Can these accounts be bot accounts?
Happened to me already. I don't like that at all, particularly when there are multiple connexions to sg or steam. I know that life can happen, but if I have an issue and still manage to connect to sg, I would send a message to the gifter so that he's aware of the situation
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That's true. Also, I appreciate you let the gifter know. Some people do that.
I think that genuine reasons can exist. And sometimes they might (maybe accidently) SG too but not be able to respond. I have been in similar situation, especially when travelling and accessing SG on phone.
However, in this case, this behavior kept going on for 10 days. Though the SG mods were quick to help and reroll, I feel that such accounts could be bot accounts.
So, I feel that allowing rerolls in such situation does make things easier for gifters, but doesn't really solve the real issue. At the same time I understand that having a system to detect bot accounts is not going to be easy.
I have no real solution here at the moment, but I feel this should be discussed and we need to take some actions to reduce the amount of possible bot activity on the platform.
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I understand that having a system to detect bot accounts is not going to be easy.
This system exists and cg used it 1x, for 2? weeks, 5 years+ ago.
He detected thousands of autojoiners and they got a message to stop with the autojoining. This message must have been clicked, so the bot owners seen them.
They got 2x this message, if they still autojoined, and the 3rd time they got a suspension for 2 days (yes, such a laughable low timeframe).
1,5k (or 1,4 1,6 or something around this) got suspended.
We don't know how much got the "Stop the autojoining" messages the first 2 times, but we can assume for sure "much more".
This system could be enabled and we must assume "without much work".
At least for short timeframes to fish the autojoiners out. 1x/year or whatever.
I feel this should be discussed and we need to take some actions to reduce the amount of possible bot activity on the platform.
We discuss since years and could discuss till the world end but this will not change that nothing happens because cg don't want that something happen.
He shown this in the last years VERY clearly (Which is one of the reasons why a part of the motivated, good, mods gave frustrated up).
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there is no problem logging into sg from your phone and activating the key from your phone as well. I activate 99% of the keys from my phone. It's about a person who, for some reason, cannot accept a gift in the near future
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Well, I am often not logged into steam, and for some reason steam keeps signing me out, even though I don't get signed out of SG.
Also, there's the fact that sometimes you need to verify ownership in case of packages, or maybe something else, which is easier on PC, so that's an added benefit.
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It’s not really a discussion worth bringing to light (again).
Cg and many of the mods are well aware of the rampant bots and multi-accounters.
But you know what? Leechers piss me off just as much.
It’s not going to change. Just ask anyone who’s been here long enough.
I went through a couple of groups lately, and I reckon there were easily 150 offenders.
If you’re so worried about bots, don’t do public giveaways. That cuts out a lot of dross.
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It’s not going to change. Just ask anyone who’s been here long enough.
Not what I expected to hear. Anyway, man can hope, right?
I personally don't mind leechers as much. There could be various reasons that someone is a leecher. They could be students or just not be able to afford to give away games, going through a financial crisis, etc. It's not against the system, and unless they are trying to profit from it (selling keys, account, etc), I don't mind them. However, I would prefer such users to at least try playing their wins if possible.
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I'll take leechers who win occasionally and play at least some of their wins over those who barely play anything and are winning 20+ games a month from groups.
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+++
I can understand if you can't afford to give games - this is a giveaway website after all, can't just get mad at people for wanting to win games, right?
But if you rack up hundreds, thousands of wins, and never touch them? Nah.
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Sweet! I learnt 2 words today, one of them thanks to you.
dross and gormless
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If it is bot, than we need to understand, why he still didn't claim the key. Most possibly he tried to trade it or sell somewhere, that is the reason for stalling time. To identify you need to understand modus operandi. If someone not responding he still can have a valid reason - like his children play on his steam acc, but he has no time to check SG.
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If it is bot, than we need to understand, why he still didn't claim the key. Most possibly he tried to trade it or sell somewhere, that is the reason for stalling time.
I see. But wouldn't that cause them to receive a "not-activated" thing?
If someone not responding he still can have a valid reason - like his children play on his steam acc, but he has no time to check SG.
