I still want to contribute, but -alas- life was to good to me and my platemail does not fit anymore. The local smith said he could change it no earlier than in 4 months ...
Comment has been collapsed.
English is not my native and, somehow, I was translating "platemail" as "license plate" (like those on cars) in my head over and over again while reading your comment.
Literally like:
I still want to contribute, but -alas- life was to good to me and my car plate does not fit anymore. The local smith said he could change it no earlier than in 4 months ...
Thankfully Google translate saved my sane :D
Comment has been collapsed.
explain why there is only 2 and a half page of giveaways appear on the main page of this website and I'm still having a lot of points but have nowhere to put it in :|
people are discouraged and don't want to create more after losing a huge portion of CVs
Comment has been collapsed.
It would be great when the ones that abuse/exploit the cv system would stop with it and are discouraged but nope, they still do GAs (to 95% still exploiting ones).
Far from all/enough cv got set to the right ammount and the ones that got hit massively should be very happy that they had a (much) higher level as they normaly had earned, partly for 3 years+.
The reason for much lesser public GAs is the community train and the fact that the HB monthly ended.
I see 97 public GAs, so a half page lesser as you.
Comment has been collapsed.
If it discouraged users from grabbing multiple copies of games that were missed by support for months - it's only a good thing. People that want a copy of game to play will have bigger chance to grab from giveaway site themselves. If they want to use sometimes random looking Russian giveaway websites.
Thing with those games is that they were barely (if ever) given away outside of time when they were available for free somewhere. Bundle starts and we have dozens giveaways popping up for few days and then nothing. So only thing that is lost is ability to bank points I think.
Also if it means less delete giveaway tickets, as creator would not be willing to pay from their pocket for game they get for free in case "original" giveaway site messed up something with keys or gave duplicates - better for everyone.
Comment has been collapsed.
(only a around $ worth nothing exactly, no $ start info, no names)
I did note the drop, did not think to write it down so precisely though. I hope majority of people that were grabbing piles of free "undetected" games to give away on SG will stop. I mean one thing is to give away random key we get for free, or when game we had key for unfortunately landed on no-CV list. Other is wait for each time website is giving away free keys with few accounts, request keys and post them here immediately.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, i hope it too but from the few that i oberserve i seen only one that changed the behavior.
The rest go the same exploiting route with games that are lesser worth and aren't jump direct in the focus of the mods.
And yes, a bunch of freebies, claimed with one acount, are totally ok but accounts like this one, in the screenshot -as much anonym as possible-, are grabbing 30 copies of each freebie on each site with the help of bots. No "good intentions" behind such GAs and from this person. From my point of view is this pure greed.
[I delete the screenshot as soon as you seen it, if necessary -i am not fully sure if needed or not-]
Ps.: The stats aren't fully correct, it would be more freebies, years after the GAs is it more difficult to identify each freebie as freebie. And the Lootboy/IG Feudalife ones aren't counted as freebies. But the stats are now much more "correct" as they were one month ago.
Pps.: This account win in average around 3 games/day on sg.
Comment has been collapsed.
No need to share screenshots, I did see enough user stats dropping when adding games to no-CV list. And the same people over and over again immediately doing multi copy GAs. Sometimes all at once and sometimes spread throught few days.
Like I said in other thread - they "lost" CV, the one that they never should have in the first place. It is unfair for other users they had inflated CV for months or years but now it's fixed. I would not go and single out most extreme cases. I think table with data how levels changed across time is more informative than fact someone gave away 2k keys for free games.
Also I think before this "purge" community stats were showing around 20% of free GAs per month. Now 2021-2022 is 24%. And Sep (so only one day, not strongest statistic) it's at 13%. We will need to see at the end of Sep and later percentage of free games being given away. It will show more clearly if people were discouraged from giving away free keys.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't looked into the community stats about the per month percentage of freebies.
Thanks for the reminder. Yeah, a "new" stat to check :-D
Comment has been collapsed.
It's nice to see that, thanks to your - and other people's- effort, abusers have finally lost the cv they shouldn't have gained in the first place. Now, this might be an unpopular opinion, but those who really abuse the system should also have gotten a suspension. I mean, losing cv isn't really a punishment since they shouldn't have been whatever level they were anyway when the purge happened.
Comment has been collapsed.
