Can the API detect if there are any hidden games? I don't mean to see which games or details, but if there's any marker that some games are hidden at all?
Because if it can, then you can change SG rules to include not allowed to have hidden games.
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https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Steam_Web_API#GetOwnedGames_.28v0001.29
Looks like you can even check private profiles if you know the userid and their api key. We have to wait and see if private games show up here, they should because this key is meant for private usage, this could be a relatively simple solution. We just have to provide our API key to this site.
I have entered my API key on other sites before, never got hacked or smth. Also it would allow us to set our steam profiles private.
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A browser extension as suggested by ormax3 would solve the issue of violating Valve's TOS.
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/XhB6vEB
However such a client side solution might be prone to manipulation.
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sorry if anyone has said this but surely you can see if people have at least won the game on here in their wins and if they are winning a game again on here they already won or didn't activate on said account then the Mods/Staff will need to be called to deal with them
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It is not a great solution, I know.
If I make a game private, does it's badge page also becomes private?
Archi Steam Farm checks the games with badges through badges page.
Even there are lot's of games without badges maybe we can scan for games that has badge and at least cross referrance them.
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I just want to say that I'm happy that most users are able to keep this thread civil and helpful. I think there are some really great ideas within this thread and some users versatile in programming also chirped in.
Thank you for all of this!
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Hm, depends how the existing syncing works. If the syncing simply clears your list and reimports it from Steam then it will be a problem, if it instead just adds onto your existing list then "hiding" a game on Steam won't result in the game being removed from your library on SGs side.
If it doesn't work like that then perhaps that the fix? To make that the syncing will only ADD games, and never remove them.
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Instead of discussing what SG/cg could do which will never materialize and get us tangible results I'd rather suggest a more realistic approach. Make it mandatory for anyone claiming key doesn't work/is duplicate to provide screenshots of activation attempt and his/her Steam licenses page (both with time and date visible). If game is in account already activation page will display "Product already owned".
This is how key shops and retailers handle such disputes and this would avoid the issue of hidden games if I'm not missing something.
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Maybe there is solution: When games are synchronising registered games stay on SG saved forever. Even when hides on Steam acc SG still know he/she have game once
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or 2hr/1 week window for return, but if you sync, your already doomed
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you can always RETURN game. Also free weekend count as 'owned' when sync, so ur doomed.
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you can buy game, sync on SG and use your 2hr/2week refund window on steam
ye, free weekend=game owned for that weekend
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The main problem with this is that games for free weekends appear as registered when you sync, so this would mean that a free weekend would permanently prevent you from ever winning the game on Steam.
There's a few workarounds for this (eg. someone can manually enter free weekends into SG, and have it remove games that were acquired at the start of the weekend if they disappeared on the next sync after it ended), but it'd be a fair amount of ongoing work.
I think the best solution is to try and figure out if there's a way to automatically retrieve the date when someone acquired a game. For public games it does appear on their profile, I think, so it should be retrievable somehow even if it's undocumented. If we can retrieve that date then this exploit can be easily caught.
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This, what's disturbing is the sound of silence from moderators the calibre of MSKOTOR who likes to chime in on every discussion with negligible importance but no dice with topics that matter to us and cg not caring is a given unfortunately.
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It was Christmas in the past days and majority of the western world is celebrating, travelling and spending time with family.
Also, literally the same thing could be done with "deleting" games from one's account. Nothing really changed, SG limits winning a game once inside its own ecosystem, but two topics brought great attention to people how they can misuse the system, in case they were aware of it before.
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This is much simpler and convenient than requesting removal of a game from your library,
Doesn't change on the fact that the same thing could be done in 5-10 seconds, for years, without SG dying an agonizing death. It will survive ... the very same. (
In my experience - that may not be too long on this planet - yelling about possible abuse and spelling out everyone how to do it, then waiting for others to do *something during the biggest clerical and secular holiday (season) of the western world is counterproductive at best, harmful at worst - while also knowing that ***THEY**\ are abusing it. The ever-present, yet miraculously invisible group.
(I literally wouldn't have noticed the feature without the topics, but I don't really matter in the big picture)
I'll personally kick back, eat some leftover stuff from xmas, and play a game. Best what I can do for the site right now. We have mods who taken on themselves to moderate and support the site, and cg who created, upholds and maaaaaaaybe profits from the site. They all have a lot more option and reasons to do some stuff about this change than I - who can do nothing. Worrying and spinning in one place worrying about some apocalypse won't make SG, or my life better ^^
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but two topics brought great attention to people how they can misuse the system
exactly, that was the dumbest thing to do.
When I noticed a free game giving 50 towards the $100 registration barrier and one dude having taken advantage of it, I didn't make a thread alerting all botters to use it, but directly contacted a mod to quickly fix it instead.
