since this door was opened, do these not count as referral links?? they came from our beloved bundle sites, so people will likely say they aren't when imo they are even clearer referral links then the one in question..
these examples have been better explained to me now.
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Well, for what it's I won't do any giveaways on here without the assistance of SGTools after what happened to me previously (I've already discussed the reasons why elsewhere and don't care to get into it again), so if it is disallowed for any reason then there will be no more giveaways from me. Which would be a shame for anyone to say, no? And also ironic in that a site that is meant to be about having and promoting giveaways actually ends up deterring it.
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Well, it's a referral link on the page, not on steamgifts itself. Are we going to ban links to every website that contains advertising? Because every ad on the internet is a referral link. So now posting a link to 95% of sites on the internet is now against the rules, sounds reasonable.
Seriously though, I don't see what everyone is getting upset about. The guy wants to earn a little referral money to help cover the costs, who cares? It probably doesn't even cover all the costs of running the site. It's not like anyone is forced to click the links, or buy anything...
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i also want to get some free money to make more giveaways, so i should post referrals in my giveaways?
ah, "it's not allowed to post referral links on sg"
ok, i will make a blog and spam it in every single thread i make with links to private GAs + a list of referrals, is that ok?
because it's off-site. ;)
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If you can get people to visit the blog, then why not? I thought that was a part of steamgifts. People giveaway games and put their blog, website, or youtube account in the giveaway description all the time and ask people to view it. They are giving away games for the purpose of getting their site know and they are doing it to make money from the ads or monetized youtube videos.
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Well, I don't have a problem with it. People use giveaways all the time to promote their game / blog / etsty store / youtube channel, doesn't seem that much different to me. Might earn you a few blacklists, though.
Whether linking to a page that contains a referral link is against the rules isn't for me to decide. The copyright lobby has been trying to say for years that linking to infringing content is a violation of copyright law, but the courts have tended to rule otherwise. Different situation I know, but somewhat relevant.
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i know, it will be up to cg to decide what's right or wrong on sg.
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ok, i will make a blog and spam it in every single thread i make with links to private GAs + a list of referrals, is that ok?
because it's off-site. ;)
Yes, it's A-ok. Linking to your blog in giveaways is more than acceptable. In fact, such links are frequently included in high quality GAs (AAA and such), so if you follow the footsteps of those "spammers" I think you're going to get way more compliments than complaints.
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So tell me if I'm understanding this right, You are against SGTools because it uses referral links when the site itself is not Steamgifts, thus not necessarily under the same rules as Steamgifts? But because one is linking to SGTools, which has referral links, it should be banned from SteamGifts?
I'm failing to see the logic behind this @-@ If this would become law here, then I would never be able to link to my YouTube channel or videos as I have a referral link for others to join the MCN I'm with, The majority of websites would be banned as well as they run referral based adverts, and linking to another site that does permit the use of referral links would be banned as well because of this.
So ya, unless I completely missunderstood what you said XP there's my thoughts on it all.
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- do you really post a youtube link to make 1 cent every 3 trillion clicks, or to share a video you made?
i assume it's just to share your work.
if people started to post 50 youtube videos per day, then the rules would change since abuse and spam has to be stopped.
- why would anyone post a referral to a csgo site?
to get money, nothing else. if referrals would be allowed on the forums or giveaways, people would spam nonstop like bots, so it's forbidden.
- why can we link to bundle sites if they have referrals in their pages?
because the focus of the link is to share information with users about deals, not to make them click on all the referrals and give money to... the bundle site. there's no personal gain.
- why are those hidden referrals in the deals section of sgtools?
to get money to the creator of sgtools.
users posting sgtools links aren't getting anything, so they aren't guilty.
but that doesn't make sgtools referral system compliant with sg rules. those referrals are there to make revenue.
not only that, the way they are implemented makes them shady.
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1 cent for 3 trillion clicks?
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-youtube-stars-actually-make-2014-2
Edit: A popular tech channel LinusTechTips puts out around 1 video every day and each video gets around 300-500 thousand views. With that he is able to not only provide for himself, but also pay 9 other employees that work for him. He does have 2 other channels, but one doesn't make much money and the other costs more money to run that he is making from it.
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More like 3 cents per 10 clicks, but with the referral links, it'd be 10%~ish of whatever that content creator makes (Taken from Maker Studio's cut) if they are accepted, which makes it just as potentially profitable as these CSGO referral links if the right people click them and use them.
And to your last point, what dictates that SGTools outright has to be compliant with SG rules? They are in independent site outside the reach of SG and have the right to make their own rules. Unless they outright break SG system by things such as revealing all link only giveaways, then there will be an issue as it directly harms SG, but other than that, there is no issue objectively, and the fact remains, they need money to keep the service running, and it's not immoral to make a little extra on the side from a service you created.
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the only fact is sg doesn't allow people to post referrals, either on the site or intentionally sending people to another page.
unless cg makes an exception and allows sgtools to keep the referrals, it's breaking the rules.
of course when/if that exception is made, everyone will be free to post a pastebin with links to private giveaways and referrals.
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Again, SGTools is independant of SG, making SG rules invalid. SG only forbids use of Referral links directly from their own site directly as stated here in the guidelines of the site:
"Referral links are not allowed in the community, and if you choose to post a link, please be sure all referral codes have been removed."
Nowhere does it mention linking to sites that use referral links themselves, only that you cannot be using a referral link on SG itself.
Find me the quote that says "you cannot link to sites that use referral links"
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From what I see, the links they are sending you to the main purpose of the content is referral links. SGTools main content is the checking of your SG stats to permit extra entry reqs. If the referral links where the focus, then it would make sense as it's maliciously bypassing the the rules of SG to break the rules of SG.
To this extent, you could also now say "because SG forbids Pornography, we must ban Tumblr as it has a buttload of porn on it."
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Better ban any site that uses adsense then, cause guess what, it runs off referral system~ It's not that it forces you to click it or not, that's how advertising works. You need to pay the server bills. And the referrals in Gleam were to get extra entries if I'm reading right, which benefits the entrants, thus is a primary focus. Adverts on SGTools are not the primary focus as there is no benefit to click them in the focus of the mechanics of entering the giveaways.
