anyone know what happens to 4 packs? If I send 3 copies and one person declines, will they refund 1/4 of the price or something?
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based off of my test of applying a steamkey (minion masters) that gives a bonus gift copy (basically a 2pack), they still work like completely normal and have fully tradeable/giftable items given to your inventory. (tradeable after the 30days anyways)
basically no change on those.
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People keep saying that re-rolls will still be possible even with the new Steam gifting system, which implies that if you send someone a gift, and they don't activate it, you can change the recipient of the gift. Is that definite?
If not, then how can you re-roll a giveaway once you send someone a Steam gift? For example, you start a giveaway, it lasts for 1 hour. You get a winner. You add them on Steam. They accept the add. You go to purchase the game and indicate that they are the recipient and that delivery is immediate. The game is purchased, and then you wait to for it to be accepted. You're still waiting. You chat at the winner. They logged off and are not responding. Now what? They have 7 days to accept. What happens if they don't decline or accept, but just let the gift offer sit there?
This would also imply that you could send gifts to an alt account and let them sit there indefinitely without being accepted, then later, when you're ready, change the recipient to someone else.
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Re-rolling is possible with unfavorable situations...
- Buy it at full price from Steam
- Buy it elsewhere if the user decided to never accept or you choose to re-roll for infractions (if you care about them)
I would see how long it takes the winner to accept and maybe re-roll next time it goes on sale again instead of deleting it.
(you can just delete the giveaway if it fails or re-roll and choose full price or wait till the next sale if it really comes to that)
"If your friend declines your gift or there is some other problem with delivery, we'll automatically refund your purchase."
If the user you chose to send it to doesn't accept, you can either refund it yourself or wait for it to be declined. It shows up in your inventory as a Gift, but you have no option to send it to anyone else or cancel it from your inventory. It might not even show in your inventory unless you already have gifts there to begin with, too. I'm pretty sure Valve wanted this option to no longer exist, so I don't see why they would would allow you to be able to send it to someone else in case your 'friend' declines.
You have to go to https://help.steampowered.com/en/wizard/HelpWithPurchase to manually get it refunded instead of being able to cancel the Gift. I don't know if it will let you refund, though.
edit: the good news is your refund is instant sarcasm.. this is only sarcasm!!! it's still good that it's instant, though
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None of those scenarios make re-rolling in any way practical going forward, which is exactly what I thought. People need to be clearer about what they mean by a re-roll when talking about Steam gifts now.
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Either re-rolling needs to get more lenient (no more 7 days wait), or it's death to Steam Gifts.
With the Region limitations they will be pain to do regardless of re-rolling anyway.
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mikapi, please include petition link in the topic's description:
https://www.change.org/p/valve-corporation-valve-please-bring-back-previous-gift-system-on-steam
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Well, there are legends, that some petitions worked :3
Anyway, most of time doing something is a bit more useful than doing nothing.
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Valve change gift system on Steam
1.not allow user to gift game via email address
Right now the petition wants Valve to remove the ability to gift using email addresses. Which they did, so petition fulfilled instantly!
And this is why it is important to only write in a language one can speak.
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Right. But this one is not mine and I haven't seen other petitions around =\
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If I had to make a wild guess, it may be because historically the amount of changes Valve implemented at the will of its user bases has been… let me count… zero. Unless we count the special translation case of "please do something against the cheaters using wallhacks and aimbots in CS and TF" turning into "okay, we added more skins and hats" as one.
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They did something against the CS cheaters.
Not putting CS on a good sale anymore and not allowing to store gifts for it ^^
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So CS:GO screws over the entirety of Steam once more since they now apply it to everything?
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Just you wait.
Next step is: All games cost 100$ minimum.
Then noone will burn an alt to cheat.
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Like Shadows of War? (congrats WB, I will now buy the Gold pack for max 10 euro, was that your intention?)
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Yep, Valve is a peace of crap were it comes to caring about what the users want. 'Cause that's what you usually do when you monopolize the market.
But the only one to blame about all this is... the user himself. He's the one who made Valve monopolist, he's the one who continue to eat all the shit Valve brings to him on the shovel. It is the users, who went crazy with all that skins, showing Valve they no longer have to make good stuff to make tons of money. And he's the one who continue to use Steam and play recent Valve crappy games. That's the sad truth.
