Why invest time in ascending in this community

Some people like being generous.

I love the community. I love doing giveaways. I love gifting games to my friends. I have a 5:1 ratio and I've given plenty of games I actually want and/or are on my wishlist. Do as you please, if you want to just win -- good luck. If you want to give -- good on you.

Read the previous replies, all you need to know there.

And by the way, your questions may not be naive, but having started this thread is probably not be the best way to get those freebies.

I like being here, it really is simple as that. I like to give and I buy the games that I give away. Some are parts of a bundle that I didn't need and some just bought straight from a store. Winning is nice too when that happens, but I don't really consider this as any kind of investment that I would get games in equal or more in worth that I have spent.

If you don't want to spend any money at all for this site, that's fine. Everyone is welcome as long as they pass the check for joining the site. If communities aren't your thing, you won't even need to read these discussions at all and just stay on the giveaways page. If you end up winning something, do at least thank the generous person giving that game away.

Haha, I actually like the idea. I am a friend of altruism. But at the same time we're living in societies that don't rely on that principle at all, so I am also a person who wants to understand why this is so. I don't want to be a d*** but just understand this weird coincidence. Everybody here just beeing selfless doesn't seem a sufficient explanantion to me. Which brings me to the very material question from my op: Were do you actually get the keys you gift? Are you in alot of communities where the stuff is just flowing around (which means investment of time, even if it's a pleasure for you)? Do you buy bundles and give away the stuff you allready have? Or do you actually buy stufff just to gift it (some answers point to that)?

I like playing games but I am really no big online community fan, so please understand my perspective ;)

I'm planning on dancing in this thread.

Would that be ok for you?

Let's dance!!

Some people don't give anything away; some people only give things away to raise their level so they can enter more giveaways; and some people make giveaways because they enjoy giving things away. Bit of everything here. Also, it gets oddly addictive, like gambling.

Why are you even asking? You can do whatever you want, as long as it's not against the rules. You are free to do anything you like. :) I'm giving away games because I'm generous. I'm getting the games from steam from the profit I make by trading games. I know nobody and nobody knows me. I just want to give something to a random person and, hopefully, make him/her happy. Anyway, welcome and have fun here. ;)

I was like you once, one time I created a giveaway because contributor GA are cool, and it felt really nice giving something to another person, so I kept doing it once in a while. I don't have a super huge ratio because of money but I do what I can.
I don't mind if you don't give, I can understand that point of view. :)

i have seen everything :|

leech away, i guess...

View attached image.

Started because I didn't want my bundle leftovers to go to waste. Stuck around because I like to do things for people.

Morbid as it sounds, a good portion of us lead lives where we aren't as appreciated for good deeds, so it's good to have that kind of place.

I usually give away keys I get in bundles that I already have, or am just not interested in. I'd rather have someone else play it and enjoy it than it just sit with me. I've yet to win a giveaway as I'm fairly new, but I still love giving things away.

I give because I feel guilt from winning. Unfortunately, I'm also broke and stingy. Which means I don't give stuff away that is expensive, but I have given stuff away that I wanted to keep...

Gaming saved my life.
I'm just paying it forward, I guess. :)

Making someone smile doesn't cost much here.

The terrible truth is that initially I thought giving was a way of getting more points. I feel rather silly admitting that now. So my original intentions did involve giving so that I could get. But after I learned how the points worked and gave a few things away, I found I liked the feeling of all those "thank yous." And once I wandered into the forums and found the community behind the giveaways I wanted to give more to them. I still like to win things too though. It feels good to win! :D So I give because it's an awesome community to give to but I give being well aware of what I can get back in return. So I guess I'm not totally altruistic.
Pretty much all my keys come from bundles but I do like to buy things from Steam sometimes to give as gifts. It makes me happy knowing I can totally make someone's day.

Thank you all for answering my questions. You really helped me to better understand the whole thing ;) Will be gifting myself one day I guess... Maybe someone can answer one more question: Is it save to buy all my steam games as a gift (during sales especially) and decide later if I want to keep them? Is there something to consider about that?

Came here to get some free games - approaching my 600th giveaway soon, no regrets :) I've got to know amazing people, got friends to talk with / play with and a community I'm happy to see :)

I give away games that come in bundles and that I wont play or already have.
Theres this rare occasion where I bought a game just to give it away here.

The selflessness might come in time.
I started by giving out bundled games that I didn't want or already had. A couple of months and the notion to give something of (")worth(") can rub off on you. More than the gift of giving to my fellow gamers, my motivation for buying and giving away games is to try and give those games more exposure (however slight) because I liked them and want them to do well.
Granted, a good majority of games you'll give will remain that bundle fodder, but you'll reckon on peppering in a GA for a game that you bought specifically to giveaway every now and then. With no discernible cause, really; I think for me it was "Well, the public giveaways area absolutely inundated with the current bundles' games; guess it's up to me!" And then I made a series of giveaways hidden away in these discussions...
I participate here because I've no (")social media(") presence anywhere else, and it's relevant to my lifestyle. Because I don't know how to life.
Perhaps there's an elite; anybody can "ascend" in the community, be it through your giveaways themselves, your comments, etc.
Of course, there's no obligation to give anything away and if someone attacks you for it, they're in the wrong because you're just using the site as it's intended; you've no choice but to be fine with being excluded from (")the better giveaways(") by people who don't appreciate (but have to respect) your selfishness (I don't use it as a charged word, just opposed to "selflessness").
Though this is not to try and use double-think on you to force you into thinking you must giveaway decent games to get a look-in on the better stuff (indeed, for all its vigilance, the community isn't able to see everybody deserving of such privilege (not a sly self-referential remark)) - just my observations from my short time being here.

This community is about WAY more than winning and gifting games - that's just the surface. Sure, for the majority of registered users that's all it is (well, for the majority it's mostly just about winning games), but that's not the "community".

I'm happy that there's so much diversity of reasons and motivations for people to be here. If you look at my SG profile, you'll see that I win a good deal, but I gift a lot more. If you dig a bit deeper, you'll see that the quality of games I'm gifting is really about the same as the games that I'm winning. Why do I participate like this? Quite simply - it makes me happy. I can spend the same amount of money buying games to give away that I used to spend buying them for myself, taking advantage of cheap bundles and bulk sales, and I end up getting at least that much game value back from my winnings while also making a lot of other people happy.

But, I'll swing back around to my first point. I came here looking for something nice to do with my extra keys, and hey, maybe I'll win something. But the reason I've stayed here and gotten quite involved has really very little to do with games at all - it's because I find the SG community to be a rare gem on the internet. I'd pay to be a part of it, but I don't have to and that's even better. :D

When I heard about SG for the first time, I was not interested. I did sign-in, but was not active at all for months, not even entering.
One day, there was a spare Steam key from certain bundle, it was useless to me. As we all know, we cannot redeem the same game(license) more than once.
So I came here. I read some documents and instructions, then created first giveaway. When winner thanked me for the game, I felt strange. Well, happy or glad or satisfying, whatever. Then I became active as a casual gifter though I was not active in this forum. I used other community then.

Welcome to the SG. :)

You are blacklisted

Umm .... welcome I guess?

You shouldn't of posted this dude, a lot of people are going to blacklist you tbh.