In this case they were active on both SG and steam. I never have any issues with winners how have not opened SG since their win. But this winner visited SG quite regularly, along with steam. Since SG only reports the "Last Seen", not the duration or what they did.
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had someone that did *the same with 7 day wait, mark the game he activated on his acc as received and switched to not received after getting blacklisted from me and also tried to gift the game i've sent him ... well it is now almost a year ago because i remember getting back from my vacation and dealing with this clown
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only thing i did was a user report ... didn't even knew you could ask for this change! ... might be also that i was fortunate enough to only encounter this once
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I could list here in a few seconds 300 accounts+ that are, without a doubt, autojoiners and that got, partly, 1x or 2x suspended for autojoining but still autojoin.
It's a joke that the get 2 or 3 chances to stop AND the mods not automatical check if the still autojoin and it needs again a report AND dozens of evidence links, stats, join times, comment times and all such stuff (it's more complicate as needed, for the mods and the users, and it is frustrating! [i assume for the, motivated, mods too]).
With a bit more time i could list, off course, more as this 300.
As hard as it sounds, but nearly nothing gets done against the bots (autojoiners) on sg.
Report someone with 400k entries in 8 years (which is nearly my stats x3 and i am 6 years here and VERY active) and the ticket gets closed without to suspend this account. [this is a real example of one of my tickets, sadly not a fantasy thing]
There isnt a "maybe" use of a autojoiner, such stats aren't reachable as human.
CG don't want to lose the high members numbers, at least it looks like this with all his explanation why someone could be a real user and not a bot, instead of handing out suspensions left and right for the obvious ones and look into the MAYBE one case that could be a false positive because of a bottle neck or whatever reason he brought up as explanation [i don't want to spend time to search for his message about the reasons/explanations because i see the most of them as bullshit (yes i am so direct and i don't care anymore if he like it or not)]. I believe in numbers of false positives in the 0,00x% range or lower (so really no reason to not suspend a big bunch of them).
And the mods don't have the needed tools and are, partly, not motivated to do the extra work (and i can understand them partly but it don't lower my frustration about the situation)
Users, like i, create mostly GAs in groups where the users that join the group are checked, because the fight against the bots is since years lost on sg.
And trust me it is hard for me, as ex extreme hunter of the bots and cheaters, to say "the fight against bots is lost since years" but it doesn't help to live in a dream land.
Accepting the reality is the best basis for decision.
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Hi Masafor,
I know your stance on the situation quite well. If you might remember, we have discussed these things a few times in the past. And I gave up on it too some years ago (and due to IRL stuff).
And I don't expect that there will be any real measures, maybe ever, on this site to prevent bots. I think it's more of a curiosity, as to what can be done in such situations. I didn't even report that person because I know the mods will not ban that account. I know cg will not implement any automated measures. But I am wondering what can be done in such cases, and how can one identify such users.
400k entries in 8 years
At first I though that's not a lot, but then I looked at my stats, and some other people I know to be active and humans, and yes, that's a lot. It's definitely not humanly. And possible they don't even care about the GAs they are entering.
I believe in numbers of false positives in the 0,00x% range
Moreover, if there were more rules to prevent such activities, those false positives would automatically go down, or at least those people would know that their accounts have been banned because they broke the rule.
mods don't have the needed tools
This is not of the most frustrating thing about the situation for me. The site has no system, and those who want to help manually can't help because the system prevent them by nor providing them with the means to prune such accounts.
Users, like i, create mostly GAs in groups where the users that join the group are checked, because the fight against the bots is since years lost on sg.
I know. But I hate the idea to excluding users who can't prove or adhere to the standards of some of the groups. I believe it should be a platform to allow anyone to receive a gift. I know that's idealism, and can never be achieved, at least not here.
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I believe it should be a platform to allow anyone to receive a gift.
Yes, it should.
But it should be bot free too, cheaters free, nearly only a positive experience etc.^^
And as long a we don't have a chance to give the GAs to real users and not in the majority, or at least 40% of the cases, to autojoiners, i am not willing to spend much of my, hard earned, money for public low level GAs.
