You know or should know the rules of this site... The fact that the system is flawed and could use improvements is irrelevant.
In my opinion there is a thing called the spirit of the rules/laws and one should always try to do good by the proper conduct of the site. Asking for a reroll when you win twice and activating wins during the first week are two of such rules.
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Funny how the thousands of other users on the site did the right thing and those supposed flaws didn't create any problems in the end. Could it be that your inability to take a few mins of your time to do the right thing had something to do with your actual problems? Ho sorry, I'm implying you had some responsibility in your f**k up ... but that couldn't be true.
Whine some more please.
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1) What UncleLothar said.
2) I agree with the "Show key"-button. It is a problem when you can just immediately see the keys right there when winning multiple giveaways. No other reason to do it though. No automatic reroll (what PsyKo said).
3) I would have no problems with a counter.
However, the complaining is pointless. You show lack of responsibility and try to put the blame on the system.
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http://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/5M9pcsY
The system can't control the other methods, so doesn't has sense to implement the system. While it can work on some cases, not on all. So probably that's the reason why it hasn't been implemented.
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Considering what I know of you, I'm glad I've added you to my blacklist after reading your rant.
Even if you have a point, you are the biggest, most entitled, reeking asshole I've ever had the misfortune to encounter outside of 4chan/reddit. And if you get banned, I will laugh in delight until I can't breathe.
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I wish I was just being mean, but no. I've run into him on Tremor Games before and he's just as entitled and selfish as he is here.
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Several people commenting that he should have asked for a re-roll.
I was just informed by a support staff member a few days back, when asking for a re-roll on something I won, that only the GA creator may do so.
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Yes, support (don't know about mods) can only reroll if the giveaway maker submits the request. However, if the winner makes a ticket or posts in the giveaway that he/she wants a reroll, it makes the lives of everyone easier.
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I know. I won a copy of Insurgency a couple of months ago ( you remember when it was on humble bundle and there was a lot of insurgency giveaways ?) but just an hour prior to that I had won it on an another giveaway site and already redeemed it. So I didn't redeem the second copy of Insurgency.
I contacted the giveaway creator directly (after asking the mods on how to proceed on steam group chat, Bobo helped me there) and explained the situation to him. He contacted the support and we finally got re-roll after 5 days and everyone was happy. None of us broke the rules and another person got the chance to win the game. Yay !
This is why I find his statements very amusing. Just because you can break the rules doesn't mean you have to. HE seems to have a very large sense of entitlement.
Yes, I'll admit the support sometimes tends to be a tad slow but overall they are doing a good job as far as I'm concerned.
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well you see, this community is built on trust, so none of these things should be issues, and if anyone makes any of these issues, shame on you! Don't ruin the good system we got going, and don't tarnish the name Steam Gifts. BTW, I am not pointing fingers at you, this is directed at anyone who uses the site.
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He's right about something: this system that makes the site automatically show the key to the winner kinda spoils the "ask for reroll" the way it is, as there's no direct contact between the GA creator and winner to deliver the prize.
A few months ago, I entered a few GAs of a specific game, and ended up buying that same game sometime later (and forgot about the GAs, ofc), and then won it . As it was a gift, the person added me, and when he did that, I had the chance to ask for reroll (which system-wise, was totally optional for me, as if I were disonest, I could have got the gift, as the creator didn't check if I had the game... noone would even know I didn't activate that gift, but I'm just divagating).
But when you receive a key/link directly from the gift, well, the GA creator maybe wouldn't even expect for a reroll or something, you "get" the key, would have to ignore it, contact the GA creator, and then ask for a reroll.
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Well since you didn't create a giveaway in quite a while .. maybe you don't know that the Giveaway creator has to go click to reveal the key once the giveaway has ended, it's not automatically shown right away. Ok, creator might not take the time to look at your games before he does so.. but what's so hard in "ignore it, contact the GA creator, and then ask for a reroll."?
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I would like to frown upon TS's bad attitude in his opening post, i don't see any reason for mixing up valid recommendations with pathetic 6y-old excuses for breaking the rules. I surely like the "show key" button idea, but there's no need for a counter -why don't you activate your gift as soon as you get it? You have 7 days to open up steam client, activate the gift, and mark it as received. Is there something i don't get?