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Better ban any site that uses adsense then
let me know when you find users spamming links to their sites every day.
referrals ARE spam, thus they are banned to avoid idiots posting 500000 times per day.
You need to pay the server bills
i also need to pay for my giveaways and i don't use referrals.
sgtools has ads, that should be enough. users block the ads? they also block them on sg and cg doesn't complain.
And the referrals in Gleam were to get extra entries if I'm reading right, which benefits the entrants, thus is a primary focus
no. many gleam threads were closed because there were referrals in the page. it wasn't required to get a free key.
Adverts on SGTools are not the primary focus
put some private giveaway links in a pastebin with referrals and post it in the forums. remember to specify "referrals aren't the focus, it's the giveaways" and see what happens.
sgtools has referrals, which are also hidden (because if it's allowed by sg, we should obviously hide them!), so it's the same case.
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How is having a link to buy a game as an advert on your own website spam and having a link from Google adsense not? I am not seeing any difference in frequency or content to be honest, only in who pays the site owner.
This is fundamentally different, in general people make websites to host content and make money (at least enough to pay for the service), which is what SGTool are doing and even SG itself is doing! are you saying SG should remove all their ads? We as the giveaway community give away games knowing that we may not receive anything in return, only rewarded in the SG level for exclusive giveaways. SGTools can run ads how they like, and if they choose to capitalize on giving people the option to buy games with their referral link on their own website, and it doesn't give you any incentive to click via bonuses, then it's no difference than that Newegg advert google pumps through on the site as well.
Now that is kinda silly, because once again, that dictates I could never link to a YouTuber's video who has Amazon referral links in their videos (EG Linus Tech Tips, or Pewdiepie who does G2A). If this is the staffs intent then they need to update the ToS to indicate that linking to any site that includes any form of referral link in it's content should be banned, which is still a stupid concept as it's not spamming in SG if it's not a mandatory or incentive.
Again, focus and intent is generally the common concept here and if one doesn't get that, they're lost. As long as I'm not exploiting the fact of referrals in the form or mandatory or incentives, there should be no issue in having them on my own website and linking my website in a relative manner with the focus on the subject of the topic. Again, roughly 80% of professional blog are officially banned by this concept, as well as 90% of all YouTube videos where the uploader is sponsored in any way, and any site that runs advertisements (practically all).
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SGTools is independant of SG, making SG rules invalid
ok
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What people are failing to realize is that without this site, his site wouldn't exist at all.
He's capitalizing not only off people using his site, but his site relies on this site and its resources (giveaways. forums and data, the exact basis of this site) for that capital gain.
Other sites with referral links (and that even includes gleam) don't do that. A gleam link can be posted anywhere; an SGT giveaway can only be hosted here.
Using SG resources to make money that way is wrong, IMHO, and in fact goes against the very nature of the site itself.
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I'm only speculating here, but I doubt he's making more money than it costs to host the site. Probably in reality it's much less.
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That's really beside the point, though.
Here, let me write a script for SG and add a few referrals to the download page, and see how people react. Then allow me to post that script link as many times as SGT giveaways get posted on SG. See how long my links last on SG.
The fact that he has other users who support the use of his site posting his links for him is why this has gone unnoticed for so long. If it were something they didn't use or didn't like, you can bet the axe would be swinging the other way. ;)
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I noticed the referral links quite a while ago, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I just assumed most people thought it was a nonissue like myself. I can understand the reasoning behind not wanting referral link spam all over the forums, but I can't see why a referral link on a download page for your script would be a problem.
As I stated on another post, virtually all websites contain advertising which are also referral links, are we going to ban linking to all of those too?
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All other sites aren't allowed to be spammed all over SG, nor do they directly use SG resources or rely on SG for their very existence.
TLDR version: someone is capitalizing off someone else's resources and bandwidth. That's not a good thing IMHO.
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It seems to me that knsys created sgtools as a service to the community, not to profit from it. He's stated in the official thread that the links make him peanuts, even less than the ads themselves. He's paying out of pocket for his own bandwith, I don't see how that's capitalizing off of someone else's resources. And regardless, using sgtools is optional; it's not like anyone is required to create or enter giveaways with it.
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Do I have the right to stand in your front yard with a sign to direct people to my front yard to buy get free lemonade? Your yard is right on the corner where I can attract the most people. Oh hey, why don't you supply the sugar and lemonade mix as well and I'll supply the lemonade stand and pay for its upkeep/repair?
Seems fair to me ....
Gleam giveaways with referrals didn't require anyone to click or enter anything, either, and they're no longer allowed on SG. :P
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Hmm, not so sure about that analogy. First off, we're all here because cg has opened the site to the public and allowed us to be here, none of us have any implicit "rights" to do anything here. So for you to stand in my yard, I would have to give you permission, like cg has.
So, I've allowed all the users of steamgifts to set up stands in my yard and give away free lemonade. One of the stipulations for giving away lemonade is that you can't have advertisements on your lemonade stand. Everything is great, except some customers are taking all the free lemonade and not sharing any of their own, or cheating on their wives, and other disreputable things.
So, this guy knsys decides to set up a free detective agency across the street as a free service to all the stand owners. If the stand owner wants, they can require their "customer" to get a background check before getting their free lemonade. None of the stand owners have to use this free service, and none of the customers have to visit stands that require the detective service. Similarly, the detective agency isn't using any of the sugar or lemonade mix; that part of the transaction is taking place on my lawn. And sure, the detective agency wouldn't exist without all the lemonade vendors in my lawn, but they're providing a free service to me and my vendors so they're hardly capitalizing off us or using our resources.
In fact, it's the opposite: not only has the agency invested a lot of their time and effort providing this free service, but they also have to pay rent for the building. They put up a flyer for their Amway, Mary Kay, Pampered Chef or whatever in the office. This is all taking place across the street, and not in my lawn. The flyer is there, but no one is being forced to attend an "Amway party" to use the free background check service (and if you have ever attended an Amway party, I feel for ya). Of course, even with the flyers only a couple people buy products through their MLM company, not nearly enough to cover the rent.
