Thanks man, It's like I made a list in my head and you read it (not the free keys per se, but the rest). Happy holidays!
Implementing the notifications is super important for Steam Trades.com
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+1
I want see too that e-mail notifications on steamtrades :)
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I registered roughly a year ago, so I don't know much about how this site was in earlier days. However, I think your plans really make sense.
Merry christmas / happy holidays!
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that is ok young padawan, you seem strong with the force ;)
happy holiday
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Much awesome, such gratz! Good luck and happy holidays too!
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Happy holidays!
Patreon idea is interesting. I have wondered there could be a way to donate to the site directly, like via bitcoin.
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Thanks for your awesome work cg! Merry Christmas & a happy new year to you and your loved ones.
As for registration: Is it possible to check the date a user activated a game. If yes (and if this is not already been done), bundle games could be allowed as long as they were in the account before the bundle date.
You could also bring back the old days (from what I've been told) and allow bundle games up to $30 (or any other value). Maybe users that register with less than $100 unbundled account value should be on a list that does automated IP cross corelation with other accounts to find multiple accounts.
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Great to hear such news from you. Happy Holidays :)
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As for registration I say keep it simple and transparent - just copy CV system from SG. Free games give 0 Value, bundle games give 15% Value, non-bundle give 100%. This way someone would still need 666,66$ of bundle games to register, To get this much value even with best value bundles they would still need to spend comparable amount of money to amount needed to buy 100$ worth of nonbundle games on big 80% sales.
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I was just going to suggest this so have a +1 from me. And happy holidays CG
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the main problem with bundle games on STeam is this:
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/K9n1YAN
no date for activation...
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count bundled game as bundle then no matter of activation date. If you bought game before it got bundled for full price bad luck, but how is it any different than for example Me buying 10 copies of Monsti b4 it got free and only managed to give away two? I am also not able to give remaining 8 copies which I paid for, not got for free the same way people who bought bundle game br=efore bundling get reduced Value. Same reason - we cannot check date of purchase/activation. Still this game counting for 15% of value is better than not counting at all like it does now.
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the difference (as i see it) is you bought it to give, not play, or make your account price higher.
the check is there to make sure no empty accounts get into SG.
if i spent that money, and SG claims i haven't hence i can't join would make me angry.
yes life sucks, still.
as for CV value, it's make belief anyway right?
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we gotta protect from multiaccounts even more. Sad but true. Multiaccounts must not be profitable to create. With current amount of GAs going on even lvl 0 bots tend to win quite a few GAs, imagine army of 100s of lvl0 bots you can create for free - how profitable would that be? Getting 15% Value is still better than getting 100% value. Especially as I believe the case of someone having just few bundle games (remember that 100$ Value is only 10 10$ games, so we're talking account having only like 6-15 games in total!) and all them being bundle games and this person not buying a single one of them via bundle but buying them all non-bundle sale price on steam is also extremelly rare. It's still possible that somehow only games ever this person was intrested in and paid full or not-deep discount price for were games which later on ended up in bundles. Generally we are t5alking only extreme cases here. For most ppl it will be having 1 or 2 non-bundle games and a few bundle games, these people are currently not able to join, while they will be able to join with proposed system, while it would still make abusers unable to join for free or almost free. For the price of being not so great to a very very rare extreme cases. Harsh, but therer are many more potential abusers than these rare cases ;)
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With all the sales, and games able to be purchased at 75%-80% off and still receive full CV, I think the current system is just fine.
As it stands now, one can pay $20 to reach the $100 account limit. If they're clever, they can actually do it for nothing with some of the sites like Orlygift, Otakumaker giveaways, and simple card farming.