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There's thousands.
Usually the same few will join any giveaway you post on the front page.
Especially if you set a low enough level, most will respond with a generic thanks - but the wiser ones don't even do that.
There HAS been a big banwave on autojoiners at some point several years ago, but it's high time we see another.
For now, all we can really do it just prune giveaway entries manually and blacklist those who are suspicious enough.
But, all those users blacklisting is going to cause extra entries in the general database and reduce overall site performance as well.
Using groups and invite only giveaways is another workaround.
But it's hardly perfect, as such users are also in as many groups they can find.
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Especially if you set a low enough level, most will respond with a generic thanks - but the wiser ones don't even do that.
Yes, I thinks that most bots have been updated to not say "thanks".
But, all those users blacklisting is going to cause extra entries in the general database and reduce overall site performance as well.
That's kinda true, but I don't think it should be that much. I have no idea about the server, but currently the limit is 1000 iirc. 5k-10k should not be that bad maybe? I am just guessing.
Using groups and invite only giveaways is another workaround.
But it's hardly perfect, as such users are also in as many groups they can find.
Yes, true that. I almost never do group only GAs, because not only they can have bad accounts, but also because they eliminate way more "good" accounts than "bad" accounts.
As for invite only GAs, they are a way better option imo if you do it well. You can really make it accessible to real people while eliminating most bots. But obviously they are a lot more work.
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Yes, I thinks that most bots have been updated to not say "thanks".
Only the dumbest autojoiners activate the auto thanks comment script.
And they are only the visible iceberg tip and show max. 10% of the autojoiners (i assume much lesser as 10%). The extreme majority don't use the auto thanks comment script and are much more hidden.
Which don't make a difference because the thanks script is anyway allowed.
Because of course such people only use the thanks script from the autojoiner program and not the autojoining function /sarcasm
Yes, i see it as absolut idiotic to handle it this way! ... but cg and, to a low degree, the mods make the rules.
So it is what it is (a absolut clusterfuck)
Oh and the thank script thanks spam messages aren't forbidden because they are "related to the GA".
Trust me i tried everything that this accounts (i don't want to call them users) gets suspended but it is as cg don't want that this happens and do all to prevent it with the rules and there interpretation.
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That's why I usually type something like "Say thanks only if you want to be BLed". This way even if someone later contacts me on steam to argue about why I BLed them, I just point them to my description. Lately, I have even begun commenting on their comemnt, asking them if they are human or not.
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I have done this before and I think it might be time to do it again. I would hope that everyone reads the description when they join a giveaway. I can't imagine commenting on so many giveaways unless they have something unique or thoughtful to say.
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max. 10%
That's very likely. I am pretty sure it must be way less than even that. More like about 3-5%. Since it's is very easy to learn that people BL you for saying thanks, and you don't get perma-banned. So even if you find it out hard way, you will find it out eventually.
Because of course such people only use the thanks script from the autojoiner program and not the autojoining function /sarcasm
I had a person say that same thing to me. Even though I don't believe them one bit, I didn't BL them (and of course didn't report them, as I have given up on reporting almost altogether). Regardless, when this person told me they use the script but only for the thank you msg and not the for joining, I was very perplexed. I had to re-read the rules to discover that it's allowed to use scripts as long as you are not using them to auto-join or mass join GAs.
A very stupid rule imo. But since it's a rule, I can't blame that person.
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Had a couple of incidents where old giveaways (greater than 1 year) have had a new thank you message and a little investigation shows that the winner's won giveaways have all gotten the same message at the same time. So a script that is auto thanking (wins only?). Does it mean auto joining too? I'd say maybe, but couldn't say definitely. I say you're welcome and ignore it. I only look because I'm curious. I find it humorous. 🤣
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If what Masafor said is true, 2 days isn't enough. Should be a 2 week ban from entering GAs. Then if they continue, 30 day ban. Do it again, 90 day ban and so on. Message needs to be sent home.
Most will laugh at 2 days and then go back to the same behaviour if they know that's the only consequence.