So back to my yard; some of the lemonade venders are getting upset because..well, I'm not entirely sure exactly. They think that the agency putting up a flyer in their office across the street violates my policy against putting up flyers on stands in my yard? They're upset that the agency is offsetting some (very little) of the cost of rent by putting up a few ads on the side? Neither the vendors nor the customers have to look at the flyers, or even use the service; I don't see what the issue is.
But that's just my take. It's not my yard.
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that analogy doesn't work, because the "detective agency" must be placed on the "yard", not outside.
sgtools isn't hosted in sg's server, but it depends 100% on the site to work. not only that, the protected links are shared here, in the forum. so the revenue comes from sg users.
so no "yard" = "no detective agency"
no sg = no sgtools
no advertisement on the yard
no referrals
want referrals? > steamcompaniontools.info is still available :)
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Steamgifts.com is the yard, so if it's not on the server here, it's outside the yard. cg doesn't own , manage or host sgtools.info, that's knsys's yard. When a user creates a SGTools protected giveaway, it's not taking place on Steamgifts.com, the giveaway creator is directing the entrant across the street to the detective agency, and if they pass the check then they come back across the street to cg's "yard" to the protected giveaway.
Granted, there wouldn't be any point to SGTools without Steamgifts, but that's beside the point. There wouldn't be any point to lawyers without a legal system, auto repair shops without car manufacturers, tv ad producers without network television, etc etc.
Your usage of revenue is technically correct, but could be misunderstood by some forum readers. Revenue is any income derived from normal operating activities, whereas net income or profits are any revenues minus operating expenses. knsys is operating at a net loss, meaning he is paying more to keep the site running than the negligible revenues derived from advertising and referral links. So, if he was in it for the money he would have cut his losses long ago and shut down the site. Instead, he is paying out of pocket to provide a free service to the community.
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a real-life analogy for an internet forum is the worst thing that could be used to compare situations, but i'll keep playing
When a user creates a SGTools protected giveaway, it's not taking place on Steamgifts.com, the giveaway creator is directing the entrant across the street to the detective agency, and if they pass the check then they come back across the street to cg's "yard" to the protected giveaway.
when someone protects a giveaway with sgtools, they share the link on sg. that's the issue here.
they don't "conduct their business elsewhere", they post them on sg, so they are breaking the no-referral rule.
now, we could blame every single user using sgtools and posting referrals here, which would be unfair and stupid (suspend 800+ users for 2 days[X-times sgtools links posted] ?)
or we could blame the creator and his tool, since users had no clue about the hidden referrals (yes, i'm gonna keep mentioning the hidden part forever).
and the part about making some money to cover costs... well, no one asked him to make sgtools.
it's like me making a site with an extended faq, rules and off-site support and them filling it with referrals and ads, because i need the money to keep it running. so i want to help, but only if i can break some rules. only if cg makes an exception for me.
if there's so much need for money to host the site and people love sgtools so much, why doesn't knsys implement a paypal donation for his site?
oh wait, it's already there! who whould have guessed?
so it's not just the site running ads, which are fine. it also has hidden referrals.... hmmm.
and a donate button?
https://www.steamgifts.com/about/guidelines
Do not ask users for payments or donations for any reason.
but it's off-site, all good! :3
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You've completely neglected the part where Knsys is using SG resources to "power" his own site.
If Knsys is entitled to anything at all for his hard work, then Knsys should then be paying CG for using his site resources. After all, CG is providing a "service", without which SGT wouldn't exist at all. SGT relies on data, giveaway hosting, and the forums of this site.
And, like Mullins said, SGT is set up right in CG's "yard" (using CG's resources aka lemonade and sugar), not across the street. Sure, he may be paying for the lemonade stand himself, but without the lemonade and sugar CG's providing, he's got nothing.
EDIT: If CG stepped in and said he has no problem with any of this, then neither would I. Silence doesn't equal consent, however, and since gleam giveaways with referrals on their page are against the rules, then SGT giveaways with referrals on their page should be as well, particularly so since they directly use SG resources.
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since gleam giveaways with referrals on their page are against the rules, then SGT giveaways with referrals on their page should be as well, particularly so since they directly use SG resources.
That's the issue here (and the one Steffke is addressing. Knsys making (whatever amount of) money using CG's site is my personal reason for not liking the referrals on the pages. Please don't confuse the two.
We're also talking about two individuals here, not one individual and a company, a company which provides API keys for people to use on their own Steam-related sites. So yeah, I'd call providing those functions for other sites to employ as "consent" by Valve. ;)
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I kinda got the feeling that there's a consent for SGTools to use SG functions, with the way support here handles the information received from SGTools and has access to the invalid entries list it provides. Of course I don't know for sure, but it does seem like there is some kind of agreement between SG and SGTools.
As for the ref rule, well I do hope we get the official word about this whole thing. It would feel like the worst situation if they just keep quiet about this and wait it out.
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I don't know if he should be paying them, but he tries to respect their policies. For example, trading a Steam account is not allowed here, because it's against their terms of service.
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Precisely.
Remove the reflinks on SGT giveaways, respect the rules of this site, and problem solved.
So why hasn't he done that yet?
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I got the impression that Steffke sent a support ticket about this that went unanswered for two weeks, which caused this thread to pop up. If it's that clear cut, why hasn't it been answered?
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It's not up to any support member to make a decision about this, and I haven't been able to discuss this with cg yet
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Ah, thanks for letting us know at least. We'll just have to wait until cg has time to give his opinion about this.
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You are right in that without SG, SGT wouldn't exist. But now you neglect one fact. SGT processes data provided by me (the user asking for a check). Knsys pulls all the data needed for processing directly from SG on my behalf, reducing this way unnecessary overhead and bandwith/cpu usage of SG servers. This is only technical detail - SGT would work as well if it was me pulling the data from SG on my machine and then passing them to SGT.