The accounts that we mean aren't accounts with a few of such GAs.
Or one copy of each freebie.
It give users that grab each freebie with 15 - 30 copies, of course with the help of bots.
There is no "maybe" when someone do this over years.
There is no "maybe" to the intentions when this people give this stolen Games (multiaccounting = stealing) on sg, because not listed properly as freebies, to have a maximum advantage from it.
Some of this accounts win 3 games each day on sg.
It give users that grab each game that are available in shady ru stores, for a few cents, and give them away in, nearly all cases, 5 - 15 copies.
The users that i mean do this since years and the games that aren't from such sources can be counted on one hand if they ever done a not abusing GA.
So i speak only from the extremest accounts.
I believe it harms the site but i am ok if other people have other opinions.
But in the end not important. The support will never suspended users for this. They don't have the rules for it and cg is too lazy to change something, as long as he earns enough.
Comment has been collapsed.
i don't think games are marked ** for too many bundles, maybe you aren't just unaware, that specific games were given away for free, ITAD doesn't list everything
For your second point, those cheap asset flips for overpriced 50$ come to my mind
Comment has been collapsed.
It had a Steam base price of 30.99 EUR until 17th August. https://steamdb.info/app/2095230/
And I think it's a sort of must to put these on the zero CV list as they'd still give way too much CV even at the reduced 15% level. A 30 USD game(-like object) that can be bought for 10 cents in shady keyshops still brings 45x value if it's reduced CV which is like 5 to 10 times better than you can get with gifting bundles with real actual games in them.
Comment has been collapsed.
But it is only $5 CV now. so.... it should be fixed?
No, because the publisher can set the price again very high and they shown with the extreme price before that they act shady.
Rules should be consistent and clear
Yes, but you can't demand this direct after the support changed the acting because too much abused a "loophole" too much.
I wanted that change since 2 years+ for games that had "only" prices of $5 - $21 and were available for 4 - 16 cents (mostly 6 or 8), mostly because of the high price, compared with the paid price, to discourage people to abuse that trash games, because the games were partly the same game with changed colors, changed assets and such stuff (one time desert, one time ice etc.) or nearly unplayable games with the same bugs in each of them etc..
The mods weren't able and/or willing to enforce a change at that time but nowadays the mods had a other view and the public pressure here on sg against such abusing GAs were much higher as before when i were one of very few that said something.
I assume that the mods will find a way how to handle situations more consistent but because the rule/handling git implemented later, it will not fit to all old cases.
I could check all old tickets that i made for games from the shady ru stores and come around with dozens of "with the new handling the game XYZ should be set to FREE and not only BUNDLED" but to be honest, i will not do this because i decided finaly, 1 week ago, that my report days are over (different reasons) -195 autojoiner tickets will be handled...sooner or later... and that will be the last from me if i can look away, for all other, as i planned it.
I done nearly 1k tickets for free/bundle GAs and over 2,1k when i count all tickets, thats more as enough for a sg lifetime.
So as hard as it sounds "not my problem anymore".
Ps.: As i said before, i would perma suspend the hardcore abusing accounts -that do it since years in a high amount- that would be much lesser work for all involved ones. But, obvious, will this never happen.
Comment has been collapsed.
There are still a lot of games missing which need to be set to 0 CV like Stray and the new Saints Row which were given away on Alienware.
Comment has been collapsed.
there were not much copies, most people shouldn't have gotten a copy, so a very limited giveaway, arguing on that basis every game ever given away on SG would have to be set on 0$ too
Comment has been collapsed.
Well there are games valued at $0.99 which had giveways with a whooping 4 copies that got reduced to 0 CV.
Comment has been collapsed.
Saints Row on AWA will be an Epic key most likely. Apart from that the other defence for not putting them on the 0 CV list is that there are too few copies in those AWA marketplace giveaways.
It's odd though that they zero out low value trash games that were in very limited giveaways. If Hitsquadgodfather gives away the 10 to 100 copies of a 1-2 USD trash game he got from the dev for promoting it that earns zero CV for some reason. I don't mind it that much as long as it's that kind of games mostly but the problem is that the owner of that channel also buys lots of bundled games to then give away for twitch channel points. I fear at some point the mod team could decide to zero them all out too which would be terrible.
