How do you feel about people self promoting themselves? (Also GIVEAWAYS HERE!)

Giveaways and threads from devs trying to promote their games on greenlight are actually quite nice, you get to find nice games, and enter good giveaways and the dev gets a bit of attention on its games, on the other hand the threads about "upvote my game and youll get a free steam key" or "join XXXX group last spot!!!" can be really annoying

WOAAAA! I got elbows too! O_O

Hate is a big word lol.

What is kind of annoying is people promoting their Early Access game on Greenlight, their Stream or a winning contest while giving away a game from a cheap bundle they already have double. People who actually buy a game for it are more than OK!

What I actually do hate:

Certainly knowing that most developers create a Early Access game and never finish it, recreating a new Steam account and inventing a new developer name and just keep doing that. Steam apparently allows it as I reported it with proves (Each time a 1 month old account max, same style of design, same style of trailer including the computer voice used, the way of ending the trailer, the description of the "Early Access" warning, etc). Even 100% copy/pasted games that are free to play already (like the one of today as example being Plague Inc Involved, the free version is available for years by another developer, the game is called Pandemic) that for me is pure fraud/scam. We reported that with lot's of people but I'm sure Steam will allow it anyway as they receive lot's of % from any sale.

The contests do annoy because it does defeat the whole purpose of a contest, but it can't really be stopped. I prefer to just look at some of the other entries and not just vote because someone linked it. On the most part I don't really mind advertising though, I rarely look at them truthfully but I'm not against it.
Greenlight is a bit more of an issue. I understand it and don't think it should be stopped but people just click "Yes" and Steam is filled with complete trash and as Valve don't seem to do anything about it if it's bad or any other reasons, like stealing content.
Kickstarters are okay because people will be paying to back it, not just mindlessly voting. I don't really like kickstarter, especially for games because people really don't really know what they're paying for, a bit like preordering, except you have much less of an idea.

I wrote a bit more than expected as well.

I had an idea to promote here ads site that we were developing year ago. But that I left that shitty project and never told anyone about that idea. Now I suppose that promoting something through giveaways is great, but I don't click on links anyway.

I honestly don't have any problem with it. No-one has to read the giveaway description, so the advertising is harmless.
If people want to acknowledge the description it is entirely up to them. I usually check the links out, but I only "like" something that genuinely interests me.

Personally, I'm indifferent because I won't bother clicking anything. Advertising for groups, assuming that they're good groups, is appreciated and I like seeing that.

I don't mind self promiting users. Without promoting their project are dead... advertising is strongest weapon for new titles/streamers/youtubers and other stuff. I found lots of great games from advertising (i don't watch most advertises). If you don't like those advertises just don't look to them and if it's on giveaway have a shame complaining about that... people gives you something asking to check game/watch video and you are angry on them? they used money to buy that game for giveaway and he is giving stuff, not you. (sorry for bad english :))

Well I don't mind self-promoting at all. Exception being if you're forced to do something for it. thanks for the giveaways btw.

Don't mind. Who forces you to click those links?

Not really hurting anything as long as the links are moderated

I don't really care since it's not a condition to join.

I don't mind. So long as they don't make it a requirement to enter their giveaway.

It depends on the content. I dont mind people promoting in their giveaway.
If someone is promoting for stuff, there is a way to find stuff you perhaps like.

Ahh, now that is a good question. There are many different kind of self promotion. Those who self promote themselves or their Youtube channel, and those who promote their group, Kickstarter, or Greenlight.

Personally, I don't mind users who promote their Steam group, after all, SG is all about gaming and community. Kickstarters and Greenlights threads are not exactly great, but they are okay, I guess. Now, someone who never cared for the community and suddenly creates a thread self promoting himself, is an entirely different matter. The user never came to the forum before, and he shouldn't create a spammy self promotion thread as his first thread.

And I hate, I HATE users who create threads to win something. First, before it is cheating, second, because it's spammy and annoying.
I also am indifferent if there is a giveaway or not. I am not after giveaways, but a great community. If a thread is an annoying spam, giveaway or not, the thread's creator will not get my respect.

But in my opinion... The ultimately worst kind of self promotion threads are the "We'll give you the game if you Greenlight it!" kind of threads. They disgust me. Totally.

Overall, TL;DR: Self promotion is okay if it stays on-topic (Gaming, in this case), and is clean and honest.

I dislike youtube/facebook self promotions because they are the first stop for lazy kids thinking they will get paid through views/likes and not have to work a day in their lives. This is a dangerous mentality and they are better off getting a real job, which has a higher chance of success and payoff.

I don't really mind. They're giving you stuff for free to check them out. As long as I can enter the giveaway we're all good XD

It really depends what they're trying to promote, if it's their games I guess that's cool but a channel or something of that kind shouldn't be allowed. It seems just like a ref link to me but a bit more legal just because they're also giving away something...

I'm fine with self promoting, but I think its better if accompanied with a giveaway. There are some greenlight links attached to giveaways and I'm fine with that. It is also good if they don't require you to do anything for a giveaway, but ask nicely to check out their youtube or greenlight. It is a little annoying if its just self advertising, but it doesn't do any harm so I'm fine with it.

I don't like it in almost all cases. The one single case I can think of (as far as SteamGifts goes, that is) is when it's in a developer giveaway with enough copies to get stickied at the top of the page. If you wanna give 50 or 100 or 25,000 copies of your game out to promote it (or anything else you happen to be making at the time), then a developer giveaway feels like legitimately buying ad space on the site. Throwing a "hey, please like my YouTube video" or even devs trying to get through Greenlight by throwing out a few random games here and there always seems to leave a bad taste in mouth.

I have no problem with (approved) advertisement or self-promotion through giveaways. I will even click on the occasional Greenlight game and check it out, if it's any good I'll vote it up if not, I'll vote it down. By no means are my votes automatic for a greenlight game just because I have a .01% chance of winning a AAA title. The way I see it, they are rolling the dice on me, bringing my eyeballs to their site because if their product is half-baked or doesn't show potential I will vote them down.

As for youtube and twitch channels and game review websites, I'm not really interested in that sort of thing so it's lost advertisement. I just skim the giveaway description in most cases, so it better be pretty good to create an action in me.

My answer

I'm fine with it. Some of the Greenlight requests bug me a little, but I deal with them.

As someone who is currently promoting my Youtube channel through a giveaway on here, I can say this much: it's largely ineffective. Which is to say, hardly anyone clicks on links in your description/reads the description at all. About 1 out of every 100 people who join your giveaway will click on links that lead to your channel (that's a rough estimate, but that's close to what I've gotten out of it). I don't really mind them myself because no one is forcing you to click on their link or whatever (unless you have to join a steam group or something like that).

tl;dr Doing giveaways to advertise for anything beyond kickstarter projects/game releases doesn't work that well.

Self-Promoting is fine, however if they're bad I'll probably have nothing to do with them, maybe tell them...
If they're good at whatever they're doing I'll be grateful, maybe tell them to continue the good work.
It really has more to do with... "Are you even worth Self-promoting?"