In other words relationship is not as you suggest of predator-prey kin but more of coexistence. And SG also directly benefits from the existence of SGT: as tool for profile checking&reporting and many GAs wouldn't be created without sgt gate (which is the primary function of SG)
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And SG also directly benefits from the existence of SGT: as tool for profile checking&reporting and many GAs wouldn't be created without sgt gate
yes, sg benefits from people not having to report rule-breakers, because they can't even enter the giveaways they create.
so all the "peasants" doing public giveaways have to deal with them alone.
seems more like an easy way to evade extra work. :3
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You got me - I'm lazy. I'd be first to admit that if I wasn't napping :p
More seriously tho. I was, and I will be using "clean profile" rule in forum GAs. Not out of laziness (because I do check winners, even in the groups), but I don't want to see anymore "reroll denied, suspension served" after which I''m left with bad choices only. Either break my promise and take not-received (or lie to support about "key no longer available), or go against my principles and deliver the game nonetheless.
If the SG changed reroll rules to: 1 (2,3) months after suspension of grace period and after that I may ask for new winner I'd drop the check in the blink of the eye.
No need to point out consequences of that rule. I'm aware of this one (and some others too). Using it seems the best path atm for me.
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seems more like an easy way to evade extra work. :3
That's a good point. I just created 14 giveaways earlier today, all protected by SGTools against rule breaking, and all Level 0. If I didn't use SGTools I would probably need to rerolls at least half of those, some more than once. This would be way more work (for me and for Support) than to simply use SGTools and nip this issue in the bud.
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I do multiple public GAs every day. Not the invite only, the front page public public. Levels vary, I go through and check every winner. I've encountered rerolls at nearly level. Last night, I had 35 GAs end. 6 were requested to be rerolls, I got 3. Withhout the sgtools checker, this would bee a lot more difficult, so I hope that part can stay (or be implemented in the site).
I will request a reroll for any innfraction in the past year. Sometimes I still catch people who are near that year mark. I don't know how many of us do this. It gets frustrating, but I find it one of the most fair ways for my GAs.
I have 17 ending tonight, one is a WL one though. I try to do 15+ each week day, all ending at the same time.
Edit to say; It would be nice if it was easier, but It works now as it is for me.
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I also do public GA (almost 18% of my GAs), and these days they're all Level 0 (the few Level 10 ones are not intended to have entries, and are there only as a target for my use of SGTools as a controlled gate for ungiftable keys list). At this level, you don't get 6 rerolls for 35 GAs. You'd get at least 20, which is simply too much work.
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To be honest, I don't do many 0. It's normally level 1+. Yesterday, a majority ended that were level 1 and 3.
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The majority of users on this site are Level 0, so for the kind of advocacy I do on these GAs, it makes sense to cater to a larger audience. I understand why most contributors prefer to restrict their GAs to higher levels.
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and if you had to reroll... you would suspend users, and with some (bad) luck, get rid permanently of them. :3
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That's not how rerolls work. Normally you're just wasting your time and that of Support. In the example above, most likely it would have been 20 rerolls requests out of 35 GAs, of which 15 would be rejected because said user “has already served a suspension for that infraction”. Guess how many rerolls would I need to request with SGTools? :-)
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and with that example you reported 5 new rule-breakers, that's more than enough.
i would reroll 100 times just to catch 1.
and you can blacklist the rest so they don't bother you again. sg vanilla rules/options are more than enough to deal with offenders.
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I'm here because I enjoy my time on this site, not because I want to waste it with futile endeavors. Unlike you I don't find reporting 100 users to catch 1 an enjoyable activity, and it sure as hell isn't necessary when I can nip this issue in the bud by using SGTools.
There are 940,000 users on this site. Blacklisting 15 isn't going to make any difference in the odds of getting another 15 rule breakers in the next batch of GAs. But there's one thing that would :-)
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I've had several members perma-banned due to my reports, and many, many more suspended for various things.
If I used SGT giveaways, none of that would have happened and those people might still be here. Granted, I'd have fewer re-rolls, but other people would have more because of me.
If you're not helping report the rule-breakers and get them removed, then you really have no place complaining about them, either. ;)
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18% of my GAs are public, so I know what I'm talking about and submit rerolls regularly. It's painful and annoying, but I do it anyway because I believe that public GAs are important. I would do way way more if SG GA controls weren't so crippled.
In addition, thanks to SGTools, the number of rule breakers have dropped, because many people activated their wins to not be left out.
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the number of rule breakers have dropped, because many people activated their wins to not be left out.
Any hard statistics to back that up, or is that just speculation and wishful thinking?
Nearly all of my 1900+ GAs are public, so yeah, I think I know what I am talking about, too. ;)
EDIT: By the way, we are wayyyyyyy off topic now. ;)
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Any hard statistics to back that up, or is that just speculation and wishful thinking?
I just checked my last 25 rerolls requests, out of which 9 no longer have unactivated wins. Small sample size so not something that would qualify as "hard statistics", but significant enough for me.
As for your public GAs,
- Unlike mine, they're not Level 0, so you don't get nearly as many rule breakers. At the same time, you're locking out 99% of users on this site, so not so impressed with your view about the burden of rerolls.
- Do you even check all your winners and report those who break the rules?
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Maybe your winners activated their games so as not to get suspended or re-rolled again.
Yes, I check my winners. Not sure why you even brought that up, since I just stated I've had numerous people suspended and perma'd. ;)
Oh, and you'd be utterly SHOCKED at how many high level rule-breakers there are. In fact, the last guy I got perma'd was level 6 with multiple wins he was unmarking (possibly to pass those precious SGT giveaways gates). ;)
FIX: correction, he was marking them Not Received, which is how he was caught. :P
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Winners had no incentive to take care of their unactivated games before SGTools GAs. They couldn't get suspended again for those unactivated wins, and there was no risk of reroll once the infractions were already reported. The reason they took care of this is because they were missing on too many good GAs.
The fact that you got people suspended doesn't mean that you necessarily check all your winners. If you do, great. That's what every GA creator on this site should do.
