Bots and cheap @ss users....

One of the many members using autojoin script I presume (looking at the number of giveaways entered).

A thank you for winning a game should go without saying.

I don't know much about the bots and scripts, but the random part on top of the generosity is what works for me here.

Levels and groups help people sort some of that out I'm sure.

Shouldn't be there a limit regarding how many giveaways can someone enter if his wins are huge comparing to the ones he offered ?

Not by default, but you can use SGTools for ratios etc, just not for public giveaways.

Give your better games to groups like Playing Appreciated or Playing Matters.
Besides that your only tools are level restrictions, blacklisting or SGtools.

If you really care about this, you can prevent low value accounts from entering by making higher level giveaways. With sgtools you can do many other things.

As others have mentioned, if you'd like to restrict your giveaways to users who have given more you can use SGTools, or the level limit on giveaway creation. Or, if you want to go deeper into it you can join a group focused on making winners play their games.

I totally get (and understand firsthand) how much it sucks giving away a game you enjoyed and want someone else to experience, only to see the game sitting in their library years later unplayed. But at the end of the day, it is a gift, and it is up to the winner to do with as they please with the win. So my personal stance on it is to not really worry, or use my whitelist for giveaways I am determined to get to someone who will play them.

Thanks for your replies people. I already started a few new giveaways. The difference -regarding the amount of entries from minimum level 2 to level 3- is big already . Also thanks for letting me know about SGTools too , just in time since I have a user wrote me that the key I added was used, something that is impossible as far as i know

Welcome back.

Bots (Autojoiners) have infested sg and only a tiny part is very visible because they spam "thanks" comments in all public GAs that they enter.
This happen because this ones additional to the autojoining activate a "thanks script" of the autojoining program.
You don't spot the most autojoiners so obvious but a lot of them have utopic high entered GAs for the amount of time they are on sg, enter high amounts of GAs (+ write the thanks comment if the thanks script are activated) in a unrealistic short timeframe and a part have unactivated wins.
IF they ever get """perma""" suspended, they can come back after 1 year (happened more then once), so don't have high hopes (besides the fact that autojoiner report tickets get nearly never handled and it can take 1 year+ till something maybe happens).

So the only defend is to check your winners with https://www.sgtools.info/activation and request a reroll for anyone that have there a red mark.
Fill your BL with the ones that act like bots (and most likely are), that don't know the word "thanks" after a win, raise the level restriction, WL GAs, group GAs -for groups that really check which users are able to enter their group only very few of such groups exist- or sgtools protected ones (but the around 50 perma banned accounts on sgtools are still able to enter your GAs as soon as a friend of them or a other account of them are able to enter/solve your sgtools GA and give them the clear sg link, because sg don't punish the sgtools cheaters [yes, it is a absolut bad joke]).

I, as example, have 1k "users" in my BL, this is the maximum, and don't do public GAs below level 5 anymore because i add only lvl 5 and higher to my BL.

i've seen worse. mind that this user has 10000+ games in his account and almost every new AAA release yet he doesn't contribute anything here.
that is why many people avoid public giveaways and prefer groups with certain rules.

View attached image.

There's way worse, believe me but nothing on the site says people have to make giveaways to win giveaways.
I suppose that's what the CV/level system was supposed to prevent by motivating people to give back but it's not turned out that way.
Public GAs will get you a lot of auto-joiners and bots and inbox spamming.
On the other hand a lot of gifters are also allergic to groups and people who participate in them.

In any case, welcome back and I hope you stick around.

I almost exclusively do CV-ratio sgtools protected invite-only level 2+ giveaways at this point for the reasons you stated which is honestly a shame. I would like to create giveaways for those that are new members (and maybe those less well off and can't afford games) but the lower levels is just filled with abusers. Speaking of which, I may just join Unlucky-7 as a giver once I get more keys.

You’re on the wrong site if you want the world to be perfect, sorry.

I do wish the site had options for that itself, many groups exist for those reasons but I don't just want to rely on them.

Many, though not all, of the problems you're noting, can be bypassed by only creating giveaways for Level 3+

I also hate that the winner doesn't say thanks. While it's not my top most annoying thing in SG, it's very close. BL'ed all of them.
The thing I hate most... I wrote something but I think it would lead to a lengthy discussion that doesn't belong here and it's probably left forgotten.

At the end of the day it's a giveaway site and you give what you can if you want, and CG has provided the tools to adjust your giveaways from levels(restricting to higher gifter accounts), to joining/creating groups and inviting who you want and giving to multiple groups at once, to having a whitelist and a blacklist for additional filtering of specific users.

I think it's safe to say the overwhelming majority of us wouldn't be here if the first win we had wasn't from a public giveaway, and if we want there to be users in the future we would need some public giveaways even if some go to leechers. At the same time, some people would be happy if there's less users, so they can win more, which is toxic imo. So while I partially understand your sentiment against leechers who have the funds to buy whatever they want and gave basically nothing back, especially when they're likely buying bundles and will come out with duplicates, I hope that once in a while a key I gifted away ended with someone who wasn't so fortunate, and that seems to have been the case from what I see.

Hopefully this brings some peace of mind, if not I'd recommend setting your giveaway entry requirement level higher like other users do, solving your problem for your giveaways.

Once I create a giveaway I try to 'let go' of the game psychologically. The same with gifting something IRL. If the recipient plays the game / uses the gift, that is awesome. (And I love it when I receive feedback).

But if they don't, that is their right. My involvement stops at the moment of gifting. I refuse to spend any further energy 'chasing' people or 'checking up' on them. That's not the spirit of gifting in my opinion. And it can create bitterness that can be pretty unhealthy.

Apart from SG Tools and groups which require members to play their wins, there are also ratio based groups (e.g. SG Pillars).

Wait after you check how many such people will ever try play games they win

People like collecting DRM. They don't necessarily love giving it away or playing the DRM they "own", lol. You do have a disproportionate amount of winners with very lopsided ratios though.

I never understood why ppl worry about ratios. If you're looking for a 50/50 ratio, just head over to SteamTrades and trade one for one. If you are looking to giveaway your games, just give them away and hope that whoever wins will enjoy them. Users with high gift ratios are probably not here to win games. With that said, if you wish to impose additional rules on your giveaways, just use SG Tools.

Give to Playing Appreciated and TalePlay! Then the winner must play the game within 1 or 3 months. At that point, I don't care about their ratio as long as they play.

Or if you want people to give as much as they get and don't care about them playing, use Masafors's group or Mini Jedi Trading or NVPG.

There are all kinds. I.e. more than a year ago, when I went through the entries of a mid-high public GA, a lot of the users hadn't done a GA in years, or had GAs only in small groups (but were happy to enter the public ones).

And then there are users, such as the one, who thanked me some hours ago for a lvl1 GA, and who gave away one game and won three games, in the nearly 2 years on the site, with about 1,500 GAs entered.

So... I ended up doing a number of low-to-no-level public GAs anyhow, more than two years ago (even before I started posting in some GAs a link to a YT channel), and I am now doing it as well.

Sure is a pity though, if there are quite a lot of bots around. IMO, it is an issue, that lowers the interest of new users to the site quite quickly, when a new user "competes" for a win the longer, the more bots there are. And GA creators going into this or that kind of backroom, that doesn't help with this issue neither. I mean, at least the numbers are quite leveled out for years now, with number of new user, per month barely reaching 2,000 most of the time, since 2019, and number of daily users below 20,000 for the past months (albeit Saturday had a peak)
https://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/active-users

I made my giveaways req to be lv. 10, is it gud enough to combat this? I assume lv 10 are all legit users.