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The earlier. Not at all a package issue like with some Bethesda games or dlc bundles, but indeed a case of hiding the game. Which was further proven after the winner still demanded receiving the key in spite of having the game in their library and proceeded to lie about it being a sync issue after the giver had proof of it not being the case.
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It definitely hides the game from third party tools too.
Tried it by making my Knightshift win private, then checked myself with SGTools, and got a warning about not owning the game.
That winner royally messed up something that they still had the game (or some elements of the package?) visible.
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As other people have mentioned, at the bare minimum you can still only win a game once; SG won't allow you to win a game you've already won, regardless of what Steam says about your ownership. So the potential damage is a bit limited in that respect.
If it turns out to be a serious problem, SG can also be updated to not remove games from its internal list of games you own after seeing them on Steam, even if they later disappear. Currently I believe it does remove them (necessary for free weekends and the like.) Of course, this will, as you might suspect, cause problems with free weekends, which would now permanently render you unable to win the game on SG if you sync with it visible even once, so it's something that should probably only be done if it turns out people are actually exploiting this.
It's also worth pointing out that there are some indicators that SG could potentially look at to detect abuse, perhaps even automatically. For instance, if you hide and later reveal a game, it probably won't change the date at which Steam says you acquired it - if this can be retrieved by an API, then SG's system can just look at the date at which Steam says you received the game that you won (which, after all, you will have to reveal to "confirm" that you redeemed it anyway.) If it's prior to the giveaway ending, your account could be flagged for moderator review - or even handled somehow automatically, although that seems dangerous because who knows how reliable the API is; I wouldn't be surprised if it sometimes hiccups and says you acquired a game on Jan 1, 1970. At a glance, there are a few games in my own library that Steam has no idea when I acquired; I'm not sure why. Still, with a few safeguards like skipping people who the system says acquired the game on 1970 or on a null date, this would probably catch the vast majority of people exploiting the system.
Or, for a TL;DR explanation of how to prevent this abuse:
I buy a game sometime in January.
In February, I see a giveaway for it, and decide to break the rules and try and win it so I can sell or regift it. To do this, I set the game to hidden in my account, sync so it looks like I don't have it, enter the giveaway, and win. Then I set the game to visible again to make it look like I redeemed it. The perfect crime!
Except not, because Steam still knows when I first acquired the game. When SG checks to see that I redeemed the game, it sees that I redeemed a game in January when I supposedly won it in February of the same year. This does not compute!
Assuming that I lack a time machine, the system alerts CG or one of CG's moderators, who glance at my account and history and smack me with a rolled-up newspaper for abusing the system unless I can somehow explain the discrepancy.
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if this can be retrieved by an API
That's a big IF. Your entire plan hinges on that being possible. I don't think it is. I'm not aware of any way of knowing when someone else activated a game except by asking Steam support. Am I missing something obvious?
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I understand that this change is a huge deal which has to be discussed and decided on internally before anything is shared with the community, but for now I'd really like to know whether users will get banned for permanently hiding games they won on SG.
If so please add it to the guidelines until a different solution has been agreed upon.
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Hiding won games shouldn't be a concern, because SG already checks previous wins in case of DLC (which never showed up in API anyway)
As I understand the issue is hiding game you already had, winning it, taking the key, and unhiding it as if you activated won key.
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It is a concern since support can ban you for removing a won game from your Steam account. Happened to me due to a revoked Steam key.
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He can make it to where syncing to Steam permanently logs what shows up in your account to your SG account. Further syncing only adds to your logged library. Pretty simple fix that addresses the private game Steam feature and also the remove game from account feature.
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As others pointed out, there needs to be a workaround for free weekends. Also people can buy games privately, still win them on SG, sell them off and then unmark them as private. This is something cg can't fix without having access to the real userdata via an extension.
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Though it's not removing games you won. It's marking them as private. For the API the result is the same, I know that. I'm just pushing towards proper wording on the FAQ and Guidelines, which is in fact missing the phrase "mark as private". A simple addition of that phrase would clear things up, even for less tech savvy users who don't know there's no difference in hiding and removing games in Steam API results.
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I had an idea, it looks like you can't wishlist privated games. There could be a switch at giveaway creation, where you mark it wishlist only so only people who have it on their wishlist can enter. That could be the default for dlcs, it would solve people entering bundles while owning everything.
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Interesting idea. Though I might then be only able to enter a handful of GAs, because I rarely wishlist games on steam. Partial because of trading (barter and lestrade improt your wishlist to what you might want to trade for... even if I actually don't) and partially because I dislike how infelxiable it is. Never have a more than 8 - 15 games on it at any one time.
I use a file with various tiers and criteria, because I no way I operate with a steam wishlist of around 100 - 120 titles.
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I have 1000+ on my wishlist, never felt it bothers me in any way. I think it's a small price to pay for fairness, if you really want a game, you just add it and sync. Also this way as a ga creator, you can make sure that only people who don't own it can enter.