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There are so many of them that it would probably kill SG to permanently ban so many people like that. An escalating ban gives people a chance to re-evaluate what they are doing and stop. Some might be doing it because they see no consequences for the ones who were doing it before them. If they don't stop, then consider 12 month or permanent bans. I don't think it would get that far for most people though because it wouldn't be worth it. They'd stop if they knew there were real consequences. You don't have to go nuclear. =)
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Always report and let the mods handle it, I believe they have better tools to find out if someone is acting suspiciously, they just need to be pointed at the right direction.
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Yes, but I have kind of stopped caring about reporting accounts. I have started to ignore as much as I can, sometimes BL them. I think someone would have to really annoy me, or hand me some very strong evidence on a silver platter for me to now report someone to mods. My exp with them regarding user reports has not been that great, and the rules also are not great (and I don't really agree with some of them, but we have to still follow them, right?).
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I see. I reported users previously, and yeah, it did take A LOT of time for someone to respond, but he did get banned at the end.
I also tend to BL people who I think auto join GAs, but stopped doing it after realizing some innocent people got caught in the crossfire.
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I reported users previously, and yeah, it did take A LOT of time for someone to respond, but he did get banned at the end.
Yeah, it's slow. The result can vary depending on the evidence you provide. The penalty is often too lenient.
I also tend to BL people who I think auto join GAs, but stopped doing it after realizing some innocent people got caught in the crossfire.
I usually try contacting a person before BLing them. I have a very small BL list though.
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Maybe interesting too ...
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/j5zjU/the-ratio-of-bots-and-autojoiners-discussion#1eqh1xy
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/h9RxE/autojoin-suspensions (cg's thread 6 years ago)
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People like that either need glasses or are bots. I just can't see myself not winning something, even if it's my 150 win, and still get excited and curious about what I won. People take winning games on this website for granted. It's coming from people's wallets, even if they are bought at reduced prices, they come from generous people who maintain the website going. Waiting 10 days for an active member who can't be bothered to activate or respond yet they are online is unacceptable. I perfectly see your frustration and others.
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Thanks!
I think the real frustrating thing here is that such behaviour strongly suggests that they are bots, but we users have no means of knowing for sure (and maybe mods), and hence reporting them usually leads to nothing. And even if there's an action, it's usually a 2-3 days suspension. Even for repeat offenders.
Anyway, I am getting off topic. I feel they winner should have a limited amount of time to claim their wins if they are active on the site. Else SG should auto-reroll and flag that user for mods to check as well.
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+1 for limited amount of time to claim the win + automatic reroll
What you experienced is not systematic but when it happens it can be annoying af.
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I would like to say those accounts are bots. But for example it happened to me with a guy who was logging every day and his Steam account was also very active in terms of the guy playing. He even approved friend requests and then deleted them.
Hard to say.
*Edit just to add something:
I think some aren't bots, but trolls.
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hmm... seams weird.
Just my 2 cents about it
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Absolutely.
I had a really hard time with the support when it happened to me.
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However, I was wondering if such accounts need to be looked into further for bot activities. I waited for this winner to activate the key for 10 days. During those 10 days they were online multiple times. I even sent them a request on Steam and commented on their steam profile. They were often online on steam as well, but never accepted/responded.
Except if winner was busy outside because of an unexpected problem, i'm sorry for your experience.
I sometimes wondered too why some can find the time to enter giveaways but can't find 1 minute to activate and mark received.
Unfortunately it encourages to gift to a restricted number of people.
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some can find the time to enter giveaways but can't find 1 minute to activate and mark received
That ^^^. I understand people can be busy with IRL stuff. But in that case I would expect them to NOT visit SG daily, enter GAs and be active on steam as well.
If someone was offline completely, even on just SG,, I have absolutely no issues with them not activating for even a few weeks.
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If it's a new account, I might want to contact them and see in case they don't really know how to claim. Is this their first win?
However, this is not acceptable from older accounts imo.
Anyway, at least the new changes allow a reroll in such cases. There's no longer the need to chase the winner through ever medium know to man, and then prove to the mods the same.