The amount of rule breakers drops drastically from Level 5. Been there, done that. Still, there are a few rule breakers even at high levels, which is why one should always check their winners and not assume anything. However, with SGTools there are zero rule breakers passing through, which means you can give access to 99% of users and ignore their level. It's a bit ironic that people try to preach about moral and fairness yet their GAs target a tiny minority of high level users.
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It's a bit ironic that people try to preach about moral and fairness yet their GAs target a tiny minority of high level users.
And just what's immoral or unfair about higher level GAs? They're completely within the rules of the site (but referrals aren't).
I think it's funny that someone who makes primarily invite only giveaways would even bring that up.
Also, your entire first paragraph is complete speculation used to support your statements. I could just as easily say "the sky is blue because God decided that", and because you can't prove it untrue doesn't necessarily make it true. Without proof of any kind, you can just say whatever you like and think it's true, right?
I forget which mod it was who said most rule-breakers don't break the rules again once they're suspended the first time (I believe it was jatan, and the number was 90% or above) -- and this was before SGT Giveaways were introduced. It could just as easily be because they didn't realize they were breaking the rules. Granted, he didn't say they fixed the errors they'd already made, but that's just as likely as your own claim.
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I think I have some pretty good arguments for a reply here, but I'll save this for a separate thread. Coming up as soon as I'm done with all this festivity :-)
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And about being off topic, I don't think steffke minds that her thread gets frequent bumps and hosts good discussions about other aspects of using SGTools. If she does mind, then of course we can continue in a separate thread.
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The referrals are only on the SGT giveaways, and that's to what I am referring when I say SGT (for the sake of brevity).
The SGT rule checker isn't breaking any rules and doesn't contain any referrals as far as I know (haven't used it in ages).
EDIT: Hehe, it's crazy how many un-whitelists and blacklists I am getting for this. I wish they'd at least do me the courtesy of letting me know so I can remove them from my whitelist, too. ;)
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And I was only writing what is the relationship between SG and SGT. Whether there are referrals or cat gifs doesn't change it.
(To be clear, on the ref links. I don't like them, more so that there are g2a links. But also I think it is gray area, not strictly forbidden nor allowed. My interpretation may be wrong ofc, I'm not good at english ) )
@edit: not me, you are still going to see GAs from that evil sgt user :p
I've gained only couple of WL, lost couple WL and gained couple BL. But I won't hold that against them if I ever accidentally find out who. If that makes someone feel better, he can do that again and again )
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Well, tbh I'm fine with that.
It's true, it's using sg to make money (even if I doubt he's drowning in money)
But it's true that he's offering a great service too.
Maybe someone doesn't like sgtool protected gibs, it's ok, everyone has his own opinion, but check for double win before sgtool ? it was hard and annoying.
check for non activated wins ? quite impossible (well it was possible but exhausting...)
gleam it's totally different.
gleam actually force you to follow\join\do stuff and above all gleam supports a steam-mafia that blackmails devs, scams kids with fake contests\raffle\etc...
knsys at the end of the day worked hard for his work, bought a domain, an hosting, I'm not mad if he manage to gain something
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we all work hard to make giveaways, so we should also be allowed to post referrals in our giveaways.
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I've seen a lot of AAA promoting* a new greenlit game\website\youtube channel\steam group
I guess a txt file can't be that different, I guess it's ok, but you are still offering no service.
*promoting = not required to click/submit info/sign up
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I'm OK with people who provide value being compensated. (creating a tool, hosting a site, etc) The GNU pages have ads, I'm OK with that.
The problem is when people ruin value in an attempt to skim value. (spamming, reselling other people's work as their own, etc) There's people reselling GNU work as their own. Justice would be served if such people accidentally fell down the stairs.
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Konrads must be reading this with a smile on his face.
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Think of it as an investment. Look at g2a goldmine details, cookie duration is 2 years and you get to earn up to 3rd level referrals, once someone joins your team (purchase something through your referral link) you will always get commission from his purchases.
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How much money it makes isn't a valid argument and shouldn't have anything to do with the conversation. The only thing that matters is if it is against the rules or not.
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However am I going to sleep tonight knowing SGTools is making a cent every time someone clicks on one of those links?? gasp
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you should think instead:
why doesn't sg let me do the same?
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Quick question gamersgate links count as reflinks?
Links with this on it?
caff=00000&aff=cj
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no idea, i never used it. but the number looks like a user id.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/wiki/affiliate
I'm not sure yet
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It doesn't? As far as I can tell, there's nothing stopping me from creating a website, putting some referral links on it, and then advertising it here on SG.
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nothing will stop you, but you will probably end up with vacation time ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/jjbtA/freeforge-of-gods-team-of-justice-pack
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/q2hZ1/free-the-note
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remember to leech those games and click all the refs!
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I have never used that site, but it looks like it is required that you click on the referral link to get the game. That should be against the rules, but I don't think it is against the rules to link to a site that just has referral links on the page that you are not required to click on.
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it's not required, and some of the gleam threads that were closed didn't require people clicking on links either. steam groups placed refs in the description.
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I was exaggerating. Also, I don't believe there's a comparison between that and something like SGTools.
Those Gimme.one giveaways are nothing more than a front for referrals and advertisements. You can't even join the giveaway without being advertised to, because you have to give the site access to your Twitter account, from which it can post tweets for you and follow new people. SGTools, on the other hand, offers multiple utilities that are freely available to all. And yet, despite that, some suggest that SGTools shouldn't make any money, which I think is fucking ridiculous. Not only does the creator deserve compensation for their work, but they also need to cover the costs of maintaining the website.
If a user advertised a legitimate website containing referral links, and support banned that user, then we can talk about double standards.
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yes, a double standard. that's exactly what people is doing here posting excuses on behalf of sgt.
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If you were going to ignore my entire argument, then you shouldn't have even bothered to reply.
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you are the one constantly ignoring the FACT that closed gleam and gimme giveaways by support DIDN'T require people to click on those links to get the key, so the referrals could be ignored. there's even links in this thread posted by steffke with proof that support closed and in some cases suspended users.
but no, keep repeating the same. ALL gleam giveaways require referrals!
