I'm just too sleepy to read the whole topic and think/explain complex solutions, so I'll just throw that question for now (and maybe will come up with something else tomorrow): isn't there a way to automatically (as in no person required) check items in someone's inventory, and modify the site so that there will be 2 choices for each game, key or giftable copy, but while you won't need to synchronize your inventory (the same way it's done with the library now) to create a key giveaway (no points), you need to for the giftable copies (with points)? Then there could be a way for people who actually buy keys from 3rd party sites just for the purpose of gifting them to provide proof and make them count as giftable copies maybe..
I don't know if what I wrote makes sense. Going to sleep now, though it's 7 AM here. D: Goodwhatever everyone!

EASY

giveaways arent 1 cent anymore they are usually like 5 dollars for terrible package and like 8 to 12 for better deals

do 2 things please:
1.ask the steamgifts website owner what makes them happy
2.ask a couple of humble bundles what they think (i was able to contact the devs of super meat boy and blocks that matter so it shouldnt be hard)

3 (special addition) auto disable bundles going on

if you care that much ^

What about this:

What if we put up a huge sheet of Bubblewrap like this and everyone gets to pop one bubble but under one of these bubbles is the key?

So just let people put them up but make it ridiculous. I would make the bubblewrap bigger then in the example I gave though...

My suggestion:
Make additional checkbox in giveaway form. For marking this game as part of bundle.
If game marked as "bundle part" it will not add 5% point to everyone here. But to win it you still need to pay full price in point.
Not sure how many points should be added in account "given away" statistics.

I think maybe no live bundles, but former bundles (like with HIB's) and their individual games should be fine.

Just remove their point value. It's simple and makes giving them away 100% about generosity, not some cheap way to exploit the system. Sure, some people may have legitimate giveaways that will be without points, but that's really not a big deal all things considered.

Of course, you could selectively apply this to certain bundles based on their price and value, for example Indiegala with it's absurd system.

I think we should quantify better what exactly we want to achieve with the new system. Given that we probably want to maintain the goals that have been iterated over the past few bundles I am outlining the following

Design Goals:

• Reduce workload on moderators
• Allow users to submit games within bundles
• Reduce spam on front page
• Try to not take money away from devs by funneling sales away from the bundle

Design Assumption

• Automation - the system needs to be automated so that mods are not overwhelmed with work
• USERS ARE IDIOTS - system must be designed in such a way as users cannot screw it up. Thing like adding a checkbox are going to be ineffective as users already cannot seem to grasp even the most basic concept that you have to have a game to do a giveaway.

Suggested Solution

Regrettably this requires a lot of work for CG so I"m not sure how feasible it is. However I hope it's something that can be discussed. Even if it's just clarifying what the design goals actually are.

• Create a separate section for 'Bundle Giveaways'
• In the database games will be flagged as 'Bundle Giveaways'
• When creating a giveaway, any game flagged as 'Bundle Giveaway' gets an automatic 2 WEEK window. This is to ensure that while giving away keys is ok, we still encourage users to actually BUY the bundle if possible supporting the devs and bundles in general. This does make the giveaway page a bit more complicated, as you'd have to AJAX something to do this.
• Give mods a web interface to both move giveaways to this "Bundle Giveaway" section, as well as flag games as "Bundle Giveaways" so that they can respond to things withotu having to bother cg constantly.

I believe these allow for everyone to 'better use their time' while still allowing the community to create giveaways, as well as encourage users to buy bundles as well.

Please feel free to comment on the design goals as I feel that quantifying these is very important before really deciding how a solution best fits.

My thoughts (which somewhat repeat what others have said):

Marking as bundle:
Automatically assume that any games which were in a bundle are bundle games, and treat them as such. Can provide ways to mark them as not bundle games:

• 'Bundle key' tick mark. Defaults to ticked when the game has been in a bundle but can easily be unticked. Easy to exploit but assuming that most people just use the defaults it could work decently enough. (Especially if there aren't severe penalties for bundle key vs. normal gift.)
• Automatic proof via inventory.
• Manual proof. Should still be a lot less moderation work than moderating bundles.

It's possible to make the 'bundle' status temporary for a few months after the bundle is released, on the assumption that few people would hoard the keys specifically to get points later, and it's not a big deal if some do.

Value:

First of all, I think that bundles are currently undervalued. Their point value is typically their average price, which tends to be closer to the minimal price than some deep discounts on Steam. Perhaps it makes little sense to price them at the full price of the games, but if a Steam bundle which was on sale at over 90% is listed at its non-sale price, why would an indie bundle be listed at cost?

Regarding points and feedback, bundle keys need to have them. Feedback could be separate, the value could be lower, but if this site is giving away points and feedback for games which people got for free, and for beta keys to free to play games which cost the users nothing, then it needs to give them to keys from bundles which people actually paid some money for.

