Overall good changes, but I have some concerns.
You can no longer enter to win games you have previously won... If you do not receive your gift after one week, and mark the giveaway as "Not Received", then you will once again be able to enter giveaways for the game.
Instead of this, can you be given a warning which you can override? Then run the scan to remove all current entries once you click that it has been received?
Alternatively, could the site scan and remove your entries only when you click received, automatically re-rolling for you if you won it more than once?
Alternatively alternatively, carlica's brilliant idea below.
Wouldn't it be much better, to queue wins. And once the first one in queue has been marked received automatically reroll the others?
I feel that being locked out for a fell week when you know (or highly suspect) that you're not going to receive it is a bit harsh.
Example Scenario:
Person A, a trusted person with lots of giveaways under their belt completed, creates lots of giveaways for a huge event, alongside the usual giveaways they do. The giveaways for the event end, and not a single one is delivered after seven days, Person A also does not return to the site in all this time. Person A now has ~1000 giveaways they made marked as Not Received.
The other giveaways Person A made now end. Person B wins one of these and sees that a) Person A has not delivered any keys in the last week or so, has ~1000 giveaways they made marked as Not Received, and hasn't returned to the site in over a week.
Person B has now had all of their entries for giveaways of the same game removed (including Invite Only giveaways they might never be able to find again), and can't enter or re-enter any of them for a week.
NOTE: This has actually happened to someone before the most recent change, but I am neither person mentioned in this scenario.
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Wow, this is the changes most of the people looking forward/need .. this will surely reduce support tickets that are open related to the mentioned issues. Thanks a bunch CG
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If I understand this correctly:
when you win something, all your subsequent entries for that game automatically get removed and you cannot enter more giveaways for said game. Then when you don't receive the game you'd have to wait for a week until you can mark it not received, before you can enter giveaways for that game again.
Wouldn't it be much better, to queue wins. And once the first one in queue has been marked received automatically reroll the others?
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Wouldn't it be much better, to queue wins. And once the first one in queue has been marked received automatically reroll the others?
This is actually a brilliant idea. You could even have the site inform the giveaway creator that it's waiting in a queue as well, so they know what's happening.
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How do you queue wins? The creators have right to get their winners immediately. Specially with how gifts on steam are timed...
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How do you queue wins? The creators have right to get their winners immediately. Specially with how gifts on steam are timed...
You raise a very good point, although "immediately" is not correct by my understanding of the rules/FAQ, I believe that both the creator and winner have 7 days. The big problem here I see is if, say, some giveaway is queued for 6 days, then that may leave getting the gift to the next winner very tight if the sale ends in 1 day.
(Whether this 7 day rule should be changed in light of new gifting restrictions or not is a different matter.)
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It should be resolved sooner in most cases. In case it's not, there's some risk for creators of giveaways with Steamgifts even now, when there's mutliple rerolls for example. So it wouldn't be much different, only that it may take a bit longer in general.
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whole point of this new change is to significantly reduce reroll timers, partially probably to make gift gifting more viable (it already is thanks to new region system). Your proposition reduces all these positive changes significantly (we're back to possible 6 days rerolls) in exchange for a very margin profit. There are 1% of fake GAs on SG, most of GAs on SG are low level, low level GAs usually have over 1000 entries. So statistically speaking chances of random user winning fake GA and then winning another non-fake GA of the same game are 1%*1/1000 = 0,001%. Ofc it sucks for these 0.001% of GA winners who will lose their chance for getting a game, but at this price we get much better reroll system and gifting system making gifting steam gifts doable again. and you propose to throw it all to trash in order to protect these 0.001% GA winners, which sounds not so great.
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As I understand the change, the real problem wasn't so much reroll timers, but the support tickets they created, because every reroll had to be approved manually. Now if we were to put multiple wins all into a neat queue, it might require a bit of patience in some cases, but it would run without manual approvals and it would make sure that people aren't locked out of their chance to win for a whole week, just because someone thinks it funny to create fake giveaways. I know that fake giveaways are quite rare compared to percentage of wins that are delivered without any complications. But then again, it doesn't help you much to tell yourself that it's rare, when it happens. Especially when there's like a hundred other giveaways for the game you won but never got delivered (e.g. on Humble Monthly reveal days there's usually a surge of the same giveaway right after ... if you're stuck on a fake giveaway right at that time and see all the other giveaways you can't enter .... I imagine that sucks like real bad).