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Please tell me, where exactly did I say any of that?
What I said, is that you cannot enter a Gimme.one giveaway, without allowing them to advertise on your Twitter account. That barrier to entry doesn't exist on SGTools, so any comparison between the two doesn't work.
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Except that's not what the rules say.
"Referral links are not allowed in the community, and if you choose to post a link, please be sure all referral codes have been removed."
There's no mention of linking to a website on which there are referral links.
Edit: Nevermind!
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ok, guess we will have to suspend support users for abusing their power and closing gleam/gimme giveaways.
even better, let me write a letter to cg so we can ban them.
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If you think it's unreasonable for SG support to ban users who promote a competitor that features egregious advertisement, then sure, go right ahead.
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how is a twitter share related to a referral/affiliate link?
it's not even mentioned in the rules here, it has absolutely nothing to do, just like a youtube link or another social site.
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You know what? You're right.
I thought support bans anyone who links to a Gleam or Gimme page, and I was speculating that it must be because of how those websites conduct themselves (aggressive advertising and such). I have to admit, I was wrong. I've found plenty of instances where users were not banned for linking to a Gleam or Gimme page, and in the cases where they were, support claimed it was because of the referral links, as you said. But if that's true, then why don't they also ban people who post links for YouTube, or Facebook, or various news articles? Those often contain referral links as well. I think it's because they view Gleam and Gimme as competitors, and they don't want SG users making giveaways there. They claim it's because of the referrals, but I think that's nothing more than a pretext.
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anyway, it's kinda pointless to "fight" here since we don't really know what support/cg thinks about this.
we'll have to wait for an official announcement, if there's gonna be one at all. -.-
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We don't need a pretext. They are already against the ToS :
the Content is not spam, is not machine or randomly-generated, and does not contain unethical or unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites or boost the search engine rankings of third party sites, or to further unlawful acts (such as phishing) or mislead recipients as to the source of the material (such as spoofing);
"drive traffic to third party sites" is the exact purpose of these promotions.They have been tolerated when users where guaranteed to receive a key (raffles have never been allowed), but when they started putting referral links everywhere it was just the straw that breaks the camel's back.
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My apologies for not reading the fine print.
That being said, I think you can see why people are confused about these bans. Support often cites the presence of the referral links as being the reason behind the bans, and not the fact that the sites in question drive traffic away from SG.
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Because it is the reason, we still allow those promotions to be posted when they don't include referrals
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It is a reason. If I'm understanding you correctly, those sites are breaking SG's rules to begin with, because they're driving away traffic, but support tolerates their use so long as it's not a raffle or there's referral links on the page, correct? So if someone posts a link for a page that contains a referral link somewhere, but the site in question doesn't drive traffic away from SG (like, say, a YouTube video), then do you ban the user who posted said link or not?
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Correct.
We usually don't suspend these users, unless they clearly are affiliated with the promotion. Most of the time the thread simply gets closed with no further action taken.
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So, you would suspend someone who posted a YouTube video, only if they were the creator of the video?
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If support member decided that the user's intention is to drive traffic to his YT video in order to profit from it - then yes, I can assure you that it would happen.
But don't forget that those are humans issuing bans, not robots. Humans can easily tell what IS unwanted referral spam, and what is not. If I post a link to my own youtube video, hell, I did, nobody banned me for that because you'd have to be fool to consider such as spam or intentional action to drive traffic for further profiting from views. But instead if I started making trash minecraft videos, and posted them every day on SG in new thread, I'd most likely get a ban after maybe 3rd or 5th if I was typical user. I can't really see what is hard to understand in this case. You either do something intentionally with hidden intention, or not. Usually it's easy to tell which case is that, and even if somebody is unsure, it just takes X more incidents to find out such hidden purpose, so it's only a matter of time - you can speculate if you get banned after 4th or 75th video, but you can't assume that you won't get banned at all.
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The reason why many people in the community are so confused about this issue, is because SG's rules are not very specific.
Here's an example. The terms of service prohibit users from posting links that contain "unwanted commercial content designed to drive traffic to third party sites". Unwanted by who? The user, or SG?
Some will assume it's the user, and think: "That's cool, I'll just disclose that this page contains ads, and folks can decide if they want to visit or not." Of course, anyone who's been on here for a while has learned the answer to that question: it's SG. But going purely by what's written in the TOS, you'd have no idea.
I don't know if the above has ever happened, but you get my point. Also, I'm not saying it's right or wrong. No rules are absolute, and perhaps the vague language SG uses is more honest, than if they were really specific, and making many exceptions. I'm not sure.
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You can't even join the giveaway without being advertised to
And that's different from SGT GAs how? Re-read that statement and explain to me how it's different. ;)
This has nothing to do with him "deserving" money. This has everything to do with how he's going about getting it. Just because someone "deserves" something shouldn't give them the right to skirt any rules to get it.
So far that's really the only excuse I've seen, too. "It should be okay because he deserves it."
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"And that's different from SGT GAs how? Re-read that statement and explain to me how it's different. ;)"
The advertisement on SGTools is not a barrier to entry, whereas on Gimme.one, you cannot enter a giveaway, unless you allow them to advertise on your Twitter account.
"This has nothing to do with him "deserving" money. This has everything to do with how he's going about getting it. Just because someone "deserves" something shouldn't give them the right to skirt any rules to get it."
And what rules did they break exactly? The OP acts as if SG's rules apply to other websites. They don't.
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And what rules did they break exactly?
Again, re-read what I said and don't assume more than I've stated, please.
Just because someone "deserves" something shouldn't give them the right to skirt any rules to get it.
Didn't say any rules were broken (as yet to be determined). I said it doesn't give someone the right to just because they provide a service, and that's the primary excuse most have given (should it be deemed as rule-breaking) -- that it shouldn't be considered rule-breaking regardless because he's providing a "service" (albeit to a very small group of SG users that use the forum).