Comment has been collapsed.
The more important question to my mind is: "What percentage of the copies of a game appearing on SG were obtained for free?"
The number of bundled games on the Hitsquadgodfather twitch channel which later find their way to SG is minuscule compared to the overall number of giveaways for those games. For the mod team to zero them out just because 50 or 100 copies were given away for free would be terrible and extremely unfair to the thousands of users who bought those games from Fanatical, Humble, etc.
The same cannot be said of the typically low-quality new releases that the owner of that channel promotes (He usually gives away 150 copies). Those are not sold anywhere outside of Steam and I doubt that anyone creating giveaways for them soon after their release date is actually paying for them. It's almost guaranteed that a 100% of the copies you see on SG are freebies. For that reason, I consider it fair to mark them as 0 CV regardless of their retail price or how limited the quantities given away were. Not to mention that such an action only targets a very small subset of users who are taking advantage.
Comment has been collapsed.
They traditionally went on the free list if there were 10,000 copies given away free, I think.
Comment has been collapsed.
Her number was wrong.
1,000 is correct and always lead to a Freebie = 0cv mark
But of course not the only point that will be looked at.
As example, how much a Game will be abused/exploited is a other point that can "force" earlier, as 1k copies, reaction.
Programs that were somewhere for free, in lower as 1k copies, price tag of $150 and multiple users that give 10 copies of it, could be a example for this.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hooked on you DbD Dating sim was in AWAs last month vault with 1000 copies, i think they looked at these other points and decided to not set it to 0 CV, because it's a game only a month old, almost no copy made it to SG and the game wasn't completely free, because they charged a lot of their currency (ARP) for it, i think not even all copies were claimed, due to the high price
Comment has been collapsed.
Because itch.io didn't give away Steam keys? All the Epic freebies aren't zeroed out either. This site is only concerned with the Steam versions of games.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, not Steam keys, so it doesn't affect SG giveaways.
Comment has been collapsed.
Feel free to report each "missed" game that you see as freebie/bundled game.
Write a "Add game" ticket, put the Name in the title and the source (+ maybe barter/itad links) + reason in the text.
The mods decide and do the rest :o)
Comment has been collapsed.
Why you introduce it to me isn't fully clear for me.
Maybe you use this thread because it have "attention" right now and it will get talked about the thing but the correct way would be to write a thread under "suggestion" and put it there.
cg can see it, and the mods too, and can react if they want.
I would say the chance is nearly not existent.
But i can't hide that i am "burned out" and frustrated from different things (how they are and what they never will be).
"The focus should be on encouraging giveaways"
I fully stand behind this sentence.
But i don't believe that this happens on sg with the active rules and limitations (and it can't be changed or cg needed to do a lot more -which i don't expect to ever see-)
Comment has been collapsed.
The thing is, no one gives away these fake games en masse unless they know exactly what they are doing. They have to seek them out and buy them for 10 cent each on dodgy website, or bot a load of them from a dodgy giveaway site. A few can happen, but not 100s, or even 1000s.
I might have lost CV here and there over the years for bundled games that were ultimately given away as freebies previously and were retroactively "fixed." But it's fine. It's not something I keep track of, to be honest. If you're not doing it deliberately, you won't even notice the minor loss of CV.
And there is no advantage to being level 10, not really. It's just an achievement really that people like to reach. Shouldn't be their sole reason for being here.
Comment has been collapsed.
Many of the reasonably priced lesser known indie games have "steam is learning" on them. That would just discourage people to give away new, lesser known real games. I have played fairly good games on Steam that have/had limited profiles.
The fake games getting added to the 0 CV list isn't affecting the majority of the people on CC. Like I said, if they're THAT upset about it, then they lost a lot of CV and knew exactly what they were doing when cheating levels. Why are they this desperate to get to level 10 that they'd bot game keys from dodgy sites? There actually aren't that many giveaways at the higher tiers. Is it for the e-peen? Is it to look mega generous? I have no sympathy for that.
Comment has been collapsed.
So you think that $50 is reasonable for an obvious asset flip, or fake game? If that's the case, then there's no point discussing it.
If they broke rules, they would be banned. Cheating levels is not the same as breaking the rules.
I'm not as invested in this as you are. Why do you care this much?
Comment has been collapsed.