All in all, 10 days of suspension is not that much, in fact i would propose permanent banning for all those who constantly don't activate their gifts. Is it that harse? Not at all: I could show you a member who got suspended for not activating and re-gifting games, now he's back, he's still not activating his gifts. (last time i checked he missed activating 5 out 8 won in a couple of weeks).
For the sake of this trustworthy community, i think we ourselves have to stand by the rules and not leave any room for cheaters. ;)
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REAL FLAW NUMBER ONE: you didn't read the rules. if you did you wouldn't get suspended, end of story
as for your "arguments"
@1 Fake GAs prohibits this system. If you win a fake GA you get screwed twice thanks to it - not only you don't receive a game but you lose te chance to win another real GAs. If you win a game and receive it - remove your entries manually it's not htat hard.
@2 - you see a shiny key and cannot control yourself from stealing it? you break the rules and get suspended. You get it for a friend or make your own GA? you get 5 days suspension for winning twice plus bonus for regifting. you take it then ask fro reroll? you get permaban for scamming. you mark a valid key as not received to steal it? you get permaban for misuse of GA feedback.
@3 cannot be implemented as it would return false positives on users not activating games they did. SG uses steam api to determine what games you have. Steam Api doesn't return some games even if activated (they don't show in your API library, while they do show in your client), so SG would think you didn't activate and kept sending you warnings. Also just activate game as soon as you win and problem solved. you won't get banned anymore.
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@ 1 Sure, you could remove the entries, if you're online when you win. What if you win in the middle of the night? What if I'm on the road? In a meeting? On the toilet? There are countless scenarios where I cannot remove myself is the point. If I win, I'd want myself removed from the five or dozen other giveaways when they've flooded the site. It's really not hard and can be entirely optional. I don't understand the resistance on this simple to implement, entirely optional feature. By default, it's off, and if you turn it on, you're consenting that you may win a fake giveaway or that the gifter disappears and never delivers.
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How hard is it to manually remove entries? Whenever, I win a game that is being massively given away, I just go to 'Giveaways entered', search for said game and click on the little red cross. It's that easy.
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What if you win a GA and the system removes all prior entries for it and it turns out to be fake? You miss out on having a chance to win a real GA. Besides, the odds of a person winning a GA for a same game twice are low, so this system would only be required for a few but demands much more effort. In rare cases that a person does win 2 GAs for the same game, it is better to ask for a reroll and let the support handle it.
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As I've pointed out before, itt's not only about winning a game twice. It's also, and primarily, about getting points back for those other giveaways. Again, winning a fake giveaway is a risk, that's why this would be an optional feature that's off by default. It should also have a note above it that you accept the risk by turning it on.
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I agree that it's a good idea to have more checks done by the system.
Furthermore what I would like is the ability for a group officer to start a steam sync for someone.
If I kick someone from my group, I want their account synced on SG as well. Now they can continue to join group giveaways for 4 or 5 days or so till they sync themselves.
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WARNING long post, skip to end for TL;DR
Flaw one. I agree that something could be done about this, but not an automatic reroll. What could be done is the first one shows you the key, when the second one is won, its key stays hidden till you hit not received. If you hit not received it should do a scan of your games to make sure you didn't add it. If you hit received, an automatic scan of your games should happen and any of the same games should have entries removed. If you won the same game, it should automatically remove that game from your list of ones you can win and should auto reroll any others you have won.
There are still some major issues with this. Its gonna cause a lot more work for the system which means SG is gonna be down a lot like in the old days. It also doesn't stop the keys from being stolen by someone. SG is very expensive to run, an even bigger server would cost even more. Auto rerolls just because you won a second of the same gift within a week of each other is dumb. If the first one is a fake but the second one is real, the system doesn't know that till the human (you) checks it and discovers it to be fake.
Flaw 2. This one is easy to solve.... if you win a game, remove it from the list yourself once you have verified its legit. Oh my thats sooooooo hard. Or hit the sync button right away, again thats SOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard.... The major issue is again over working the server. Again it could keep any secondary ones you win blanked out till the first one is rejected. This shouldn't be too hard on the system.