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Of course it should be an optional feature, the ga creator could decide how it will be. There are a lot of keys that no one really wants, they just enter because they can. But idk if you want to give away some AAA key, it would be nice to know who enters the ga doesn't own it already.
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So you can ask the winner to have it wishlisted, friend them briefly and it will show as being wishlisted - love this idea :)
Edit: I would imagine it would be impossible to exclude people during the giveaway who have not had it wishlisted, but so long as the game shows up as wishlisted on the game's steam page- it's all good. Once won, the wishlist disappears so should not interfere with the winner's set wishlist.
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I guess it is up to the giver. I tend to check the winner's steam account to make sure the game or dlc is not already owned. And in the case of dlc I ask the winner to briefly friend me so I can check. For me, asking the winner to wishlist it would not be a bother.
I also don't think many gifters will bother with the above. The gifter has the right to ask to check that the game is not already owned - takes seconds for a winner to wishlist and then seconds for the gifter to check. For me, this is a solution I will try. Other gifters are free to do what they feel is best.
Edit: - I don't envisage this as a requirement to enter a giveaway, but once a winner is determined, I don't think this is an unreasonable request - to wishlist the won game before I hand over the key.
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So true :)
There is always the option to just continue on and ignore the possibility that games have been made private. I agree with those that point out this would like be a small percentage of users who might try to take advantage.
My gifting style is to gift about 8 or 9 games at a time. Even before this change it was possible to wait 7 days and then have support tell you that you cannot reroll yet as you did not send them an email, so wait another 7 days.
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The gifter doesn't need to check anything. This needs to be implemented on the site. Your wishlist is already being imported just as your owned games. The giveaway creator just needs to set the giveaway to wishlist only.
I'm just brainstorming, I think it's a good enough way to check game ownership. It shouldn't be hard to implement this on the site, all the necessary data is already available and imported.
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"Please add the won game to your wishlist, then leave me a message. If it checks out, I'll send the key"
Copy-paste this, wait until reply, about 10 seconds, without a change that will make wishlists useless for any reason (targeted GA, events, SGTools gate) on the site.
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playing out the scenario: the winner will accept your friend request but does not add the game to wishlist (whether it's miscommunication, language barrier, or because they are trying to cheat already owning the game and having it private). A period of one week goes by, having not received the game they mark it as such, nothing was proved, and the GA creator gets a strike for not delivering a game.
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You'd need support's approval to even withhold a key, but if one solution may involve a new feature's implementation from the ground up and breaking multiple other community features as I mentioned, then getting the supports to say "wishlist it, bitch" is also an option. Or get it to the site rules, easy as that :D
On my part the least effort is not caring about the hysteria regarding this feature. Support either doesn't deep it problematic or they are having their winter sleep / long-term food coma, so I maximize my efforts and time about this that *that* level :)
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I don't understand why do people want to check everything manually, I thought this should be implemented on the site it could fix some of the uncertainty.
Wishlisted and owned games list is already imported. There just needs to be a check if they have the game wishlisted before they enter. They can remove it from the list after, doesn't matter. The ga creator can decide it they want their game to be wishlist only. There are a lot of games that no one in their right mind has wishlisted.
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Couldn't they just remove it from their library like people already do? It just adds one extra step or has people remove them instead of private them like they already do. People are also allowed to have their game and wishlist private I thought.
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There are differences. I've been on Steam for 10+ years and I had no idea, that you can just remove and add back games. Also I think you can't play a game if it is removed. So probably, there weren't too many people who have exploited this, because it's kind of hidden.
On the other hand, the private game feature is really visible, you can instantly buy a game as private, it shows up as an option when you buy a game. You can just keep playing the game if it's private. Makes it easy, comfortable and kind of obvious to exploit. Could be a lot bigger problem then it already is.
Of course this needs to be implemented on the site, but if you choose to keep your wishlist private, you choose to not enter certain giveaways.
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The topic was created over two weeks ago. Everyone from staff, including CG, has been online since (I checked).
The silence is deafening. So at this time it seems to me it is obvious that SG does not see this new feature as a problem.
I will close this thread, since apparently it is a non-issue.
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Hello CG, hello Support, hello community.
Steam has released a new feature to the Beta branch and will soon release it to the public: The ability to individually set owned games as private.
FAQ on private games.
This feature could break SG fundamentally and opens the door for abuse/fraud to cheat gifters out of (legit and valuable) keys, because:
As DiabLXIX pointed out and in my own words, this creates a huge problem! After the update goes live, a user always can hide an already owned AAA game, the API can no longer detect it as owned so the user can enter a GA for it and win it, sell the won key on the grey market or trade it away and unhide the game and sync his account here at SG (and SGTools) so that the API detects the game as owned.
Rinse and repeat or repeat the same for another AAA game.
Result: Kashing!
So my questions to CG and Support are:
Thank you for your input.
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