To start off, I'm not perfect, if you notice any flaws with the things I describe, feel free to correct me. However, don't just tell me that it's a bad idea and not say why. I want to create a discussion, not an angry mess.

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE SYSTEM

• It's hidden from new users. Nowhere on the "create a giveaway" page is there a clear explanation of what the bundle system actually is, how it affects your contributor value or what the * next to the name of the game means. If you want to find it, you have to find the FAQ, which is on the very bottom of the site (a place that may not be discovered if you're using SG+ like a lot of people) and find an explanation in a very specific question. Not only this, the FAQ is my opinion more to solve problems. It's good to read it before you do anything on the site, but it's far from necessary.
  When people don't get contributor value for bundle games, even though the deserve it, they go to the forum to find an answer. This is where they get a ton of shit from the community and eventually get pointed at the thread hidden in the FAQ. At this point, they have given away a game through the site which they won't get back and have received an unhealthy portion of abuse. In my eyes, they have been cheated out of contributor value because they didn't read the little details hidden away in some thread.

• The greatest offense of them all happened recently. The mods came out and said that the Humble Weekly Sale will not be added to the bundle list. Now they have changed their mind and a lot of people are losing contributor value retroactivly. I've seen someone that payed for 10$ in these sales, yet now they'll only receive 30$ contributor value. They are literally tricking people into giving away lots of weekly sales, to later rob them of their contributor value. He could have taken those 10$ and bought a bundle on amazon or bought some games on steam and received 50$ to 100$ of contributor value, yet he didn't have the choice because the system was changed after he gave the games away, and he can't get his prizes back.

• The system isn't homogeneous. Bundles that are essentially 75% off are added, yet games that are on sale for 90% or 95% on amazon, steam or other places are in the clear.

• If you give away a full bundle to one person (example), you get the same you payed for the bundle or even less (if you payed double the average). This is quite odd, because these bundles offer a lot of awesome games in a package, yet you get contributor value that matches what you paid for it in the best case scenario. You're punishing people for giving away awesome bundles and encouraging them to just buy the game that is on sale on steam, if they want to build up some kind of contributor value.

• You discourage people to give away games. Personally, I like VVVVVV and I've thought about giving it away, but if I don't receive any contributor value for it, why should I bother going through SG? I feel cheated out of something I should get, because I payed for it, but I can't get because of the system.

• There are way too many contributor giveaways. We should give away to those who can't afford games, yet we're just giving away to those who have enough money to just gift games to random people. The contributors are lovely people and should be thanked properly, but with the amount of of contributor giveaways, it feels more like you need to gift something before you can win anything, and at that point you're turning the site into steamtrades.

I could probably go on for a little while, but now some solutions.

HOW TO FIX IT

• Best possible scenario? Get rid of it all. We should be happy for anything that gets gifted to the community, even bundle games. There is no clear way to give people exactly the contributor value they deserve (the price they paid) and with so many games being in bundles, a lot of awesome games are not given away just because they don't earn you more contributor value. Still want to weed out the "farmers"? I disagree with that, but you can still create giveaway groups and private giveaways to gift to those who in your eyes have contributed enough to this community.

• You can also reduce the contributor value for bundle games to 1$. This means you can't "farm" insane amounts of contributor value from bundles, yet you don't get limited to 30$ if you decide to give away lots of bundles. It's an option I've seen suggested on the forum, but I think this would still create an unfair advantage from cheap bundles (indie gala, 10 games for 3$) to expensive bundles (indie royale, 4 games for 5$). I suggest there is a set percentage of the total game value you get, which varies from bundle to bundle, so that people don't buy a ton of indie galas, just because they gain more contributor value from it. How we calculate the percentage, I don't have an idea for, but feel free to suggest anything below. This idea is probably going to be shot down anyways, so I'm not going to invest time into thinking a system out to determine the percentage for now.

• EDIT: Another suggestion was to work with entries on your giveaway. For example, you set 1000 entries for your giveaway, which means that you need to have 1000 entries on giveaways you created. There are a couple problems with this system (private and group giveaways get less "contributor value" and it encourages making giveaways 2 months long.

These are 3 solutions that I remember off the top of my head and I've been working on this for too long, so I'm going to stop for now. Got any other, better solutions? Write a comment and if they make sense, I'll add them to the thread.

I hope some of the mods and critics of me take some time to read this and tell me what's wrong with the suggestions, or start thinking about implementing them (okay I'm dreaming here). I hope the community and the mods can work this out, because the problems with the current system are too big not to do something about it.

If there are any spelling mistakes or sentences that don't make any sense, excuse me and feel free to correct them or ask me to clarify.