Site organisation:

Assuming there will be a lot such keys, I agree that treating them separately would be a good thing. Putting them in a separate section is a start, but it will mainly help people who aren't interested in bundle games at all. People who do want them will not only have to wade through the multiple bundle key giveaways as before to find those for the games they want, but will have to check two different sections.

A filter would IMO be a better version of this solution. Put a checkbox for 'show bundle key giveaways' on the giveaway page, so anyone who doesn't want to see them can tick it off.

A different solution would be to handle these giveaways differently: all the giveaways for a bundle game are added by default to a pool for that game, and are given away by the system without direct control from the giver regarding time and length of the giveaway. The more keys there are in the pool, the more often the system schedules giveaways for this particular game. These giveaways could run normally, but because only one will be given at a time by the system they won't clatter the list.

The separate section idea is great. You can try it. You can make it as an option when creating giveaway.
Since it doesn't affect feedback, to prevent people creating fake giveaway, you can set a separate feedback only viewable to gifter himself and Mods, so when other people report the fake separate bundle giveaway Mods can refer to this hidden feedback.

Maybe create a bot account which handles gifts? After you create the giveaway you can choose to trade the gift over to the bot, after the winner is selected the bot gifts it to the winner. Same with keys. Too bad there is no such thing as a key validator.
Pros:
eliminates many feedback issues, non-activation issues (the bot can check the gift status), delayed sending issues.
Cons:
someone has to make the bot =). He has to be a trusted community member, and if the bot is compromised, well...

correct me if I got this here wrong, but the original reason for disallowing individual bundle keys was that the (by then) few bundles out there actually forbid sharing the keys (although that's just one way to interpret those policies).

now several ones don't do that in any way, so now it's forbidden due to the (point) spam due to many bundle game giveaways, right?
this spam doesn't just go for bundles, it also goes for arbitrary cheap/free giveaways (see faerie solitaire, lucid, supreme commander), so it seems off to forbid the individual bundle game giveaways - make a more generic rule that fits those as well.

but as we're already there: is a rule for such things even needed? to raise a suggestion I already made in relation to some of those point-spams: could we have such giveaways auto-grouped into single ones?
imo this could work by having settings for games (similiar to "was in a bundle recently") and while there actually are tons of those giveaways (so there's actually a reason to fight the "spam") this setting would be enabled and - for example work like that:
the system would not allow the user to specify a specific time, etc. for which the giveaway will run, but just to create a giveaway with n copies for that game. those n copies are then - together with the user - pushed on a "stack" for that game and once it has a certain amount of copies or there weren't any in a certain timeframe an actual giveaway with many copies from all the different users would be created.

so what would this achieve? 1) those giveaways wouldn't clutter the new giveaways anymore 2) those who actually want those games have a better chance without using tons of points and 3) the point spam could be reduced to a minimum (dunno how n copy giveaways are handled atm, but iirc they give as many points as a 1 copy giveaway - if that's not the case, it could be done for those that way)
what's the downside? it does need a little coding, but it's not really that complex imo.

any input appreciated ;)

this is a giveaway site. when you give away something, you don't expect anything in change.

so i'd possilby eliminate feedback/points at all. the collateral effect would be people would have no acknowlegment from cheap bundle keys giveaways.

when i make a giveaway i don't give a damn about points or such; besides almost all my giveaways so far have been contrary to the norms so i had to use the forum or other ways to do them.

i realize also that there is people that gets motivation to give from public acknowledgement, chat fame, moderator/middleman reputation and so on and at the end of the day these people make the site live, so i understand that there must be some kind of reward for them. something like the contributor's giveaway perhaps.

whichever the solution, i hope there is a controlled way to give the leftover keys (something different from the ninja threads if possible) without hurting the bundle policies, which (remember) state that all the components of a bundle are for personal use.

we don't want abuse and further cuts to the actual bundle scene, do we?

Well, I did one thing to give away my numerous leftover keys, and I think it turned out to be a fun event too. It all requires a Star Wars: Jedi Knight III: Jedi Academy base game though. I'm hosting weekend competitions for the clan I'm part of, that requires you to play the game in more and more unconventional ways, such as being the last one to stay alive in a small arena with a rancor beast, making some last man standing matches, doing swoop races, playing hide and seek, and doing various turn based last man standing games. These are a fresh take on a 7-8 years old game, so regular players usually find it a good pastime that is not simply "go and kill that guy" or duel with people. This clan is called Jedi Phoenix, and if anyone has the game, I recommend getting on our servers and have fun, especially on Sunday afternoons when I host these events. Here's a link to the forum section of the events, you can find details inside for all the events I hosted so far, with some screenshots at places. If you're interested in trying yourself in one of these, don't be afraid to say hi on the forum, we don't bite... usually. As a special note, those who are absolutely new to this game('s multiplayer) will find these events a bit hard to win in, though competitions like "hide and seek" are meant to be events that require no skill at all, and I'm trying to include more of those in the future.