I have zero idea how gimme.one works. Haven't visited the site yet. The discussion here is about gleam.io, though. Gleam.io is forbidden on SG if it has referrals on the page. SGT giveaways also have referrals on the page, and yet is (so far) allowed here. Whether or not a "service" is provided should be completely irrelevant, but apparently to some it is not.
My beef is that SGT Giveaways use SG site resources and have money making referrals on the GA gates, which IMHO makes them worse than gleam. [There are many other reasons I won't use SGT GAs, but none of them apply to this discussion].
You can't even join the giveaway without being advertised to
As far as that, you can't join an SGT giveaway without being advertised to, either -- with either a donate button (if you're using adblock), or referrals (if you're not).
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"I have zero idea how gimme.one works. Haven't visited the site yet. The discussion here is about gleam.io, though. Gleam.io is forbidden on SG if it has referrals on the page."
I'm positive that's nothing more than a justification to ban the promotion of two competitors to SG (Gimme and Gleam). If it were really because of the referrals, then people would get banned left and right every day - FYI, users get away with posting a whole lot of links to pages containing referral links, not just SGTools. I'll give you that CG should just cut the crap, and put that stuff in the rules.
"As far as that, you can't join an SGT giveaway without being advertised to, either -- with either a donate button (if you're using adblock), or referrals (if you're not)."
I think I've explained the difference quite clearly:
"The advertisement on SGTools is not a barrier to entry, whereas on Gimme.one, you cannot enter a giveaway, unless you allow them to advertise on your Twitter account."
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How are Gleam and Gimme any competitor to SG? Regardless of they are banned or not, they games given away ~there cannot given away here. There is literally no interaction between SG and those sites, because in both cases the game gets blocked here. Not to mention that even a half-decent game is rare as hell on gleam, it's just shoveware trash to farm cards from
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"How are Gleam and Gimme any competitor to SG?."
Simple: you can host giveaways on those sites, therefore they're competitors to SG.
"Regardless of they are banned or not, they games given away ~there cannot given away here. There is literally no interaction between SG and those sites, because in both cases the game gets blocked here."
Are you implying that all giveaways on Gleam and Gimme are for free games? Because at least on Gleam, I've seen plenty of giveaways for non-free games and even AAA titles - games that could be given away here. I would link some to you, but you see my conundrum. Google it or something if you don't believe me.
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I'm curious how you're "positive" about that, or are you using that theory to support your statements? Because it sure seems that way.
Gleam and Gimme aren't competitors in any way to SG. They offer games for free, and SG doesn't even allow those games to be given away here. ;)
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I'm telling you, they aren't allowed for referral reasons and it has nothing to do with competition.
Here, I'll even provide you a link (from this very thread) that explains gleam links to referrals aren't allowed here. Within that link are three more links. Check them out. I'm nothing if not helpful. ;)
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Perhaps you should read his recent reply. ;)
Then ask yourself -- why do SGT GAs have referrals on the page? Hmm ...
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The point is that TempeteJoachim's post confirms that, yes, referrals are against the rules, but support does make exceptions, and they tolerate it in certain contexts, hence why you don't see users suspended for posting YouTube videos, or Reddit links, or indeed, SGTools giveaways, even though they all contain referrals.
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I need someone on marketing here, anybody?
How this works?
This then counts as ref "caff=00000&aff=cj"????
gamersgate links are here https://www.steamgifts.com/sales/recommended
But this are described as affiliates here
https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/wiki/affiliate
Slowly ignored by op, will senpai notice me?
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I think there's a difference between the theoretical definition and the commonly used one.
It happens with words like "theory", "vertigo", "advertisement/publicity/propaganda", etc.
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It's been answered in the thread: https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/b7nWsfq
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You just ruined my fun.
This link involves I need a suspension because you know, posting a referal, but you also needs report CG because you know 'referals' are not allowed here(and he will need to remove his own 'referals' according to Princess), but you just ruined my moment of knowing the answer of the Princess.
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It was an interesting reading to see all the opinions on this thread, I think it's time for my feedback and some clarifications.
Referrals links (more accurately affiliate links in this case) are not hidden, I'll try to explain it in a simple way to you all. Affiliate links are generated dynamically on server side, they are not stored anywhere, so the server has to "create them" everytime because it's a waste of space on the tight DB (it's quite a long string in fact). Why to bother to keep those long affiliate links to display them when nearly nobody clicks on them? It's preferable (and way more efficient) to have a redirect page that will do that on demand, aka when a user clicks on them (that's why the link has the game id and the store). With that said, it's the exact same system as Steamgifts uses, even the same affiliate network provider (CJ for curious people).
"Affiliate links gives peanuts". That is true, at least with the level of traffic and the type of users SGTools attracts, I can't speak for other types of traffic, but I can assure you that (but you ofc don't have to trust my word). So then, why do you keep them on giveaway page? Thing is I've been thinking of removing them since 2 months ago, but It wasn't even worth it. I've been extremely busy those late months, people who share chat rooms with me know that I've been MIA those days (mostly on work and personal/side projects). That means that changes on hobby projects (like SGT) must be something that worth the time to do that. When affiliate links where put into place, they were in complete compliance with SG rules (way before gleam stuff), and since the rules didn't really change, it keeps being compliant with them.
I'll remove them from giveaway pages, once we get a final word about their compliance, and I'll do it on both case scenarios (compliant and not compliant), because it's just not worth it. But now I want to know if they are or not.
SGTools has both ads and donate buttons. That is not true, at all. SGTools has ads OR donate buttons, those paypal buttons only appears if a part of the website is not being rendered (aka adblock).
As a general rule of thumb, don't try to impose to other people personal interpretations of the rules, when you are not someone in the position to do that. I've read some categorical explanations that something is against the rules, when it's just their personal and subjective vision. Rules has been linked in this thread quite a few times, and it's quite clear that SGTools doesn't break them (unless they change them).
Those people should note too, that there is a rule against calling out, but I guess they know that because they seem experts in SG ruling :)
Tons of things has been talked in this thread, I'm sure I've missed a lot of them in my reply, sorry if I didn't get to answer them, it's quite late here and I'm kind of sleepy. Gently remind me replying to this message and I'll clarify it for you.