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i agree completley.
what about my suggestion:
as for the User Registration, only solution i see is to open to lower levels, but make it so new users can win only 1 game. that would also work to show them the site is real and trustworthy before they gave anything away.
that restriction would be lifted after they have given at least one game (same as lvl1 now). then, free for all GA and for ever.
simple small step.
considering that making a small GA is easy, especially for bad rats, it won't be perfect. but 75% of people can't join
even assuming 50% of those are bots. that is sad
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sorry but it's a very bad solution if our main purpose is to fight multiaccounts. Accumulating 100$ non-bundle or 666$ bundle or both combined requires some investment making multiaccounting not profitable idea. Requiring just 1 GA and whatever account makes it EXTREMELLY cheap and profitable. Let's look at DIG games sold as an example - you can buy giftable bundle game for like 3 cents. Minimum amount of money you can add to your account is 5$, which is ~ cost of good bundle BTA. 5$ is not enough to make a single alt account if your purpose is multiaccounting. you could get 25$ game with it on 80% sale or let's say 100$ good bundle so 5$ investment would get you 1/th up to 1/4th of multiaccount according to my idea. Now considering your idea 5$ investment would get you 166 3 cents keys from DIG allowing you to create 166 multiaccounts!
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Never said to drop the 100$ completely. But as an added bonus for reduced entry requirements.
And you underestimate the laziness of such people who makes the bots. True, eventually it will happen...
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I would be fine with this if they up the min. requirement as well. It is very easy to build up an alt account with hundred of games with cheap HH IG bundles or keys from plati.ru. There are some peeps with bot farms that go into the thousands so getting an account with $666 worth is not as hard as it once was.
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It's not hard to get 100$ aaccount either, but you gotta take into consideration that ifg you set up bat too high a lot of fair users won't be able to get in as well. you rise bar to 250$ non bundle let's say - so it is harder for farmers to get there cheaply. But it also means that a lot less fair users will eb able to get in, because for someone who is buying only games he really wants and not ust sniping bundles and/or 80% sales on Steam getting to 250$ value will be expensive and for most newbie users unaccessible.
Also consider this - let's say good (not awesome but good) bundle is 95% off. Getting 666$ out of 95% off bundle would cost 33,3$. You can get into SG by investing 10$ on 90% sale with a game that is simply not available in russia so it don't go on bundle list. So sorry but your argument is not very valid - already it's easy to get into SG with 10-20$ investment max, IG HH value investment required to get to 666$ would not be very different from these current values.
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+1 This was exactly my thought. Definitely need to make sure not to count anything that's been free.
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The problem with allowing bundled games to count for account registration, even using a CV-like calculation, is certainly very real. My bot accounts have well over 1K games each, and these are just games that I purchased to farm cards, which net me profits with zero net cost. This is not at all hard to do, and is probably exactly what most people with multiple accounts are doing. I of course don't create SG accounts for these bots, but others with less attention to rules or ethics could do so easily if a CV calculation was implemented. I buy bundles in bulk, spend $1 per bundle and sell the cards for $1.50. Yes, the money just ends up in my Steam wallet, where I then spend it on games that I really want on my primary account, but still - others could convert that money to real cash via game trading and what-not if they were so inclined.
TLDR: Getting to a significant level of CV-calculated value on a bot account is not difficult at all with no real money spent long-term.
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sorry but how is it any different? The same way you can use cards and item drops to save up for non-bundle game during sale, activate non-bundle game on bot account and register.
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Because these extra accounts are paying for themselves. I buy a bundle for them only if the card value will exceed what I'm paying for the bundle. There's no limit on how many accounts I can run this way, apart from my own ability to manage them. In your example, I'm taking money from my primary that I could otherwise use for games I actually want on my primary account and diverting it to the bots. That's fairly limited and is costing me real money.
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the same can be done with Steam - buy a steam bundle on 9X% sale, the cards will be usually worth more than games themselves, sellc ards, buy more few cents indie games, rinse and repeat. Few cents profit here, few cents =profit there and with big time investment (and in your idea time investment is big as well) you can easilly save up to 10-15$ and get yourself 100$ worth account.
