Every now and then I do a review on a site I'm part of the admin for.
I ask users to check it out and let me know in the comments what they think of it, etc. so I can improve on some of style, quality and content of the review/post.
I don't receive any monetary gains, likes, followers, etc. from it, nor are there tasks added to the post to achieve a reward.
I do, however, add a hidden GA to all those who view the thread on SG as a thanks for their time, even if they don't comment or provide feedback.
I'm not sure, then, from this post if it's allowed going forward. Could you please confirm?
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What if I wanted to include a link to my not-gaming-related site in the description of my giveaway, is this allowed or not? Because going by the guidelines it's neither banned (it's nothing to do about referrals, advertising etc., also not forcing or even encouraging users to visit it) or allowed (it's not "Steam Greenlight, group, and store pages" or "social media channels").
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I'm not part of the support team so take this with a grain of salt but experience says that this is okay. If you linked at your site where people would be required to do something in order to enter the giveaway and not the other way around, then it'd be against it.
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My SAVE THE KITTIES! fundraiser is OK, right? No one is forced to do anything (it's totally voluntary), and one does not have to go to the website to get to my GA's.
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Could the guidelines be split into "encouraged behaviour/guidelines" and a "Rules" section (anything that holds a penalty). Right now the wording for both is "should" where "must"/"shall" leaves less room for interpretation. Or at least have an unambiguous clarification of the meaning of "should not".
"Should" is interpreted as non-mandatory, "Shall" or "Must" is mandatory in many established standards.
http://asq.org/standards-shall-should
https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
[EDIT: please ignore the stuff after this line it's apparently a able to be interpreted as entitlement.]
Now to my more personal tidbits:
In general I hold a stance, that winners can only win an AppID once and it shouldn't be in steamgifts interest to police what happens after it has been marked as received, not just because it needlessly discriminates against users with public profiles. Most sanctions are simply ineffective or have simply no deterrence to people who are out to exploit this platform for small gains. Of cause sg should reserve the right to ban objectively exploitive/fraudulent or commercial-use users.
While bonafide users who can't keep track of their DLC get suspended about 5 days once a year, [Yes that's me.] for small point, mass giveaway DLCs. Maybe also make it rule to let people (insert cut-off account level here/account age) explain themselves first before clogging the support ticket queue with unsuspension tickets, especially if there are multiple active giveaways pending.
Something like 3 strikes a rolling year and giveaway value sum threshold of guideline violations to differ between warning/on-watch and direct suspension.
Enforcement of minor rule violations should not have longer window than the maximum allowed time to receive a key. (Getting suspended six or more weeks after the incident just seems arbitrary.)
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@1st paragraph - if someone asks you to do something you should do it, especially when you're in that person's place (and SG is cg's place, it's a private website). If you go out to your friends and they politely ask you to take out your shoes do you march into the livingroom with your boots on and then argue "well, you didn't tell me that I must take them off, you just asked me to do so"? If someone cannot respect guidelines simply because they tell him he should do something and not telling him he must do something, this someone by this attitude alone have no sympathy of mine.
As for your 1st and 2nd personal issue - if you entered GA not realizing you already owned it it's a honest mistake - you should ask for reroll. But if you marked as received it's no longer a minor mistake, you already know you won something you already owned, thus you broke the most basic rule of SG - activating things you win. There's not much explaining to do, and I see no reason why it would not be done via unsuspend ticket if you have something to add.
As for 3rd - terrible terrible idea. So what? I just have to make sure I only don't activate twice a year, so I can only turn a little profit, then wait a year, then do so again? Now add the possibility of multiaccounting done for profit - now if you don't activate sooner or later you will end permasuspended. With your idea I can run countless multiaccounts, trade all wins, or send them to my main, and just when I hit 2 strikes or some value treshhold I will stop on this account for a year, go doing the same with all my other accounts, then in a year restart the process. What you propose is not only heavilly exploitable but also gives a very bad example - it's telling people "it's ok to cheat as long as you don't cheat a lot".
As 4th - also terrible idea. Most of support work on SG is done via reports. We don't have enough staff to moderate everything 24/7 and check each user and every win. Thus SG depending on support tickets means you never know when someone will find out some rulebreaking, when he will report it, when there will be some mod online who can deal with it, what you propose would mean that basically 99% of rulebreaking on sG goes on unpunished, because very rarely they get reported, reviewed and suspended in so small time window.
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First I'm not friends (friends don't sniff through my game activation history; since there is apparently no trust here in the first place, so please don't use that analogy) with steamgifts. Even for a volunteer site, a proper unambiguous rules section would make things clearer at no harm done whatsoever. Guidelines should be clear and leave little room for interpretation.
There is no profit in mass DLC giveaways! Please explain how one could make possibly a profit of this? At times it takes multiple rerolls to find a next winner. Why would I spend multiple reroll support tickets for single point DLC items? It's simply not worth the support effort in my view. I'm not doing this to enrich myself, but keep obviously unnecessary workload with no harm done away from support. In this case a should vs must would make thing just way clearer.