PS: Usually my posts and opinions on those types of drama threads are ignored, you prefer to keep battling without paying attention to what I have to say, so if you read this line, thank you for taking the time to read it!
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I'm surprised I'm the first reply unless somebody replies while I type this.
Anyway, thank you for commenting, knsys. What this all boils down to, IMO, is 1) do these links break site rules according to cg and 2) if it is technically in violation, are you permitted to be an exception because of the service SGT provides, and that you're not so much making a profit as trying to defray some hosting costs. (That last point is my assumption...forgive me if you've become a rich man due to SGT.)
The gleam examples provided (the ones with the optional links) seem to be rather similar to SGT, but I'm not an expert on such things-- I'd never heard of "affiliate links" until today. And like you said, these things didn't exist when you first added the links. Unless I'm missing something, they do appear to be against the rules since those links had to be removed. At the least, you seem to have added them believing them not to be against the rules.
That said, given that one of SGT's main functions is to detect rule-breakers, and there is a premium in detecting and punishing SGT rule-breakers (link-sharers, etc.), I would think that SGT (and therefore you) would be held to the highest standard of not breaking the rules. And as such, it might have been wise to check with cg/Support/whoever as to whether the links were okay, so that this whole topic could have been nipped in the bud.
Thanks for reading, and thank you for developing SGTools.
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Thank you so much again for SGTools Knsys! ^^
As I said before in this thread this whole inflated drama is like someone yelling shark in a pond with just goldfish in it. Much to do about nothing.
The funniest thing in this thread is that some of the worst SGTools haters use SGTools every day to check their winners and to check other users and who every day enter in an AAA hypocritical way as much SGtools giveaways as they can. So for those users SGTools giveaways are very, very, very bad except when they win SGTools giveaways. ^^
Also Knsys do you have updated SGTools numbers?
These were the last:
STATS (20/06/2016)
Number of users: 18.286
Number of users that are giveaway creators: 801
Number of users serving infractions: 37
Number of banned: 13
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I've just updated the stats:
STATS (27/08/2016)
- Number of users: 20.844
- Number of users that are giveaway creators: 937
- Number of users serving infractions: 33
- Number of banned: 14
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Thank you Knsys! ^^
Knowing that SGTools giveaways are invite only giveaways and that not a lot of the total 940K SG users are active on the SG forums it's very nice to see that more than 20K SG users have no problem entering SGTools protected giveaways! ^^
I hope we can soon celebrate 1K SGTools creators.
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"In complete compliance with SG rules" means it doesn't break any of the current rules, it's quite self-explanatory.
There is currently only one mention or rule involving referral (affiliate) links on the Steamgifts guidelines,
Referral links are not allowed in the community, and if you choose to post a link, please be sure all referral codes have been removed.SGTools have affiliate links in SGTools website, that means that posting a SGTools link is just posting a link to another website, a link that isn't a referral. So the link posted "in the community" (Steamgifts) is not a referral link. Other people have already discussed that part of the rules, you can get more info here.
Let's go to the other rule you mention
"Do not ask users for payments or donations for any reason. Fees to gain access to gifting groups, or attempts to raise money for lotteries or giveaways is not allowed."The first part of the rule applies to steamgifts website not to other websites, second part of the rule involves every activity related to a steamgifts giveaway. Being that clarified, it's not even the case of SGTools.
SGTools doesn't ask for payments, not donations and of course there is no lottery or payment to access a gifting group. You can see paypal buttons only if you block the site ads, and if you read the text that's on the top of the paypal buttons you'll see that is not asking anything either (I could if I wanted, SG rules doesn't apply in that matter).
Let's talk about Gleam giveaways. When they began to pop in steamgifts, all of those "free games" offers made you click referral links to get the "prize", and that is what it's forbidden by rules. When that was an issue, some of them (the minority) tried a new approach of having "optional" referral links (they were indeed optional, but nearly everybody used the autoscript so they were clicked anyways). Those later doesn't violate any (current) SG rule or guideline, but you cannot expect support to check them all to ban some and allow the others, so the easiest and more efficient solution is to ban them all.
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I have to agree with knsys here. There is no referral in the link that goes to sgtools, so no rule has been broken. Nobody can be expected to find a random topic where a support member gave his opinion on how he personally interprets the rule and then decided for themselves if that is even an official rule or just one support members opinion. If they want to make a rule specific to referral links on third party websites that are not required to be clicked on to get to the giveaway then they need to add that to the guidelines page.
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The rule only states not to post links here that contain referrals and that rule was not broken. If support members want to go above and beyond the rules and suspend people on a case by case basis, that is their choice, but you cannot claim something is a rule when it is not. The rule needs to be clarified.
I personally don't care about sgtools and whether people use it here or not, but I don't think there is anything wrong with putting referral links on a website as long as the referral is not in the link posted here and it is not required to be clicked on to get to a giveaway. I don't think Gleam giveaways should be allowed where you have to complete so many actions and one of those is a referral, even if it is an optional action.
I think it will be a very bad idea to change the rule to say that you cannot link to a page that has referral links on the page because this is going to severely limit the number of sites that can be linked here.
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So the fact that a user was warned about posting it is subsidiary?
Completely unrelated, we are not talking about spamming your website that happens to have referral links. But even if it were comparable, as you can see, it's not against the rules.
Gleam stuff
Unless support says the contrary, it's the most reasonable reason to close them. Since we've got some mod's feedback on the thread already, I guess we'll know soon enough :)
If something is not against the rules, is in compliance with the rules. That's why rules and guidelines exists, and I'm quite sure is the same in Germany, so it shouldn't be new or shocking to you.
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I don't understand the issue. SGtools is an unrelated site that gets (or tries to get) some money from something. That's true for pretty much all external sites linked in posts, and is true for SG itself. That's the way sites support themselves, and there's absolutely no problem with that. The rule is about individual posters getting something from posting here.
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The rule is about individual posters getting something from posting here.
a site owned by one steamgifts user.
completely fine with the rules.
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