I did answer it, you just didn't read it and chose to instead take offense.
And my question about the $50 fake games was rhetorical, since you asked what I thought was reasonable. What's reasonable depends on the game. Any person who knows anything about games at all will know an asset flip when they see one. Not sure why you asked me that question in that case.
You are the one that put words in my mouth. I said "cheat levels" I did not say that they broke site rules. Those are two very different things. You knew perfectly well what I meant. You don't come across as an idiot, so why are you pretending not to understand. What I said was pretty plain and simple to understand.
You are very upset for someone who isn't invested in it. That's all. I wasn't intending to upset anyone, just explain why this is happening. And why it doesn't affect the majority of users who generally give away real games.
I'm done responding as I'm not bothered about this in the same way you are. Have a good day/evening/night.
Comment has been collapsed.
Good job mate! I wish this could be automatized by cg at some point - new trash is released = added to crap list with ZERO CV. That's all folks!
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks :o)
Trust me i delivered him a big part on the silver plate and he done still nothing after years.
A few of my group members created tools, in a few hours, which he couldn't in years.
Each one can think about this whatever he want.
Comment has been collapsed.
Rule for? When exactly game will be counted as 0CV?
This would only allow people to look for free or extremely cheap games that are 0,01% below the official threshold. So it will not be made public. Give games from bundles you bought or some freebies you have keys for, without calculating 24/7 if it will land on some list to maximize CV. That would be the rule.
I remember years ago when people were giving piles of Serious Sam: Complete to maximize their CV. Pages on pages of SS giveaways. Support decided it's too much and is just CV exploitation. And game landed in 2015 on bundle list, even when it was never in bundle that would warrant doing so. Same with LEGO: Barman Trilogy. It was really cheap on some brazilian website and thus bundled in 2016. And it was in proper bundle in 2018.
Comment has been collapsed.
The only ones that got hit heavier were the ones that abused the site/the cv system since longer times with, mostly many copies of, "trash games" that they bought for a few cents.
Because of the price, the sources etc., they known that they take a advantage and use loopholes (to say it friendly).
And that are the users that are now, maybe, assume they will be again hit, which can only happen if they again try to get the biggest advantage for the lowest possible money invested.
If such people aren't willing anymore to create GAs that abuse the cv system, i would see it as win.
Comment has been collapsed.
You misunderstood me.
I complain only about the time that i waste with discussing something with someone that don't want to see all informations/sentences that other ones and i write and prefer to be in the "why user X got hit and not other level cheaters too" bubble and think it is a unfair handling.
If you want something solved, write a thread in the suggestion discussion, contact cg, the mods etc..
If i would do the rules i had banned the 50 - 100 most extremest cv system absusers/exploiters.
After that would sg be much more healthy and the workload dropped to maybe 5% of before. Some people would not grab 30 copies of each freebies and other ones would not buy each crap game that is ultra cheap, in a shady ru store, and, more or less, promoted as "great to exploit the sg cv system".
Over and out, to this case
Comment has been collapsed.
This would only allow people to look for free or extremely cheap games that are 0,01% below the official threshold.
The best way to avoid people abusing a threshold effect isn't to desperately try to hide the threshold (nor to move it around at will), it's simply to... get rid of the threshold.
We're in 2022, given the increase in computing power, storage capacity, etc, since the website was created, it would be perfectly reasonable to try setting up something way more continuous in the way games get depreciated over time. (but yup, I know that's something you or any other mod can't do anything about anyway, which is a bit sad because if the development team was just a bit bigger I'm pretty sure we could get this)
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, that would require complete site overhaul. Though SG often struggled with performance, where cuts had to be made to keep it alive. Like when it was taking few seconds to even load a page. So don't think there is much overhead how much more complex calculations site can do on the fly :thinking: But I don't have any hard numbers, only site admin knows how much it cost to host and run service, how much it brings revenue, how does it balance and if there is any room for more computational heavy tasks. Plus there is always steam limit where we can't just keep requesting game data, there is a point where we will hit request limit.
Comment has been collapsed.
Price data should be stored so that wouldn't mean additional Steam requests. Level calculations should be stored/cached as well. And from the way the site runs now, my guess is they already are, as I can't imagine the site running such calculations on the fly for someone with 1k sent GAs.