I won the same game twice, with in hours of each other and I never got suspended. Why? Because I took one, and contacted not only the creator of the other one but also SG support and told them what happened and asked for a reroll. Oh oh oh and guess what happened???? It got rerolled and I never got into any trouble. WOW!!! What a concept. To this day I still enter for lots of the same game, some of them that finish within minutes of each other. I know for a fact I will not get suspended for winning 2 of the same game, because I'm an honorable person and will take a few minutes of my own time to contact the second giveaway maker and Support and inform them of whats going on.
Flaw 3. I'm sorry but Steam just doesn't put stuff from other people in your inventory without telling you. One way or another you get a big popup saying you have received a gift and asks you what to do with it. It only takes seconds to activate it and you don't even need to install it right then and there. Just activate it on your account. It takes seconds. You are whining because YOU made the choice to put it in your inventory instead of activating it. Well guess what, any of the "solutions" that have been suggested would turned you in long ago and you would have been suspended back then too.
Also you marked it as received on steam gifts so you knew you received it. Again it takes seconds to activate it on your account. You can obviously run steam where ever you were at so that means its not blocked. You can just activate a game, but not install it. I do it all the time when I am in a hurry or just don't have the room to install it at the time. But I still activate it on my account and hit received.
There was only one time I actually had to put the game into my inventory first and that was because steam itself was acting up and neither the gifter or myself could actually see the name on the gift at the time. We had to play around with it a bit to make sure they sent the right one. They did on first try and it did activate normally after that, but still thats the only time I put it in my inventory first.
No wait thats a lie, there was a couple that I had opened a trade window for (one way trade, I didn't send anything), but they were only in my inventory for about 20 seconds after the trade window was closed because thats about how long it took to get steam to show me my inventory, find the gift and activate it.
Could SG do some things better? Yes, but it would also slow the whole system down for the most part. There are just too many whiners around that make posts like this after they get suspended for breaking rules and it was their own damn faults that they broke the rules. If you didn't know the rules, well again thats your own damn fault, you should know them.
TL;DR
Stop blaming steamgifts and start blaming the person who broke the rules, yourself.
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Jeez, just put some effort into it if/when you win something here. It's simply your own fault that you didn't check where a game comes from (you get a message in Steam, so it's not like you 'silently' got the game).
I agree that the situation about duplicate wins is flawed. I'd like to add that blacklisting someone should remove him from current giveaways and refund his points and not just block them from future giveaways. As you said those features are easily implemented. Your whole rant however is blowing the issue way out of proportion. It's really just a minimal flaw and not a big issue.
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I agree with point 2, but not quite for the reason stated. There are more reason than 1 for you to want to re-roll, you might have just bought the game, only for you to a few min later win it (that has happened to me), or you might have already won it or you might have found out where the game is from and intend to buy the bundle. I mean, the reasons are many for an easy automatic re-roll to be in place.
As for point 1, not everyone delivers. So it sadly makes sense for you to be allowed to retain your entries for other GAs of the same game.
For point 3, you should only mark a game as received when you've got it, and you should activate the game as soon as possible. Thus it's really a non-issue.
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@Suggestion #1: Not feasible to implement, and creates more problems than it solves. Not all wins turn out to be wins, so people need the ability to evaluate multiple wins at once.
@Suggestion #2: Keys are shown only after the creator chooses to display them. The suggestion of a "Show key" button for the winner would be of some small benefit to the creator without any drawbacks that I can see. It's worth considering. A "Reject Gift" button would be superfluous.
@Suggestion #3: SteamGifts is a community-run site requiring participation. As it is not meant to be an automated, gift-distributing device, there is no need for an alarm function..
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How is #1 not feasible? Make it optional like filtering games you've won, with it defaulted to being off. The time spent actually creating it shouldn't take more than a few hours. Heck, even an hour should be ample time of the developer knows what they're doing. What problems does it create? If it's optional, you're agreeing that you may win a fake giveaway. It's less about preventing double wins and more so getting points back that don't need to be spent. You're not always online to do it yourself, so this handy, simple to add, and completely optional feature helps.
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You are already familiar with how long it takes to enter or withdraw for a giveaway, yes? Now, imagine that delay multiplied by every duplicate giveaway you have entered. Then, multiply that by the number of users on SteamGifts. That delay will occur every time a giveaway ends, which happens roughly once every minute. So, unless you are willing to donate a bunch of top-of-the-line servers to the site, along with the money to run them, this suggestion is not feasible.