Why are people here so afraid of some non-policing? First, keys should per considered personal use items, most people would either regift them, if i gift my friend something no questions asked, I don't police how he uses it. To me this simply some kind of overreach that results in unnecessary support load.
If the site stuff is constantly overloaded with support tickets it's time to review what should be policed and what not, at what tradeoffs. If people have time to suspend people on trivial stuff like this, I simply don't buy this no time argument, to me it seems, that some moderators just like moderating without moderation.
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friends don't sniff through my game activation history; since there is apparently no trust here in the first placeWhat kind of idiotic logic is that? If I saw a friend shoplifting for example I should act like nothing happen, because friends don't sniff through friends stealing? bullcrap. Also you say you cannot be friends because there isa no trust that you followed the rules? Apparently there is the reason for there to be no trust then, since you did not follow them.
Also if you don't like rules on some website, noone is forcing you to use it. There are door right over there.
Also also friends house was just an exaple. Normal cililised person will act civilised no matter if he's in friends house or any other place. If someone asks you to do something it's polite and civilised way to do it, not do the oppositer because "you asked not told me to!". Acting like that is an attitude of a spoiled brat, and like I said, no sympathy for that. If you go to library they will ask you to be quiet, if you go to restaurant they will ask you to don't bother other guests, if you go to city office they will ask you to take a number and wait in line. I understand that by your logic you would come to library with hifi system and turned on loud music max volume, went to restaurant and eat from other guests plates and in city office cut the line without a number and demand service before all people waiting in line - and by your logic it should be all fine because theyu all asked you to do something and you are no friends with library/restaurant/city office. Again - idiotic argumentatrion.
Please explain how one could make possibly a profit of this?Simply - regifting. Especially with multiple accounts - one mass DLC GA if DLC was never in a bundle with multiple accounts would earn you more Value than most of tier 1 bundles. Also what you proposed would work the same way for any GA, not just DLCs. Because SG treats DLCs the same way it treats full game GAs - so what profit would there be in multiwinning brand new 60$ AAA game and not getting opunished for it? And inb4 you propose that DLCs just gottas be treated different - then let's say multiwin of 30$ Season Pass (it's a DLC) to brand new game.
I'm not doing this to enrich myself, but keep obviously unnecessary workload with no harm done away from support.Bullshit excuse - it's not up to you to decide whether some rulebreaking on your part is excusable because it would make support work. It's up to supporet, up to gA creator, not up to you. And if someone does not reroll you still do not mark as received - he refused to reroll, you refuse to mark. If you would actually ask support this would be the answer you would get.
Why are people here so afraid of some non-policing? First, keys should per considered personal use items, most people would either regift them, if i gift my friend something no questions asked, I don't police how he uses it. To me this simply some kind of overreach that results in unnecessary support load.Because this is internet. Without policing the place would get overrun by scammers, cheaters, multiaccounts and so on and on making it much less attractive for any fair user. but again - if you don't like it here, noone is forcing you to stay. There are many other places in the internet, many without strict rules and policies like SG. But guess what? There's been dozens of GA sites like SG just without strict policing - and they all died so far. Guess the reason why it happened? Because of no-policing. Fair users seeing all cdheaters stopped coming to these places, when they stopped all others including all cheaters had no more nice things to win, because noone will give away nbice things to cheaters, community dies.
If the site stuff is constantly overloaded with support tickets it's time to review what should be policed and what not,It is not, learn to read, I nowhere said the reason people are suspended are because support cannjot handle tickets, I said it is because it depends on support tickets, so someone will have to report rulebreaker first for him to be punished and it will most likely happen after these 7 days. Your idea of changing what should be policed and what not would change nothing in this aspect. Even if only 10% of things now suspendable would be it would still require people to report it to aupport and it would mean that 7 days idea is stupid.
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I never had issues with games, I'm talking about obscure 2 point or less DLC*. First it's all nice and friends and then it's all bullshit and scammers out there, just pick one. Please.
That's exactly why I was for a more clear wording and neutral wording in the guidelines, which is the only thing that I was really concerned about. If everything is so serious about things here, nobody would be harmed or offended by changing of the "should not" to "must not"/"shall not" which rules out any non-mandatory interpretation of the "guidelines", which again are actually rules (even friends understand house rules).
*If winning something twice is such a grave offence, it should be technically impossible, by blacklisting the game ID and exiting all giveaways the user has still entered.
(What's up with all your actual crime allegories here, seriously, it can't be shoplifting since you're winning something and I don't know in what legal framework conditions attached to winning things are enforceable. If anything you should just rule out who is eligible to win. I'm not here to change the rules I'm just stating my opinion.)
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If winning something twice is such a grave offence, it should be technically impossible, by blacklisting the game ID and exiting all giveaways the user has still entered.
Well, blacklisting is already made, it's the Steam API which have a problem with DLC detection
Exiting all giveways : put in place one or two months ago now
I think we can consider it a serious offence then.
