This below here shows exactly what's wrong with contribution farming.

It was an announcement on a group from someone trying to get ref links, which I have copy pasted below. There's ref. links all over the original I'm not putting here - emphasis added to the lines that cause me most offence and prove my point:

JUST TO BE CLEAR: THIS IS NOT MY TEXT, THIS IS SOMETHING I SAW SOMEWHERE. If mods want, I will remove the copypasted bit, or remove the "instructional" bit, as my whole intent is to counter such behavior, not encourage it.

Boost Your "Given Away" Total on SteamGifts

Sorry to promote TremorGames so much. It might seen like I'm just trying to refer you all, but that's not entirely the case-bear with me for a second.

If you frequently use SteamGifts, you know that having a high giveaway total will increase your likelihood of winning to a certain extent. The following advice will have you boosting your giveaway total by around $15 every week. Sounds too good to be true? It's not. Here's proof.

HERE'S HOW IT WORKS.

I'm not going to lie, I get a 20% bonus off whatever you earn. If you're not yet a member of TG, I encourage you to sign up here.

Next, leave one of these videos playing in the background; repeat with the next one when it's done for 5 coins every time. (If the link didn't work, just click on the red "More Coins" button and find the video tab). With around 10 videos a day times 5 coins each time, that's 350 coins a week--almost enough for Dungeons: The Dark Lord (worth $20, 395 coins). Because the games change frequently, check out other games under 1000 coins. You can easily utilise this method to join the league of those who have given away hundreds of dollars worth of games. Just make sure to buy games that weren't part of a bundle for maximum return!

That's just through watching (or rather, backgrounding) some videos. I got 600 coins for trying the Hulu+ free trial. That, plus 300 I already had, got me Two Worlds 2--$30 worth right there.

Thanks for reading!
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"You can easily utilise this method to join the league of those who have given away hundreds of dollars worth of games. Just make sure to buy games that weren't part of a bundle for maximum return!"

Exactly you contrib. farming douches - the giveaways made with higher contributor limits were made by people to reward those people who have a high contrib. value on their profile due to choosing to giveaway games, purely for generous and warm spirited reasons, not for people trying to exploit the system and strategically try and boost their contrib. value - like you types with that attitude of plotting the best way to get "maximum return".

I've participated in a number of these contrib. farming threads / discussions, and was / am pretty sick and tired of the way things are going, but this load of crap "instructional" on how to "boost your contrib. value!" really prompted me to post this up, see what reactions people post. Go ahead, try defending such a ridiculously dishonest, conniving attitude.

And the site doesn't like exploited keys being given out and takes a stand against them, a lot in the community are very vocal against piracy etc, and act like moral white-knights, but this behavior's somehow ok? Tell me again why the contrib. value feature was implemented in the site again? That's right; as a simple way to record and reward generosity - i.e. to give people a tool to give back to people giving a lot away, after the fact. Not as an incentive to encourage exploitation and trickery, and selfish motivation. And no, not every giveaway has to be for 100% altruistic, selfless reasons. There's a wide range of nuances between trying to be the next messiah in terms of altruistic intent, and being a grubby bottom-feeder who only ever cares for persona numero uno. But regardless of intended motivation in making giveaways, you can be sure this contrib. boosting crap is entirely selfish, and purely an attempt to shamelessly exploit and trick the system, nothing more.

Period.

I'm not going to call anyone out here publicly, but I keep seeing low entry, high contributor limit giveaways with entries off people with 1k+, sometimes even 2k+ contrib. value on their profile, but when looking through their given away games, all they've given away are 20x Crazy Machines, 30x Shadow Ops, etc. One such profile I saw had more than 2k value, but looking through their list of given away games, a rough estimate of what they actually spent on it would fall shy of two, maybe three hundred bucks, being very generous in my estimate.

So, firstly, that 2k+ is bull (and yes I know almost everything given away here has been on sale etc, but there's still a HUGE disparity between buying a 20 buck game for 5 and giving it away, and buying 5 bundles for that price, then netting 5x the value of the games in that bundle), as well as the far more important issue - they're clearly, undeniably selfishly, strategically trying to boost their value as cheaply as possible.

And these exploitative types, who are on here purely, entirely, 100% solely to get free games, and are trying to trick the system however they can (even if it means they begrudgingly have to spend a handful of dollars [euros, whatever] to fool the site into letting them in to lower entry giveaways), get rewarded with <20 entry AAA giveaways? And this is right how again?