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support tickets result in longer reroll timers. So indirectly the change appeals to both things. And yeah - fake GAs are rare. But winning a fake GA and then winning the same game in 1 week window is something not just rare, it's extremally rare (see my math explanation). Also fake GAs are usually not from stuff that is currently and humble Monthly, it's for stuff that will stand out, not be lost in a flood of GAs for the same game. But that's not my point anyway, my point is developing automatic system (automatic meaning it will be faulty as well, because no system will fully replace actual human evaluating tickets) will take a lot of time and effort to develop, test and implement, at top of that it will also punish GA creators in multiple ways: waiting additional time for GA marking, because 1st GA your winner won gotta wait full week to mark not received to get your key and mark it, as I mentioned before it will cripple Steam Gifts GAs even more again, at top of that it may even make your GAs worthless - let's consider situation here using your own example with current monthly and game bveing flooded all over SG, you make GA which is group GA, or high level GA with some region lock or sth, anyway you only get 5 Entries. Your winner end up winning fake GA first and is queued. In 1 week time it is possible that all 4 other of people who entered your GA already won this game in another GAs, because you had to wait for 7 days for automatic reroll you can no longer make this GA to your group for example, because there is noone left to enter. Aren't you as screwed as the guy from your hypothethical example?
So tl;dr while your proposition may sound nice on paper in fact it qould require a lot of work to implement and would end up punishing/screwing GA creators in several ways, would end up crippling GAs using gifts and all of that in order to prevent extremelly rare cases of very low % of winners who would have win the game otherwise. It is simply not worth it, you gotta evaluate pros and cons and in this case cons heavilly outweight pros.
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automatic meaning it will be faulty as well, because no system will fully replace actual human evaluating tickets
Well, while that is true in general. I don't see how an automatic reroll once something has been marked received could be faulty.
[...] because there is noone left to enter. Aren't you as screwed as the guy from your hypothethical example?
Not really, because it would be the same thing as if there had been no entries in the first place. Giveaway ends with no winners, creator can use they key to make a new one. As for Steam gifts, I still think that, thanks to Valve, doing giveaways with Steamgifts is a bad idea. No matter how nicely you time things out and how you set up your region restrictions, you still pledging to give something away which you don't have yet. There's always some kind of risk involved.
Also fake GAs are usually not from stuff that is currently and humble Monthly, it's for stuff that will stand out, not be lost in a flood of GAs for the same game.
True. However, I'd say we'll see more fake giveaways in future, once those jerks (that you find in every web community) realize the damage they can do. And they won't necessarily stick with those giveaways that stand out anyway.
while your proposition may sound nice on paper in fact it qould require a lot of work to implement
Okay, on that we can agree upon. It would require work. All changes, even small ones, require work. So yes, maybe it was a bit hasty of me to suggest doing things differently, when there was already put a lot of work and thought into the changes we just got. Let's see how things turn out and if it's gonna be a problem. :-)
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it would be the same thing as if there had been no entries in the first placeabsolutelly not. There were 5 valid entries, after 1st guy got his win elsewhere there were still 4 valid entries. Quite different than "no valid entries in the first place". The only reason there are no longer any vaslid entries is unfair system you just proposed which screwed GA creator of successful GA. We can make this example even bigger - what if game became free in 7 days? He had a valid GA with valid entries for non-free game he paid for, because of your system he has no valid GA and is left with worthless free game.
I'd say we'll see more fake giveaways in future, once those jerks (that you find in every web community) realize the damage they can do.Then proper solution to this problem is changing punishments for fake GAs - to actually punish rulebreakers in a way that would make them stop doing what they are doing. Instead you are proposing punishing everyone else in the community.