As for the problems it would create, there are good reasons why refusal of a gift is a moderated (rather than automatic) process. Quite often, a situation of "refusal" actually includes two or three other issues which must also be resolved by the mods.
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Are you a DBA or something of one? A single query is all that's needed per winner to remove the entries. Most giveaways have a single winner, and leveraging triggers allows an update to run if a setting is enabled. It could also be written so that an update is attempted that includes a check for the setting, making it a single action. We're talking barely milliseconds to remove a winner from other giveaways. The other consideration is adding the points back. If the developer knows what they're doing, you can add the point difference once, not every time an entry is removed. So no, you don't need a bunch of top of the line servers. Many operations are being performed by the site every second, this is just adding one more, and it isn't taxing. I offered my help to making the site better, but gave up after my support ticket went unanswered for months.
Edit: I don't want to seem to imply that the devs don't know what they're doing. I haven't seen a line of code, but the site functions well. I'd like to see it expanded to be even better.
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I am guessing that your programming knowledge and web-page editing far outstrips mine. While your comments address the functional side of the issue, however, you seem to be side-stepping the necessity of human oversight. Sure, in a perfect world where everyone does what they are supposed to do, in the manner they are supposed to do it, the system could be set up to run itself. From what I can see, though, SG is designed so as to be flexible enough to address a variety of situations without being overly complicated. That gives its users the freedom to tailor the site's functions to their individual needs, but it also makes it easy for them to make mistakes. The idea behind doing things manually is to insert the judgement and careful consideration of the human being into the equation.
Not that human beings always exercise judgement and careful consideration....
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No matter how many safe guards or warnings you put up, there's always going to be the human element. It's an often frustrating aspect of software development. That said, I don't believe this feature complicates the system any further. Realistically, I'd say the majority of users here wouldn't want that feature, or at least wouldn't use it. I'm nearly 100 wins in without a single fake giveaway, but I'm not naïve to the fact that it likely will happen eventually, and I'm okay with that. I'd rather put my points to other giveaways instead of effectively wasting them.
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Also... (and of course with "crowd think" this hasn't been mentioned)
I'd wager the vast majority of "Fake" give aways are not on 'Bundle trash" or 20 cent Steam games, but on AAA ($50+) titles that you very likely will never win 2 of in a week/month let alone a couple hours...There just aren't that many posted, and entries usually total in the 1000s.
The whole "what if one is fake" is really grasping at straws... For anything likely to have been spammed in give aways.
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LOL'd at #3. I was hoping we'd get some point by point support response on this. You didn't disappoint.
Also, I am returning to an acceptance of number 2. I just don't want it to be easy to reject gifts, because in the vast majority of cases you shouldn't be winning games you don't want to receive for whatever reason. Forcing the exceptions to require tickets and 3rd party (support) eyeballing prevents potential abuse in my mind. And with your "show key" option, those safeguards could still be in place with some additional useful data (did the user accept/view the key)
Edit: Also, I love how you created a thoughtful bug/suggestion topic promoting one of the points the OP made despite the fact that he unkindly bashed SG support.
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must be nice to have to worry about winning the same game twice....some of us have entered around 1500 GA's and still have not won once lol just saying.
but that aside the way i see it these days on the net if i dont like a site i just stop using it, complaining gets you nothing but criticized and often banned, and while i agree with some of your suggestions i think they would better placed in a support ticket or an email to the sites admins.
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People don't really pay attention to what they read!
The 2 keys belonging to the same game he won in 2 hours are different from the game he won and left in his inventory (that game was a gift copy). He said he contacted the creator of the second key he won and that the person said he didn't care if the key was re-gifted.
Now, as for the gift copy left in your inventory for months, that was you bad. You know the rules and since you didn't pay enough attention and forgot about it, well c'est la vie!
Regarding the 2 keys, I understand it was not your fault and that you didn't try to deceive the system. I, for example, enter giveaways in the morning before work and only check them when I come back at night. That leaves me vulnerable to winning 2 copies of the same game while I was away. You did the right thing when you contacted the creator of the giveaway. And I believe it would be unfair to mark the game as not received, when in fact you did receive it. But maybe you didn't think it through. You could have asked him to cancel the giveaway and/or opened a support ticket. That would have covered your bases.
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boo
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