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It's definitely possible, sure. I'm just saying that the CV calculation makes it much easier. Most people with multiple accounts have them for card farming like I described. By changing the barrier to a CV-based calculation, they wouldn't have to do anything differently than they are now for all of their bot accounts to instantly satisfy that barrier. And with tools like ASF and a lot of automation that is easily available and managed, it's not really that much of a time investment at all. I only have five bots, but there are people with hundreds, and they would all instantly pass a CV-based barrier. Yes, it would be difficult for them to set themselves up to have a different IP address for each bot to avoid scrutiny, but they could if they were determined - combine that with auto-entry bots, etc. and we could have a huge flood of bot accounts. I doubt many people would be willing to use your approach on such a large scale.
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Happy holidays! It's nice hearing the plans for the future of Steamgifts. I think it sounds pretty good!
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great news!
Happy Holidays for you too and for everyone who reads it! :3
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Thanks for all the info and your hard work.
Merry Christmas to you too!
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Happy holidays and good fortune to you! Hope this site keeps on being what you wanted it to be.
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Happy Holidays and happy new year cg and everyone.
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As much as i like to get rid off free keys that are not allowed to giveaway on SG, but this is the place where i check a game if it was free when trading/purchasing one. I suggest making a database regardless of those free given away games if you ever gonna allow user to get rid of their freebies here, i think it will be useful for many users.
Also for user registration, there could be multiple types of registration. One is the current requirement of $100 unbundled game worth, Second, less than $100, for say $50 registration requirement+ you have to giveaway $50 worth of unbundled games before you can access giveaways, or a slider to choose initial registration requirement vs unbundled game given requirement, Third, a user can join without any requirement but they need to maintain their cv atleast 1, that is same amount given away : same amount received to avoid multiple accounts from signing in and to encourage those that doesnt meet requirement to join the community.
Happy Holidays!
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from here: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/dsq6C/discussions-that-should-never-go-away-aka-sg-bookmarks
you have this: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/pJRbR/can-we-have-a-list-of-games-that-cannot-be-created-as-giveaway-unofficial-list-inside
but yeah, an official list would be nice
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I'm still waiting for that day to finally close my unofficial list thread.
cg please make it happen! Sooner!
xD
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Never. Muahahahahahah
Or, he should hire (for no pay ofcourse) you to keep that list official
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How about hire me into the admin ranks and let me add the official list to the site?
I'm a programmer, I know how to do stuff.
:P
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Thanks but no thanks. I mean, yeah, making a list isn't that hard,
But making the list official into this site isn't something that we can hack into. At least not legally. hehehe
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User Registration
The most feasible way here is to allow calculation on bundle games, but with reduced value just akin to how CV is determined for bundled games.
For example, Steam user owns a steam account with a copy of Counter Strike Global Offensive and other bundled games. The way the account value can be calculated should be this - assuming that the person has bought the Serious Sam Complete Pack and the Humble Origin Bundle, this is how their account value would be calculated:
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Counter Strike GO : $15 [NonBundled]
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Serious Sam bundle : $19 [Bundled, 20/100 * 95]
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Crysis 2 Maximum Edition: $3 [Bundled, 10/100 * 30]
This gives an example of all bundle types available. For 1, CSGO is a NB game and value is calculated normally, with no restrictions.
For 2, Serious Sam Complete Pack has been available on 90% making it closely eligible for bundling status, and unlike some other bundles on steam, it was purchasable as a gift. An important distinction here is to maintain/update a database of bundles purchasable as gifts and/or on steam with 90-99% off on their price, similar to the way a bundled-games list exists. This is not a very essential job to do since there are few bundles like this, but if such bundles exist, then the value towards the account must always be calculated on the total value of the bundle (in this case, either 90$ or 100$, I do not have the US Steam Store) The value for this bundle is calculated as 20% of the bundle's value.
For 3, Crysis 2 Maximum Edition was a part of the Humble Origin Bundle, making it a bundled game, and 10% on the individual game's value has been calculated, and not the bundle. This distinction is made so as to demarcate the line between bundles with massive discount on steam such as Valve Complete pack, and rest of the bundles available on the internet(HB, Indiegala, Bundlestars etc) This difference in value has been created so that people who have directly spent money on steam are not discriminated against, since most bundles have minimal price which can be increased ($1 in the case of HB), whereas Steam's bundles have only 1 fixed discount.