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stealing is a very apropriate analogy here. Person creating GA gives you thew game not to do as you wish with but to activate it on your own account, according to site rules. if you don't fdo that - you arte practically stealing it for your own personal profit. In addition you are also stealing the game from person who should have won it in your place if you didn't break the rules.
I get it now, from your argumentation so far, that behaving like a normal human being, not like an entitled prick is very hard concept for you to understand, but come on, it's really not that hard...
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so what profit would there be in multi winning brand new 60$ AAA game and not getting punished for it? And inb4 you propose that DLCs just gottas be treated different - then let's say multiwin of 30$ Season Pass (it's a DLC) to brand new game.
When did that ever happen? Then the problem is people not having one account per person, a limitation which I support, not the one in 5000 chance of a person winning something that valuable twice on the same account. This is simply luck and should either be made technically impossible or tolerated to encouraged.
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or prohibited and people behaving like normal people and if something is prohibited not doing it. Or when they do it accepting punishment instead of crying about bad opressive system. Or if they cannot do it - like I said - no one if forcing them or you to stay here with all these opressive rules which don't allow you to regift or trade your wins "only few times a year".
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I can live with those rules, just please call em that and not guidelines with non-mandatory wording.
I don't find them oppressive, I just find them ineffective when enforced blindly.
This is not even about me. sg is the only one shooting itself in the foot when people are suspended for with legit giveaways magnitudes above the value of the offense pending, and the winners have no idea what happening. So please stop it with the needless escalation and borderline insults for no good reason.
I had 2 suspensions (both for penny DLC won twice) in 4 years, I don't plan to have more, it's just about others who might interpret the guidelines as exactly that, a helpful recommendation, aka guidelines, not house rule or law. Less ambiguous wording would help to make that clearer, even to friends.
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and we see your point even clearer now ;) you are not ok with rules, you can eventually live with them, meaning you think it would be better without them but you can live with them ifg other option would be leaving SG ;p
Also they are not enforced "blindly" - what do you even mean by that? They are enforced pretty straight forward. You don't activate your won game - no matter who you are or what game it was you get same punishment. And there are no excuses from it, so there is nothing "blind" about it ;)
And SG is much better even with ppl suspended who have legit GAs every now and then than it would be with thousands upon thousands of rulebreakers roaming it freely without any fear of punishment :) Also remember that these people with legit GAs did something less legit in the first place. If they did not they would not be suspended.
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But why then the whole suspension thing, just disable entering giveaways maybe even for longer than 5 days or stacking by number of offenses, if the problem is with that side and not the other? The quite extensive role system here seems to be capable of doing this.
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because there are other offences suspendable as well beside non-activation, many of them related to your comments, topics, forum activity etc, so suspension is easiest, simplest thus best solution to deal with all kinds of punishable offenses. Other reason is to stop all crybabies of spamming forums about "please unsuspend me!".
And it is stacking by the number of offenses. the first time you get normal punishment as stated at the bottom, if after being suspended you do the same thing again you will get double punishment etc, repeating same offence over and over again will even result in permament suspension. So for example - 1st time you get caught with non-activated wims you will get 5 day suspension per non-activated win. If after this suspension you are caught not activationg again it will be 10 day suspension per any new non-activated win. and if you caontinue not activating your wins third time may even result in you getting permamently suspended.
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"When posting links or content, that content should not force users, encourage users through reward, or primarily exist as a traffic source for users to perform an action for promotional, commercial, or monetary benefit. Such actions include but are not limited to clicking a referral link, liking a Facebook page, following a Twitter account, joining a Steam group, completing a survey, or making a donation."
Does Brightlocker fit this criteria or not?
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I'd say most likely, yes it does (according to their About Us subpage, I haven't used the system myself, nor I plan to). From Brightlocker About Us page:
Expand your audience with our integrated sharing tools.
Gamers earn XP by following, sharing, or commenting on any game. Our platform offers currency rewards to encourage sharing with new gamers. so this alone already covers "liking a Facebook page, following a Twitter account" plus other platforms as well (like YouTube)
then there's option for asking for donations
and then About Us also is saying about using system for driving attention to your company for promotional/commercial purposes.
Sounds to me like this system covers almost everything that is prohibited on SG, only exception it's even worse than gleam - there you do actions and get game straight away, here you gotta farm gold first by doing actions, and only after you farm enough you gert a game.
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Hi SG, a few updates to the guidelines page are below.
Before
After
There were a few questions on the forum recently about referrals, and whether the previous rule implied that referral codes needed to be removed from URLs, or whether pages being linked to were not allowed to contain any referral links in their content. It was originally intended to mean the former, that referral codes should be removed from URLs posted to the site, and the example now better illustrates that point.
The new guideline has been added to help reduce advertising in the community. Most of our users have seen links to Gleam and related sites, asking people to perform a wide variety of actions to win a game. Occasionally these sites are used by developers to promote their games, but more frequently we see them used by individuals asking others to like Facebook pages, follow Twitter accounts, and click referral links to receive a random Steam key from a bundle. We don't feel our community should be used as a platform to advertise and promote these pages, and for that reason we ask users not to share this type of content in the future.
If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Thanks.
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