P.S. Still, I can come up with one case of shitstorm that made Valve revert their decision - paid mods.
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And this is why it is important to only write in a language one can speak.
Well, that excludes approximately 43% of Americans [from writing anything in English].
Hungary seems as though it'd be a lot better off, comparatively*..?
* Assuming a rough correlation between literacy rate and fluency of speech.
In 2006, USA was considered to have a functional illiteracy rate of roughly 15-20% (up to 35% under stricter literacy cutoffs). As of 2013, those stats were down to 14% (20-25% under stricter cutoffs). Meanwhile, at the time of the 2006 survey, only an estimated 15% of Americans were considered to have full reading proficiency.
However, by the time of the 2013 study, that number had actually dropped down to 13% (Though intermediate reading proficiency is indicated to have increased sizably since 2006- presumably in large part due to the benefits of the internet, which definitely encourages and improves basic reading skills [but generally doesn't impart proper grammatical and comprehension skills, if the individual in question isn't willing to put in the effort of study on their own]).
In total, only 57% of Americans read at a proficient or intermediate (versus basic or illiterate) level. Of course, those stats are often localized, so the actual rate does vary significantly region to region.
While literacy stats may not directly correlate to language fluency, they should be fairly indicative of writing skills. Assuming that the functionally illiterate are removed from the equation, you're still looking at 29% of Americans who may be on the internet and unable to communicate clearly.
(Note, I'm referencing the most favorable statistics out there. Another study in 2016 indicated only 11% proficiency and 35% at only a basic level. This could mean that as little as 40% of Americans are capable of expressing themselves adequately through writing.)
Comparatively, in 2015 UNESCO put Hungary as having an impressive 99.1% literacy rate [though other European studies indicate similar stats to present-day America, so do let me know which you feel is a more accurate representation].
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Wow, that's quite a surprising fact.
But not that surprising: there are a lot of badly educated people around the whole world.
I wonder, how big these percentage in England, minding, that English people believe Americans ruined the language.
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As with most things in the UK, I'd assume they fall somewhere between the States and most of the rest of western Europe.
Googling it, however, indicates they're actually worse off than the states, with 16% functional illiteracy (to the States 14%) and 28% illiteracy under stricter cutoffs (to the States' 20-25%).
For clarification, 'stricter cutoffs' refers to being able to find a requested piece of information within a reading sample when asked (with no tricks or advanced reading comprehension concepts involved). In other words, people not meeting the cut-off may understand some smattering of words, but they lack clear, basic reading comprehension [as necessary, for example, to complete any job requiring even basic literacy]. In other words, those in this grouping are not functionally (ie, completely) illiterate, but can't meet the most basic literary comprehension requirements, either. See:
At basic (UK: "Level 1") literacy, adults can read brief texts on familiar topics and locate a single piece of specific information identical in form to information in the question or directive.
Even more odd, it seems the majority of the UK's illiteracy concerns are among its youth (with, for example, one study indicating 17% of 15 year olds in the study were functionally illiterate) whereas in the States, it's an issue usually directly tied to poverty and age, with a full third of the nation's illiteracy being based in the 65+ crowd.
In England, adults aged 55-65 perform better than 16-24 year-olds in both literacy and numeracy. In fact, England is the only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest age group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations, are taken into account. In Northern Ireland, 16-24 year-olds scored slightly higher in literacy and numeracy than 55-65 year-olds, but the differences are very small.
Of those who are literate in the UK, the stats I found indicate that (rounded to the nearest percent point): 49% have basic literacy, 38% have intermediate literacy, and 14% have proficiency. Adjusting for total population percentage, that should be about 35%, 27%, and 10%. This compared to the States' stats of 18% (after adjusting for stricter literacy cutoff), 44%, and 13%.
Assuming that's all even somewhat close to accurate, then the states has a 75% literacy rate compared to the UK's 72% (and that with me using the highest estimation of US illiteracy, so the contrast may actually be sharper), with the UK's literacy stats being far more heavily weighted toward basic literacy. In other words, for all the literacy problems within the States, the UK is nevertheless still quite a bit worse off.
As an added consideration, UK stats factor in Ireland, which- as noted in the last quote- does generally do at least somewhat better in literacy. As such, England's stats (when excluding Ireland) must be even more winceworthy.
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Actually, the extended stats for UK are fascinating.