The best part for 2 is the fact that there are few bundles which exist which fit its criteria, and most of the work on 3 can be conducted easily since a native bundled-games database exists for SG which can be liberally applied. This sort of system instead of granting 0 value to bundled games should help increase membership registration for SG. Note that this is hardly the perfect method, since people still have the potential to exploit it by purchasing multiple bundles, but the existence of Clause 3 means that they would find it due to only 10% of the value being granted, while users who have only purchased bundles and other cheap games would still find it possible to join up.
Free games should not be counted, by any means.
Also, on the support issue, moar support definitely pls. And other than support, more diverse "titles" would also be welcome (similar to how TheShobo is the bundler, chronicdiscord is unofficial SG Trivia master, and so on... titles being created to fit and curate accordingly to the needs (members whose only support function is to approve re-rolls, for example)
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today, with IG HH you can buy full account very cheap. even with the 15% off.
also, another problem, is how can you check when they got the game?
SG cv gives you full vaule if the GA was made before the bundle. not sure you can check dates on the Steam page for other users (i could be wrong)....
but in general, i agree with you, the bundle games should be allowed in some way.
edit: look up, it seems some users say no date can be implemented...
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/K9n1YAN
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Simple, you don't. Once it's bundled, you get bundled value. It sucks, but retrospective effect would be a massive effort of its own since you need to work on the relevant steam api. As for IG HH, I agree with your point but 10% off still reduces the value massively for most games, and most of the games on IG are ones that do not have a very high base price to begin with.
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the HoG bundles have high base price.
but yeah... life sucks ;)
that is why we spend time on SG :D
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holiday HH 50% sale for all bundles is something that occurs very rare. The same way already someone may buy 100$ games on 95% sale quickly before they get retroactivelly added to bundle list and this person will still be able to make an account. But thing is both ewxamples will happen relativelly rare. Few ppl will slip thanks to both of them. But for vast majority it will still work as intended.
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indeed
but i go back to date of activation.
i still thinks it's unfair ;)
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it gets retrobundled but this person is already on SG and usually will stay on SG unless someone raises the question "how was this person able to join SG with such games"? Other example - you can already buy Humble on 0hour, if nothing from it was bundled before you can create account, then games got bundled but you're already on sG.
So all these things are already possible, just very rare. So nothing would change - in rare cases someone can unfair join SG. Only change is that also a lot of fair ppl will be able to join SG as well while now they cannot.
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I'd like to change the way we look at those games in the future, and allow users to give them away with a highly reduced CV, or no CV.
Yes! Great idea, and one I was hoping to see as well :)
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great stuff cg, thanks!
as for the User Registration, only solution i see is to open to lower levels, but make it so new users can win only 1 game. that would also work to show them the site is real and trustworthy before they gave anything away.
that restriction would be lifted after they have given at least one game (same as lvl1 now). then, free for all GA and for ever.
simple small step.
Happy Hanukkah :)
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Happy Holidays!
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Support - keep 'em coming, current crew is really overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of tickets. They are doing a great job, but the website is much larger than it used to be and needs more people in the backend.
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Previously Free Games - I think being able to give them away with 0 CV and no +1 to number of created giveaways would be okay. Even I have some keys I can't get rid off.... for decent games even.
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Notifications - yes, specially for "your giveaway just ended, send a gift to the winner" and "you won a game, visit ... to claim your gift from X"
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Patreon - I'd like to help if I can
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User Registration - Wouldn't change anything for now. Or maybe allow up to 25% of required cv to come from bundled games but those users have to solve captcha when MAKING initial 3 giveaways...
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why captcha thou? Generally main reason for 100$ requirement is to avoid ppl creating shitload of multiaccounts for free, if you make multiaccounts you are unlikelly to invest into giving away with them anyway. Or you just make 6 multiaccounts and make private GAs entering with other 5 ;p
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to avoid fake giveaways before they read the faq? I was mostly thinking of 13 year olds outside of English speaking countries... didn't even think of scammers.
