Steamgift soul would be lost: a global feeling spreading in the community

"longtermist"
What?

Time and time again these threads pop up, usually written by someone that does not want to contribute to the community and wants access to games that some people may have earned from their generosity.

i dont care much.

The system is fine as is. Note most free games are generally banned. On the note of cheap games, there really isn't a reason to decrease the value of a game just cause someone found it on sale somewhere. A lot of people don't know about third party sites where they could acquire games for cheap. Unless someone had a really solid plan I don't see this system changing anytime in the near future

Yes, a lot of people do gift for contribute value. A lot less gifting would be on the site if the contribute value system was gone. Now you may think "Meh no big deal. We don't want those peoples gifts anyways." But the fact is if 2/3 or 1/2 of the people stopped gifting it will just make it harder for people to actually win, and each giveaway will have even more entries than they already do.

So yea the system is abused, but there isn't much to do about it. But rewarding those people who contribute is always nice since they are the ones who help keep the site alive.(Even if some people do it for wrong reasons.)

In the end I don't see any harm in people giving games away, even if it is done with the intention of raising their contributor value. Games are games, and the contributor value stat doesn't have an enormous effect until it reaches maybe $1,000.

Ah such is life... Questioning systems and trying to come up with something better. But imo this one is ok. Users can always decide what to do with the contribution value themselves.
You can never perfect a system, cause it can only be perfect for a few. If it's perfect for you, a bunch of other people will think it stinks. Better ok for all than perfect for some.
There's nothing wrong with debating whether or not a system is good though. If you can't then something is very wrong with your community.

Why do you say, it's spreading ?
You ran a poll or something ?

Well, I mostly give away for the contr. value and I don't see anything bad about it. Also with bundled games being handled differenently there is no easy way to exploit the system. As it is now I have a way to get rid of the games which I got in bundle and already have (like the Bioshocks I recently gave away) and as a reward my chances of winning some other games I want rise.

Anyway giving away just for the good feeling? It certainly feels good to make someone happy, but when 2/3 of the winners of your giveaways don't even bother to thank you, you kinda lose enthusiasm.

The system is not perfect, but it is the best we can have, just like the Versailles Peace Treaty after World War I. Nobody wanted it, but all countries had to accept it since there was not a suitable alternative. Removing contribution value would lead to a disaster and people will stop giving away, so that is not an option. Also, updating prices does not make any sense as it would not change anything.

Finally, why do you complain that people give away a lot of games that are on sale? You can easily win them without having to buy them! What's the problem with that? More games means more entries for you and a bigger chance for getting that game you always wanted. I find no essential problems in the current system, so it should stay the same if we want SG to truly function as a community.

I find it amusing that in almost EVERY single case these threads are made complaining about contributor value, it turns out the OPs have their own skeletons in the closet. Three copies of Babel Rising given way two months ago? Hmmm ...

Good day Mr. Longtermist, I ( A 1 year ( read 12 month instead of your little 8 months) ) does not seem to care too much. The diversity is still great, and if people give away bundle games, I think it's great! More chance for everyone to win a game! Also contrib value for bundles is capped on 30$, do some research before you go full retard.

bai

Let the farmers farm, the haters hate, leechers leech, whiners whine, and the givers give. Live long and prosper.

says a guy with 3 babel rising giveaway(exploited ubisoft keys)

Leechers will always remain Leechers,
Atleast with sales and bundle games, there are people giving away games and others winning those games, besides the contribution from bundle game is also capped so it doesnt not exceed 20% of your non bundle contribution so it remains in check...

mods could permanently be updating prices depending on how they evolve on websites

Well to be honest with you I highly doubt mods would have to do any of this, my suggestion is that they update every game's prices one or twice a day, wouldn't be to hard to do, simple cronjob, and how you may ask? Well they already have the script for it, over at steamgamesales.com.
So to make things simple, I think they should make a simple script that updates game's value every now and again, using a script similar to steamgamesales. But there's more to it, after you gifted a game, the value that it had when you gifted it is the value it'll be on your cont. value forever. I've seen many people giveaway games that are worth 40$, and a week or two later, appear in a bundle, and the value goes down, and thus the contribution value too! This is unfair in my opinion. Simply put, when you gift a game, the value will be the current market value, and it won't incrase/decrease your contribution value if the game's value later changes.

This way people who gift a bundle game, will get maybe 5$ worth of gifted value, while prior to the bundle, someone else who gifted it will have 40$ worth of gifted value.
If I didn't explain myself to well then people ask your questions ;)

"i think this can hurt Steamgift diversity"
you mean like how you gave away 3 babel rising around the same time as the ubisoft exploit?

It's a damned shame to see how many people only seem to be interested in raising their contributor value, and how it has become such a focus point of the community, but the only reasonable way to fix it would be to remove contributor giveaways entirely. I'm personally of the opinion that this isn't a big loss - after all, we still have group and private giveaways to restrict access to a chosen group and people could make a "Contributor's Group" on Steam to manually filter out people who abuse bundles and such things if they were really that concerned about who contributes what - but it's a feature that was implemented at the request of the community so removing it would probably cause more butthurt than it's worth.

And honestly, in the end it's not that important. Yes, people are exploiting bundles, free giveaways, sales and pricing errors, but they're still gifting games which is what the site is all about, and (most) winners are still happy to get their games even though they might not be worth their listed price. And the people complaining about some contributor values not being "legit" enough due to "exploited" games are just as much overly concerned about a meaningless little number as the people exploiting games for contributor value in the first place, so neither side has much merit in my eyes.

So you're saying sales hurt those people who want to get the game?

Look at the amount of users in site, look at the amount of threads regarding contributor value complains, look at their profiles; most of them are recent users who are completely convinced that having a big contrib value will get them most games, when in reality the biggest chance of winning a contrib game is usually when the limit is around 250$ and up, which is not something you get from bundle gifting, but because you actually want to give away something.

TL;DR: Pointless complaints.

Update prices should be like this: Points will stay at the minimum the price was once. Otherwise people will hold on to the games until the points got up again. To avoid more work for mods just connect it with steamgamesales and you should be good.

Three Babel Rising giveaways? Did you pay Ubisoft for them or exploit their code? Loser.