The last generation (currently aged 25-44) have stats more comparable to the States: Of those who have literacy, 40% were at intermediate and 17% at proficient reading skill. Presumably illiteracy was down during that period as well.
Adjusting current US stats to only account for literacy gives us comparison points of 57% and 17%- however, keep in mind how much lower US stats were during that last generation; In other words, the UK used to beat the states in literacy.
Meanwhile, the current generation (16-24) has far more deteriorated literacy stats: Roughly 61% basic literacy (versus roughly 43%), and about 33% intermediate (versus roughly 38%). Proficient literacy has- compared to the 2% drop the States had between 2006 and 2013- dropped from roughly 18% (better than the US's current 17%) to roughly 5%.
In the States, there's this whole shtick of older folks being unwilling to adapt to the modern age, and blaming youth for for all of society's problems, despite information reliably showing that the responsibility almost always lies with the older generation. In contrast to that, the UK may be the only civilized nation which can legitimately accuse their youth of dragging the country downward.. :X
(My apologies for continuously jumping between total population percentages and intra-literacy percentages; it's the only way to maintain calculations accurate to the stats which I have available to me.)
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I don't claim to have any answers - but a few things to think about.
Exam results in England have been improving for many years now while many people have been complaining that educational standards are actually declining. Employers and higher education are increasingly claiming that children are leaving schools without the required skills for their jobs and courses.
The major shift appeared to be around 1990 when there was a change from traditional knowledge based examinations to coursework based examinations. On top of that the 80s also saw significant cuts in school funding under Thatcher, etc that arguably have never been reversed. Other factors may include changes to grammar schools, the rise of certain faith schools, etc.
A lot of people consider the 'golden age' of schooling in Britain to have been between the 50s and 70s and that may explain why older people are considered to be more literate.
Also consider that immigration is statistically significant in the UK. With around 15% of the population now born outside of the UK that is going to have an impact on English literacy.
That is going to have an impact on falling literacy (as the foreign born population has grown drastically in recent years) and on literacy by age group. Older age groups have fewer immigrants amongst them - and any immigrants are more likely to be commonwealth immigrants who arrived with excellent English skills. Younger age groups are going to be skewed by far more working age EU immigrants and their children who are far less likely to speak English as a primary language.
It's also arguably going to have an impact in terms of the numbers of schools that are claiming to be struggling due to the numbers of pupils they have that speak different primary languages.
I'd hope when you mentioned Ireland those UK stats only included Northern Ireland - the rest of Ireland isn't in the UK and feels very strongly about the matter. And Northern Island doesn't have sufficient population to impact the overall stats much. However it would be interesting to know more about regional stats due to the number of regional factors.
Schooling can vary drastically by region due to available funding as well as by organisation (schooling is somewhat different in Scotland) and native languages (in my own region there is a lot of Welsh language education). Likewise immigration is very much regional in terms of both scale and type.
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The US had comparable immigration totals (arpox. 14% of the total population) at the time of the 2016 study, which is one reason I didn't factor immigration in. Likewise, the States have more significant issues with poverty and anti-education culture, so I assumed imbalances between the nations due to outside factors wouldn't be readily measurable.
My stats were based off the UK as a whole, as the UK's official studies/surveys don't distinguish between component nations. The one mention that referenced [Northern] Ireland was directly quoted. I just added the end reference to that quote for passing consideration, but if the population influence is negligible to overall statistics, then you're right, it was unnecessary of me to do so.
The fact that the UK is the only nation reporting such a decline (a fact even mentioned within the most recent UK survey) among its youth is what is unusual, as it's hardly the only nation within the EU which is accepting young immigrants.
None of these stats should really be taken as absolutes, but they do, at the least, indicate that literacy is still a problem in a lot of developed nations. And that's all that's really of key note in regards to talgaby's considerations toward people writing in a language they've more than just the very most basic control over.
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Well, those numbers are surely not correct. Literacy is high, like in all Europe, but intermediate or higher is surely not higher than 90%, maybe not even reaching 80%.
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Yeah, apparently UNESCO statistics are pretty worthless. They also gave the UK 99%, and even the most generous official UK study I found [as in, one that doesn't properly provide access to those of limited literacy] put the nation's illiteracy at 3.3%, so I think it's safe to say UNESCO stats don't match reality. :P
Well, at the very least, I don't imagine Hungary's actual stats'd come out worse than the UK's.. :S
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You're also not taking the total population into account. Hungary has maybe 10~20 million people while the US has 300~400 million people. Percentages are nice for making people think statistics are worthwhile, but raw numbers are better.