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still don't get why you put this argument here. How are these potential future entries any more likely than current newbies making fake GA? Is person having 75$ nonbundle games and 25$ bundle games value on account more likelly to be a trolling 13 y/o thank someone having just 1 more 25$ nonbundle game? I don't see corelation. If anything according to your idea captcha should be for everyone.
Plus if someone doesn't want to read rules or wants to troll he will do so regardless of captcha, in general most of ppl tend to just clicvk annoying captchas away without even reading.
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You're right, captcha and reading the rules should be required for everyone before they enter/create for the first time!
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and there is simply no way of enforcing it ;) because no captcha will force anyone to read if he doesn't want to ;) Only solution to it would be forced Rules Test for each user, but it would drive a lot of people away. Not to mention troll would still answer correctly and make fake GA anyway.
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Happy Holidays CG!
I really love the ideas about those problematic features, and that they became addressed as problems, even with ideas for solutions, while being understandable and clear about certain points (Steamgifts platinum!!! ;) )
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I think you're on the right track in all areas.... Thanks for the update cg :D
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These are great news! 🎅
Thank you very very much!
(If you can spare 2 minutes of your time, please accept my request on steam I have a question, I know you are very busy person)
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Happy holidays to you too, CG.
Thanks for the post and for the updates, 2017 looks to be a very promising year for the community of Steamgifts! :)
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I'd like to change the way we look at those games in the future, and allow users to give them away with a highly reduced CV, or no CV. I think it'll provide users with more flexibility in terms of what they give away, and it'll provide everyone with a chance to win some great games we've unfortunately removed from our game list.
I think free games shouldn't give any CV at all, on top of that they shouldn't count as sent games either otherwise people will abuse the system in order to get free CV and better ratio.
Now one could argue that people who spend money to gift games can also give away freebies so it's not unfair if freebies would give CV, but in that case we'd still have, even more so, people who in one way or another get multiple free keys for a single game and then "spam" the website with giveaways for it making a mess. Also ratio matters to some people here, we even have people making SGT giveaways that only people with certain ratios can enter. While I'm not exactly a fan of that feature (albeit I'm not against it either) I think people have the right to put such limitations on entries to their private giveaways and if people could improve their ratio with freebies then this SGT feature would be almost meaningless and I'm sure that would cause an uproar.
Patreon
Go ahead and see what happens. You could make it so site still uses ads and that donating on patrion removes them. That would probably be the best way to go about things to get the most income, but I have a feeling you won't like this idea.
Looking at our stats, it's easy to see we have less users registering per month, and you might assume this means a drop in activity. However, that's not the case. Our bundle list grows daily, and since we exclude bundle games when calculating registration value, it's becoming more and more difficult for new users to register. It's normal for us to see 75% of users unable to register on a typical day. This is a difficult problem to solve. On one hand we need strict requirements to protect our community against users signing up multiple accounts, and on the other hand, we don't want to block hundreds of legitimate users from registering each day. If anyone has any thoughts on improving this system, please share.
You could make it so bundled games count but not with their full value (just like with giveaways and CV) and make it so games given for free don't count at all. Now one of the issue about that is figuring out the fair percentage for the value of bundled games. I think 15-25% would be okay. Maybe you could make it so bundle games count only on accounts older than a year. Not a perfect suggestion but I don't think there is a perfect solution for this.
That being said, thank you once again for creating and supporting this amazing website, not only because of the giveaways but because a great community formed here. Also I would like to ask that you reconsider the punishment for re-gifters and people who don't activate won games on their account (those who activate it on another account, give it to someone else or sell it). I really think the punishment should be harsher; one month ban for first offense, permanent for second. Both type of offenders could get unbanned if they end up activating the game on their account.