I hope you don't take it as an attack on yourself, I am not attacking you, I am "attacking" idea I do not agree with ;) So I simply argumented why I think it's not really neccessarry considering all work and cons involved with it ;) Anyway in the first place I say we wait and see how new system is going to work in action. If there is suddently an influx of fake GAs made by trolls, like you suggested it may happen, and a lot of people getting locked out of popualr GAs like humble monthly - then yes, it will be right time to rething the system, but not before that, because nothing on SG in the past indicate such situation occuring, so it may as well never occur, stats may remain the same, and then it's really not worth the hassle over 0.001% GAs ;p
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I hope you don't take it as an attack on yourself, I am not attacking you, I am "attacking" idea I do not agree with ;)
No, no, we're all good ... this is a civilized exchange of opinions after all. :-)
Anyway in the first place I say we wait and see how new system is going to work in action.
Agreed. As I said before, I probably was too quick to suggest doing things differently, thanks for pointing that out. :-) I also agree that changing punishments for these fake giveaways may be a way to solve this. I've always had the impression that a few days suspension are too mild in many cases.
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Assuming most giveaways are keys ... in case of actual Steam gifts there's the risk of sale prices ending before they get a legit winner in case (multiple) rerolls even now under the current system. Even now, the winner has one week to activate their wins. So asking the creator of a giveaway to wait a bit on the queue isn't that much different.
As for getting their winners immediately: they could get their winner immediately, they could even check the rules and approve them, but the winners can't pick up the approved key while they're queued. In case, the winner gets another key in front of the queue, they'd get a new winner and had to check/approve again. Again, for gifts: they'd be told that their winner is in queue and they're being asked to refrain from handing over the gift until they have a final winner.
Maybe the site could even offer a mechanism to swap and favor gift-type giveaways for the queue in case of mutiple queued wins (would need a "reveal key" button on the won-giveaways page to make sure the winner hasn't seen the key yet..)
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Decent changes.
Suggestion: please change it so that we get a refund of the points when a giveaway is deleted. It's not fun when 60 points disappear an hour after I enter a giveaway because it was deleted for being fake.
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I think this is the biggest improvement on SG, well done cg!
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Very welcome changes! Thanks devs!
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I entered giveaway, didn't win and buy this game on next day
GA creator made reroll and i was "lucky" winner
So no more "lucky" rerolls?
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Yes, less work for the staff having to reroll because people forgot to remove their entries.
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i'm talking not about "forgot to remove their entries"
I had situation
I entered giveaway in october and didn't win, entered giveaway for the same game in november and won it, activated and marked recieved. And ofc sync account
In next month - december, i won same game after october's reroll 😱
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Cool, now only make an option to only see games compatible for an OS you've selected and this site will be even better. I hate it to check every game manually if it's compatible with OSX.
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Nice! Keep the great updates comming =)
Also maybe you'd want to make the auto sync timer, like if " the timer has counted 48 hours after last sync" not just auto sync every 48, tho i dont really know if it will improve performance of the site =)
Just rambling =))
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Hi SG,
The site has just been updated with a couple of changes for entering giveaways.
You can no longer enter to win games you have previously won. You'll see a "Previously Won" error. This occurs when you have won the game in the past, and your win is marked either "Received" or "Awaiting Feedback". If you do not receive your gift after one week, and mark the giveaway as "Not Received", then you will once again be able to enter giveaways for the game.
When your account is synced, the site will remove open giveaway entries for games which have been detected on your account. Points will be restored if any giveaway entries are removed. This way, if you buy new games or redeem bundles, you don't have to worry about searching for and manually removing your giveaway entries after syncing. As well, automatic syncing now occurs more frequently, and your account will be synced every 48 hours when you visit the site. This might be further shortened to 24 hours in the coming days.
I think the pros far outweigh the cons with the above changes. I believe this will greatly reduce the number of support tickets. Issues with users winning a game more than once, or winning a game they already purchased, is by far the most active support category. This should not only benefit support, but reduce the number of tickets giveaway creators need to create, and cut down on delays for winners receiving their gifts.
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