[showerthoughts] Fanta-SteamGifts - 1 entry = 1 cent, starting tomorrow

Well, since I don't trust anyone, it won't change me at all. I won't go there.

You should stop taking showers.

I think most SG users would run away if they were required to pay like that. Could easily end up killing the site.

So SG to become dig? Now if dig had any good games....

You need a new pastime icaio. I am just glad you aren't cg :P
We could end up with a bunch of new gambling addicts.

I mean it would most likely get rid of all the auto joiners and possibly make it much easier to win giveaways so.

It would make more people come of course, but probably, old members (old sg if we call your side the new one) would leave for this. I would like to see a poll of what people think like Yes/No.

I would say I wouldn't stay/wouldn't like it.

I don't enter many giveaways anyway - I probably wouldn't enter anything if I had to pay to enter. Its more about the effort rather than the cost (Also not wanting to see a list of $0.01 transactions on my account :D)

Although you'd probably get your moneys worth - $10 for 1000 entries doesn't seem too bad, and as people mentioned with this you'd have reduced entries. On the other hand you could argue this could reduce the number of giveaways and concentrate the entries on the ones that remain.

Maybe such a thing would encourage people to value their wins and only enter things which they want/want to play.

Disclaimer - This idea is nuts and I'm rambling.

It would probably kill the site. Most people need 500 or 1000 entries before getting a game

If I get a free fanta delivered each time I join a GA I may consider

I'd create my own SteamGifts, with blackjack and hookers.

I'm not very keep the idea, but entering 0-10 games a day... I would likely go with it. Would cost less than buying a single 1$ bundle a week.
Thinking a bit further - maybe I would be paying up to about 1$ a week max, based on my entries, but would not pay a fix monthly price to use the site.

There have already been giveaway sites that were accepting money for entering GAs. And it's been similar story with all of them. First of all mostly selected few who invested the most were turning actual profit, vast majority paid less in hopes of winning "as much as all these top players" and maybe a few lucky ones won more than they paid, but most of people were winning less, but thought "hey, I just got unlucky, maybe I'll try again" - typical gambling mechanic, in the end the only people who really won in this system were site owners and very few top players.

PlayBlink required you to purchase Premium Membership to gain access to best GAs. Premium accounts had also more entries in GAs. All GAs were gift copies donated by users and admin decided what GA goes to normal and what to Premium GAs. But he was managing all GAs by hand whenever he wanted, you never knew wehn new GAs gonna show up, you could buy a monthly Premium and only have access to 20GAs because he was "busy" this month, other month he would put 20GAs every 3 days. Only people who could really use the system were ones who maintained Premium all the time. But even then, higher levels had even more entries, so older subscribers still had bigger chance to win. Then he started doing events where for example in a month people would donate games and purchase premium, and people in Top 3 gained massive bonuses, like yearly premium membership etc, he ran a few of those events, cashed in a lot of gift copies, money for premium accounts, then suddenly went offline and never returned, site died, and he went away with all premium money and hundreds/thousands of gifts he never put on the site.

GameMiner also had "Premium GAs" called Gold GAs, you needed paid premium currency to enter those. You could make your own gold GA with a good game and you would get 10% of gold of entries, but that's just 10%, meaning in whole system 90% of gold at least had to come from real-money-purchases. And here again we had a case of a few top players actually earning all their gold from making GAs from things they won (regifting was allowed), usual case of rich getting richer, while vast majority of users just purchased small amounts of gold in hope of winning, and most of them didn't win, they were only putting more gold in pockets of top players and even more money in pockets of site owners. Then site owners started shady business like selling Steam accounts, and as a result their bots holding all gifts users donated got TradeBanned, and they just quit taking all the money with them and leaving users without gold nor donated/won gifts.

And don't even get me started on possibility of GA being fake - you pay for entry, you may even win, and then it ends up being fake? As long as points are free, you can say tough luck, but if SG accepted money for entries, SG would also be responsible for delivering the wins.

Well, 1 cent entry fee?
There is a foreign exchange fee.*ucking high.
There is a problem more than that, it is certified as a service similar to "Overseas Online Casino".
(May violate the law.)
All of the users from Japan will be sent to jail as "gaming crime".
Ja━━||Φ|(|´|Θ|`|)|Φ||━━il!!!!
Oh, I am not humanity, so it's okay?

I only enter giveaways because i can do so for free. I'd quit coming to the site if I had to pay.

If 1 cent per entry, I would've spent ~$20 USD on $500 of received value, only $10 of which was public - Not bad IMO.
Given that I sometimes buy cheaper major bundles mostly for the purpose of giving away, I would likely cut back on this if the penny per entry were implemented.
I wouldnt be thrilled about the entry cost unless it resulted in many benefits such as: Less public entries, deterrance of low value (1-5p) bundle shovelware, doesnt cause group entry counts to plummet too low, etc.

I'd probably just stop coming. The games I enter for here tend to be the ones that I'm kind of interested in checking out, but not entirely sold on. Paying to enter for those games kind of defeats the purpose. If I was interested in paying for them, I'd just buy whatever bundle they're in.

The thing that I love most about SG is that even though it's managed by site owners, it's largely run by the community for the community, if that would change to a money-driven enterprise by site owners for site owners, it would seriously change my attitude towards the site. I would look at it as any online shop, and they usually don't get my time of day.

I don't believe the site would just up and die, but it would probably change. A lot.
New users wouldn't come in the droves we se today, the real-money barrier would deter most young ones, and many first timers just looking to see what SG is - so less GA:s given.
I think many of the higher level users would leave, as a good chunk of them already complain about what the site ''has become'', I believe this to be the last straw for some, and with that two things follows;
Many of the really good or large GA:s wold disappear, so the allure for newcomers will be even less, and;
A lot of reporting to support (support assistance) would go away, leading to a chaotic site for a while while moderators get a grip on it again. Most likely with harsher rules and implementations of those rules making the site feel colder still.

After an initial outcry and raging on the message boards, and a time of turmoil on site, it would again stabilize around the new user base/site regulations and continue onward as something else than it is today. I base this assumption on seeing the result of other sites changing from free to need-to-pay in the past. As much as we love to rage and hope it will completely die if they implement such a feature, it most probably won't.
Perhaps a smaller user base, but depending on how the site is managed, what further changes are implemented it might grow again. Or it might die completely over time if future users feel they are not getting their moneys worth.

And just to pour gasoline on all your feelings; this (or something else just as disruptive) is likely to occur sometime in the future.
Today, CG seems to run the site like a hobby, or just for fun, or at least in a way where income doesn't stem from users wallets directly.
It's those policies that is keeping the site as it is today. One day he will relinquish leadership to another entity for one reason or another - you know, old age, lost interest, too much work, or whatever reason. In almost every such case the policies changes, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly.... Enjoy it while it lasts.

Actually, if this were to be implemented on SG, I think the 1 cent per entry would probably only apply to games of higher value (unbundled ones for example, or games with values of 30-40p and above) rather than shovelware/ overbundled games/ etc.

Though, honestly, I really don't like to imagine what sort of impact this will have on the SG community.

Your ideas are worth 1 cent.