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This change is HUGE to me. I already spend more time than I have available just making giveaways and verifying winners afterwards. To spend even more time and with the added cost of frustration has almost caused me to stop giveaways on a few occasions.
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A huge number of members use autojoiners while other members use one-click-join scripts (where you don't have to enter each GA page to join). I make this experiment from time to time:
Public GA with a link to the exact same game (private/invite only GA) on the description:
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/bcKNT/warhammer-40000-battlesector
Public GA (level 4): 816 entries
Private GA: 77 entries (less than 10% compared to the public one)
You only had to read the description to join the private GA. Draw your own conclusions.
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That makes a lot of sense. The ESGT or something script that's very popular here also allows you to do that I believe.
I can't say for certain, but I am sure at least some of those 90+% would have visited the GA page still not read the description.
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Steamgifts is infested with Bots, Autojoiners, cheaters, leechers, you name it.
The only person who could do something about it, CG, isn't interested to solve the problem. His reasons? Unknown, so one can only speculate (Traffic and user numbers lead to higher ad revenue might be the reason why, I am just speculating here).
To add insult to injury, so many members offered to help with the situation for years but are constantly ignored.
This lead to a situation where those helpful members stopped offering their help due to frustration and anger about being treated as such.
Which, in the end, makes everything worse.
At this point, in my eyes, CG is completely disconnected from the active user base and doesn't care about SG any more. His heart is no longer in it.
I guess I will stay here long enough to see it all burn to the ground, but I myself stopped offering any help years ago after constantly being ignored.
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Traffic and user numbers lead to higher ad revenue
You are right but there is a paradox: if the members who create most public GAs feel that there are too many bots/autojoiners, they will be discouraged from keep doing them. I think you are an example of that kind of generous members that ended up angry with the situation.
Public GAs are the main source of ad revenue. Most members do not even read the forums. The less public GAs, the lesser the revenue.
Also, bots do not click on ads...
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You are absolutely correct.
The users frequenting the forums are the minority, tho, even when you're only looking at active members without the Botters and Autojoiners.
So the reason could be as simple as: The turning point has not been reached yet. Most active users might still be satisfied and the disgruntled user base is the one within the forums because they try to be heard?
Again, just speculating here. I have neither numbers nor any hard facts to back those claims up.
Maybe the paradox will only cease to exist when the tipping point for the majority of those active members is reached and they will simply leave without ever voicing any disdain within the forums? I don't know.
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There are very interesting stats to check: https://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/giveaways
Year with the highest activity and higher number of public GAs: 2017; September 2017: 134k GAs, 70.1% public
This month (July 2024): 13k GAs, 48.6% public.
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You are correct with much things and this is the reason why the GAs, discussions, comments etc. are lesser with each month.
More and more gifters quit and, much lesser, new gifters appear (but a lot of bots and multiaccounters).
But all in all cg, still, earns earns with the site and not only $50/month or he would change something.
He added the additional ads on the site and came up with the partnership with fanatical etc. when in the corona times his income started to be lower. [Ads got lower paid, people don't spended so much money online etc.]
If each user would deactivate the, as standard enabled, ref link adding to each shop link, which brings a good amount of income, and would use some sort of addblocker till cg would do something against the hordes of autojoiners and multiaccounters, then it would happen in the timeframe of weeks that he would do his job as only admin.
In this case he would earn his income.
Right now i see that a lazy admin gets rewarded with a good income for beeing lazy and desinterested.
Not what i see as fitting
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That makes a lot of sense, about cg. However in addition to what orono said, I believe that most ad networks have measures to detect bot activity and don't pay for them. Else anyone could earn a fortune by create bots for their own website.
Regardless, real users are only more likely to become less active and even leave the site with time in such conditions, and there's no way allowing bots is gonna help the site in the long run imo.
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Bots will definitely kill the site in the medium or long run. As I said, bots do not click on the ads. As the stats I posted here say about the public giveaways, they are decreasing. Right now there are less public giveaways than private/WL/group ones.
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I always wondered, do they sell these accounts? How much profit they can get?