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❄❄❄
Hey SG, happy holidays, I hope everyone is having a great weekend! It's been a good year for SteamGifts, and we've seen a lot of growth in terms of giveaways. Although there's still a week remaining, I think this December might turn into our highest month on record for giveaway activity, averaging over 3,300 giveaways per day. However, we still have room to improve, and I'd like to see a few changes to our site in early 2017. I'll talk about a few of those now, and I look forward to the community feedback before I start implementing any of them.
Plans
Support
There's been a number of discussions lately asking why tickets are taking longer to answer, and users wondering why we have not yet expanded our team of volunteers to help with the demand. I'm aware of the need for more support, and it's going to be my highest priority going into 2017. The issue with simply expanding our team is the lack of documentation for the wide variety of tickets and edge cases new team members would face. Consistency is an area we still struggle with today when answering tickets. The majority of tickets we face are not simply black and white, and even the most basic of questions, such as, "What's considered an inappropriate comment?", can be a challenge to answer and moderate consistently. I'm in the process of improving our documentation with the help of our volunteers, and writing a set of standard operating procedures to help guide us when answering tickets. Once finished, we'll be able to more efficiently add new members to our team, bring them up to speed faster, and be more confident when handling tickets. Personally, I'd like to see another 5-10 users join our team early 2017, and then further expand again in the months that follow.
Allowing Giveaways for Previously Free Games
I've seen this suggestion show up a few times in the discussions section, and it's one I'd like to implement. As you know, when a game is free, we typically pull it from our game list. This means if a developer briefly distributes their game for free, or if a user gives away thousands of keys on another site, the corresponding game can no longer be given away on SteamGifts. At the moment, it's unfortunate for users that miss those opportunities, since our site does not provide them with a second chance to obtain a copy of the game. We also receive quite a few tickets from users with previously free games, that simply want to find them a home. I'd like to change the way we look at those games in the future, and allow users to give them away with a highly reduced CV, or no CV. I think it'll provide users with more flexibility in terms of what they give away, and it'll provide everyone with a chance to win some great games we've unfortunately removed from our game list.
Notifications
I think e-mail notifications will be a good method of increasing overall engagement on our site in the upcoming year. They could provide users with the option to be notified when games on their wishlist are being given away, or when featured giveaways are posted for games they don't own. Notifications would be easy to subscribe or unsubscribe to with a single click, and not only would they help to grow our site, I think they would be a valuable tool for less active users that don't have the time to check our site daily.
Patreon
This is one idea I go back and forth on frequently, but you might see it tested in 2017. The idea is simple; replace our advertisements with a Patreon page to raise donations. I think the concept of being directly funded by our users would better fit with the spirit of our community, and it would help to separate us from advertising networks, which grow more invasive on a regular basis. If we do ever implement a donation system, it would be entirely optional, and no giveaway or point advantages would ever come to those that donate.
Challenges
User Registration
Looking at our stats, it's easy to see we have less users registering per month, and you might assume this means a drop in activity. However, that's not the case. Our bundle list grows daily, and since we exclude bundle games when calculating registration value, it's becoming more and more difficult for new users to register. It's normal for us to see 75% of users unable to register on a typical day. This is a difficult problem to solve. On one hand we need strict requirements to protect our community against users signing up multiple accounts, and on the other hand, we don't want to block hundreds of legitimate users from registering each day. If anyone has any thoughts on improving this system, please share.
Infrastructure
If you've been a member for a few years, you likely remember the days of slow load times and frequent downtime. We've come a long way since then, and I think in 2016 our site has been reliable and responsive. There's been quite a few updates focused on improving performance during the past year. As well, we have a good backup solution in place with our daily, client-side encrypted backups being stored outside of our servers. Last but not least, we have room to grow. We could likely double our traffic with our current Infrastructure, and reach 5x or 10x our traffic with 20 minutes of downtime to scale our database server. Overall, I think it's one area we're finally doing well.
Thanks to everyone for being a part of SteamGifts this year, and a special thanks to our volunteers for answering tickets and helping to support our community!
❄❄❄
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