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I used to buy some games on sale during the whole year, store them in my BP and the gift them to my best friend on his birthday in October.
guess, no b-day present like those anymore?
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Only if you know the exact day of their birthday, then you can schedule the gift be sent to them on that day.
But no, you can't do any spontaneous or unplanned giving. You have to know exact dates and the exact people you want to give them to when you purchase.
Let's say you purchase a gift for your friend and schedule it to be delivered on their birthday in October.
Then in September, you get into a fight with them and decide you are no longer friends.
Your only option is to cancel the gift and get a refund, you can't keep the gift and give it to someone else.
Or let's say they buy the game for themselves in August. When October rolls around, they won't be able to accept the gift because they already own it, and your gift will be canceled and you'll get a refund. There's no way to keep the gift and give it to anyone else.
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Or let's say they buy the game for themselves in August. When October rolls around, they won't be able to accept the gift because they already own it,
In September, the game gets removed from the store. Just a year later, it resells for over 10 times what you paid for it.
#ThanksValve
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Oh.
Haven't thought about that yet.
Hard times for removed game colectors. There won't be gifts anymore, just keys... if you are lucky....
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Yes, you can...
https://www.humblebundle.com/store
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Modern times. All of the business changes towards individualism and greed. And people keep repeating "it's a business, they have to make money" as it was an excuse for shitty behavior.
I said. Not at any price.
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Please, if anyone would see a change.org petition to Valve regarding that stupidity, link me to it. Regards to everyone!.
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Thank you, TheCyberDruid :)
I am afraid, Valve won't get the meaning of that petition because of so many orthographic and stylistic mistakes, committed there. I expect it will be re-posted after sometime by a native English user. Anyway, I signed this one too) More petitions - more chances to be heard)..
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The recent Star Wars bundle is a good methaphor for this.
Valve thinks that if the lower price gives them less income. So they fix the price.
However the end result isn't that I will pay more, it's that I won't buy AT ALL. So in the end Valve does not win.
Pretty much the same going on here on a bigger scale.
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It's more like 5 don't buy the $1 so one will buy the $2 though.
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Publishers set the discount percentage, not Valve. If it's a store glitch on Valve's end, they are required by the publisher to fix it asap.
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Still, it's a good example that "not available cheaper" doesn't mean 'higher paid purchase', but more likely 'no purchase whatsoever'... which in the end is less money for both of them.
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also to be note, you can't gift a game to someone who have price for the game higher than you
for this experiment, i'm trying to sent a gift to my friend in thailand (Cubicle Quest),
its different country but still same region with me (SEA)
the game price is 0.11usd in indonesia and 0.22usd in thailand (steamdb) and i get this warning
Due to regional price differences, the gift you are trying to send cannot be sent to the recipient's region.
you can see it on the gif i provided
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not sure if it's higher so much as 10% difference in price, is the new cap
what a fine example of the mess this is.
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Seems Valve don't care for negative opinions about these changes and just meh.
I live in Poland and to be honest, i feel allready fucked up by Blizzard by changed prices in EU only for Hearthstone packs, WoW services prices. And now Valve? But at least Valve maked it global, but still is not right...
I wonder what is prices diffrences between Poland, Germany and US mainly.
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We don't need move a finger, they will change this in the next sales when they see how lowwwww the sells will be.Soon or later they will change it. just wait and don't buy any game, and they will change.
WE HAVE THE POWER, WE ONLY NEED START TO USE IT.
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When it fails horribly, they will say that are reverting the decision because of the people complains.
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xD
People have already said that at the introduction of the regio-lock
that one has reduced the sales much more than the ridiculous Giftlock now
which no one has really used....not even the resellers compared to other sources
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https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791457287600/announcements/detail/1301948399254001159
You can now only buy something directly for another steam user and if they decline, your money gets refunded.
"Steam Gifting will now be a system of direct exchange from gift buyer to gift receiver, and we will be retiring the Gift to E-mail and Gift to Inventory options."
"Note: Pre-existing gifts will be unaffected by this change."
here's a change.org petition created by another user in the thread,
https://www.change.org/p/valve-corporation-valve-please-bring-back-previous-gift-system-on-steam
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