A VPN is enough to skip the multi account restriction here?
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Let's say it this way...
In the past when i hunted the multiaccounters/bots/cheaters i seen users with the same name and only added 1, 2, 3 after the name and they were clearly autojoining, and really obvious multiaccounts. They don't got detected automatically.
It give save methods to not get detected and it give unsafe ones that get you suspended as soon as a staff member looks into a report to the involved account(s).
But why exactly it isn't detected that bot farms, with around 150 accounts on sg, aren't detected automatically. is for me absolute unclear.
Because i don't assume that they (can) use the save methods (that i know) for such a big amount of accounts.
So all in all, i must assume that there aren't some automatic safety measures and each one can multiaccount the easiest way(s).
And yes, a part of the accounts gets sold.
I don't know how much they earn with it but if they only get 5% - 10% of the steam store prices of the games, they earn big, special because they don't have expenses besides the electricity costs.
Mostly 3 countries are involved in the autojoining and bot farms and are responsible for 80% of them.
Brazil, Ukraine, Russia (in this order)
Brazil alone are responsible for 50%. So a much higher chance, as from each other country, that accounts from there do bad stuff and the logical thing would be to have a more open eye to accounts from that country. But nope, no checks for same names, no checks for something else like autojoining or bot farms behavior.
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Thanks. I felt that 100 accounts could be a number for a real profit but I wasnt sure they could do that and you're telling us that they can reach 150... that's insane.
There is enough people that want a change in that matter.
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I seen two with around 150 accounts. One got hunted down from a bigger crowd of people publicly because the sg account names were strange and because of this was his multiaccounting "too visible" (he were from malaysia or philipines and the account names were all english for- and surenames, if i remember correct) and the other one got hunted down from Gaffi and me.
The one that Gaffi and i hunted down used "only" 5-10 sg accounts simultaneous and each time when they got suspended he brought new accounts to sg.
All accounts had the name ser001, ser002, ser003 etc. on steam but different ones on sg and i stumbled only about them because all wrote in spanish/portug., were friends, entered their own (for sure never delivered) GAs (to level up), all of the autojoined, all from different south american countries and when i checked the steam profiles closer, i seen the same name with only changed numbers, which made the thing very obvious.
Gaffi perma suspended each of them and step by step new accounts appeared that i were able to spot and trace back to the steam accounts with, again, the same names and numbers. After a while Gaffi had time to dig longer and were able to find a group with all the accounts and we checked daily which accounts got new sg accounts. All manual work, nothing like "highlight or block all steam accounts with the name ser001 - ser200" or something like this.
The ser guy changed the steam names of his bots after a while (i assume he wasn't happy about all the perma suspended accounts^^) and it were much harder to hunt then new accounts (special later created steam accounts, that weren't in that group, not had the other ones as friends etc.) and Gaffi and i gave up after 1 month or something like this because it was very much work and took a lot of hours.
I am sure this guy is still around with a bunch of accounts.
I, strongly, assume only a few people behind the other south american multiaccounters (i assume 90% of them from brazil).
Maybe 50 or lesser (so bot farms).
And because of this, i assume, they must earn good with it.
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Please note, I know nothing is gonna change. I am NOT expecting any real changes from cg or mods here. This is more about just speculating about things, and maybe even ranting a bit.
Earlier I complained about winners that are active but don't respond to their wins. And cg said there's a change coming to ease the pain of gifters in such scenario: https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/qWxAIlI
I recently faced this issue with one of my GA winners. They were active daily but didn't claim the key. I asked for a reroll and it got approved immediately. So, at least it seems the new changes to make it easier to get a reroll for non-responding winners is in effect.
However, I was wondering if such accounts need to be looked into further for bot activities. I waited for this winner to activate the key for 10 days. During those 10 days they were online multiple times. I even sent them a request on Steam and commented on their steam profile. They were often online on steam as well, but never accepted/responded.
It seemed like that account was being operated by a bot, ignorant to wins and my communication attempts.
But how do we identify such accounts? And what can we do to prevent the spread of such accounts here?
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