Advertisements aside, I think hosting matches (even regular ones) in certain games would be good for these giveaways. It's way more interesting than letting ninjas nab your keys, and participants will probably have fun even if they don't win. Free to play games would be the best choice for these, but hosting some matches in games like Killing Floor or some other more popular ones are probably not a bad idea either. We also had a small competition organized by Shardok, that included playing a game called Draw My Thing on OMGPOP.COM. Yeah, it requires registration and login, but it's still a nice place to race for a game key. Well, those are my few cents, check out the events I did and maybe it will give you a more complete idea of what I'm talking about.

I think the separate section thing would work nicely.

There should be prefix on every giveaway like "Keys :" and "Steam Gifts :"

How about an appealing "Create a giveaway" -like tab for bundle keys which brings you to a page where you can simply choose a game from a list (like normally creating giveaway) only including bundle games (problem #1). There would be a box where you can write (problem #2) your bundle key and submit it, nothing more to it.

Under this selection there are two "boxes" where you can choose "request a giveaway" or "enter a giveaway". This would bring you the same list of games as in creation one. You could choose a game you would like to enter, a bundle game. In total you could enter only two such giveaways and in any point you could change the game you wish to receive.

A random entrant would receive/win a key from the submitted keys. For example it could take a day (24 hours) from the point a contributor submits the key-code to it reaching it's taker. This would all be automized from selecting the winners to them receiving the submitted keys.

Problem #1 - The games list should be updated very often which is another burden to carry.
Problem #2 - You could easily misstype the key and obviously there are no other way to check wether it's correct other than the contributor compairing the typed one and the source.

I'm sure there would be other problems with this idea too, but it's extremely important to make such "feature" as unappealing as possible for exploitation. In this case the contributor is simply just giving away their leftovers and just anyone can take part on any of the raffles. The winner gets the key, an icon of the game and who it is from. As addition there could be a little text box in which you could express your gratitudeness to the giver.

Yeah, just create seperate section for keys.
I am never ninja enough to grab them from the forums...

If people want to gift games , then they should be allowed. This site is one place on the internet where complete strangers give gifts to other strangers out of the kindness of their heart. Bundle keys may have cost less but if the gifter is willing to gift the keys then let them.As long as the gifter is legit then there are no problems at all. As for the points system with the bundle keys being worth more than the gifter paid for them , lets be honest most of the giveaways on the site are games that were bought as a result of significant discounts. It is rare to see new release games on the site. I say just leave it as it is. If its not broken why fix it?

Reading this thread I'm not really sure, what you are aiming for. Do you want to get rid of Bundle Keys, as they are illegal / unethical? Or are you afraid of people using bundles to get a good status as contributors on this site?

I still think you should make it optionally possible to create a giveaway from the inventory (selecting the gift in the inventory). I know that many contributors don't like it, but if it is optionally and automatically marks a giveaway as "verified steamgift" (and not a key), people can still gift all these cool games that were once part of a bundle. Disallow them otherwise.
In my opinion this is the only way to deal with it, since I don't support bundle keys.

The only other "solution" I can think of is to allow everything (maybe even blacklisted items) and put all the responsibility upon the gift winner. -.-

I may be naive but I do not mind spending points on a key for Steam if it's a game I want and if it was allowed.

It's hard to do something about this but I guess a whole new section for bundle keys is the best idea so far.

I was thinking about when removing a giveaway, you are required to state a reason why the giveaway was removed

i'm not the indie type of guy that buy a lot of indie when they came out.tried my hand on afew and found them enjoyable but i got a few indie steam key which i don't play.i wanted to gave them away but i found out that this site doesn't allow steam key for indie game so dunno what to do it since none of my RL friend like or play indie and my steam friend jump on every indie sale.so please allow for keys to be gifted away.if not for point or winning anything purpose at least probably some other guys would play it rather than rot in my indie acc.

maybe bundle keys could go as regular giveaways, more like contributor giveaways like now. only entry would be 1 point, no feedback (only for receiving gift as a seperate for given away keys) value gain to account.
the hardest part of this one would update the bundle key list, cause it's huge atm.

the Create a Giveaway page doesn't specifically say bundle keys aren't allowed and the "Important..." text is a lengthy block. A separate bulletpointed box saying: 1) All gifts should be Steam redeemable CD keys or Steam gifts only. 2) No bundle keys. would probably be noticed by more people.

and my view on bundle keys: they shouldn't be officially supported anywhere on the site, a bundle isn't meant to be split up.