So really, there would be just added complexity at the rare moments level is updated, and (quite a bit of) added storage for historical price data - something that is not stored at all at the moment, as far as I guess and considering people's levels have been changing on the fly as developers made changes to their game prices on Steam. Significant code changes indeed, but not really much need for extra computational power nor Steam requests.
Comment has been collapsed.
Interesting.
By curiosity, that made me check my giveaways.
Indeed, not that it is important or anything, my "No Value" number raised a little bit.
Oh c'est la vie :)
Comment has been collapsed.
I strongly assume with 3x level 10, you will not really feel a difference :-D giggling
Comment has been collapsed.
What's the point of leveling up nowadays though? I'm level 7 and there's only a couple of lvl 4-7 giveaway pages.
Nonetheless, great work on catching those CV abusers
Comment has been collapsed.
The Text got edited.
EDIT: The screenshot is from someone else and show the difference from 27th August to 13th October.
Comment has been collapsed.
According to my notes it slightly differs:
Comment has been collapsed.
You wrote "According to my statistics there are at least 766 people who got to level 0 today. And at least 809 people more who lost at least one level."
Did that was after you and i posting the stats ? Because with our posted stats i don't come to -1500 (in a much bigger timeframe)
I don't have time for collecting own stats (too much work, too bad health)
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, that was same day. That is the difference between 12.10.2022 and 13.10.2022.
Only 26 new users were registered between measurements. So there are 792 "new" people at level 0, only 26 counted in my stats as new users. So 766 users dropped from higher levels. That is not accurate at all as I can't see the actual movements of people between levels and so on.
"809" is cumulative number of all negative numbers in day to day change (lvls 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). It is also inaccurate but can be counted :)
PS: I'm not doing it on a daily basis, just coincidentally i did a note about stats on 12.10 and then saw what is going on on 13.10. :)
PPS: My data can be argued in a lot of ways, like for example one can say that I should subtract 766 counted users on lvl0 from 809 users who lost at least one level. But that won't make stats more accurate in any way. For example I know at least some people who lost at least 1 level but I don't know anyone who dropped to lvl 0 from any level. So for me it is more accurate to think about everything like there are two groups of people, who lost at least one level and those who lost all levels.
Comment has been collapsed.
So excluding levels 0 and 1, level 9 is the only level where there wasn't an exodus? I'm surprised by that.
Thanks for collecting this data, it sure looks cool.
Comment has been collapsed.
*and after hundreds of handled reduce/free tickets
Hi,
Fake games = high price for the delivered, mostly not existant/very bad, content. Could be called overpriced trash. Mostly available for a few cents in different, mostly very shady, stores.
Hundreds of reduce/free tickets = all in all were 800(?) open
Thanks to the 3 mods that done in the last few years nearly all reduce/free tickets and special to the one mod that handled over 800 tickets + done extra work in only 2-3 weeks.
I collected the stats because i have fun on such things and were curious.
And i had a eye on different "special friends", so it was very easy to spot that a good bunch of them lost much of their, cheated, levels.
Later i seen that other ones collected stats too but started later or only collected a part of the stats.
So i thought that maybe the one or other is interested on them.
That is the reason for this Thread.
The +/- numbers are based on the comparing with the first stats from the 29.07.22.
More stats collected from Andy Frost:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/Rl6Uw/how-the-ammount-of-users-in-each-level-changed-after-the-big-purge-of-fake-games#xWodXO7
Below a few "special friends", so much anonymized (only a around $ worth nothing exactly, no $ start info, no names) that it should be not traceable from which exact users i write but the general direction should be visible.
1.)
$3,800 down (Level 10 --> 7)
-thousands of freebies, all collected with multiple accounts and bots-
2.)
$1,400 down (Level 7 --> 4)
3.)
$1,100 down (Level 10 --> 9)
First checked after 4 days, maybe lost more.
4.)
$1,100 down (Level 9 --> 7)
First checked after 4 days, maybe lost more.
5.)
$900 down (lvl 9 --> 8)
It gave much more with "only" $600 lost, which often mean from level 6 to 4.
All is better with music...
Iron Maiden - Fear of the Dark
Fitting to the theme^^
Have fun
EDIT: The screenshot is from someone else and show the difference from 27th August to 13th October.
Comment has been collapsed.