I believe in some occasions, both CG and the moderating team once complained about two things that made these changes impossible:
Hope that clarify the problem.
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Its because he is a patreon now and get money for steamgifts.
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The site is a personal project, so a lot of the changes are a combination of what users are requesting, and what I feel like working on at any given moment. That being said, I think the autojoin issue has been growing due to the greater number of giveaways, and it reached a point where I decided it was higher priority over other tasks on my to-do list.
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What about extesion that add a join button on the home page? I use those 2-3 times per day, I enter the site and start spending all the points from the homepage because it's faster (sometimes i enter 20+ GA together with fast clicking in 1 min or less). Honestly it would be very annoying for me if we are going to be forced to enter the GA page first.
What if i join a lot of GA in those times and being fast flags me as an autojoiner?
PS: About point 1, can't you just lower the amount of point or fix it by time? At a level that, autojoiner or not, everyone should be able to join the same amount of GA.
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Pertinent and honest questions:
The measure of lowering the points to visit the website more wouldn't be a way to get more $ through ads?
Do you guys plan in the future that Patreon contributors have some kinds of features that those scripts have? That's something a lot of users I talked to are wondering about. Because if the answer is yes, well, it will just change to some kind of pay2win system and wouldn't change the annoyance that the scripts cause at all.
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Points generate too fast. I look at this site a lot, and they are usually maxxed, or near, every time I come here.
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I only enter GAs for games I'm interested in. I ran out of points maybe twice since I joined. I think slowing down points refill might make people more picky about what they enter, although I'm not sure if it's ultimately for the better. I think detecting and banning auto-joiners would be quite enough.
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I'm sure the creator of ESGST could change his script to remove that feature, if it needed to be removed by this new SG update.
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I admit I use that enter button, and it indeed speeds things up a bit.
However, since I turned off some other scripts it seems like the "pop-up description if available"-function of ESGST has started to work, so now I can read the descriptions (and post comments) without opening the actual giveaway when I enter it, and it's perfect (as well as slowing down the entering a bit).
Since I mainly (almost exclusively) join giveaways for wishlisted games, and sometimes the odd train, I guess I'm often sitting with a lot of points "in the bank" (100-200), so I don't think I'd be considered scripting.
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then maybe join on the normal way that each one can use without a script ?
It is not a attack on you or others that use ESGST (friends from me do this too and maybe i will use it soon too), too say this very clear.
But maybe not use this ONE function from ESGST but all others.
Then it's a very good script/prog. too and you "loose" not sooo much and have no risk :o)
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ESGST "enter" button is very handy for DLCs - SG shows all DCLs but ESGST doesn't show "enter" button if I already own it.
Even more handy with extracted trains and group giveaway lists, when "enter" buttons are only shown next to non-owned games. I always pop-up and read the description though, so I don't think it's that much different than joining the standard way (well, it circumvents the ad displayed on the GA page, but I'm self-trained to ignore ads anyway :P).
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This includes scripts that enter multiple giveaways at once, or scripts that enter giveaways while you are away.
ESGST does not allow any of that, it simply allows you to enter giveaways without visiting the giveaway page. But if cg has a problem with the way ESGST does it, I'd obviously remove it. Though that would affect all other major scripts, since they all have the quick-enter button feature.
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cg confirmed he has no issues with the way my script does it.
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And the Android SG app has this feature too, so...
I don't think that small enhancement (being able to enter a GA without having to open the actual GA page) can be compared to a 24/7 script automatically entering as much GAs as possible, optimizing points distribution and efficiently using all of them.
The only problem is that people don't read the GA description and, therefore, any relevant information it might contain (region locked stuff, for example, however, this has been enhanced recently).
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I'm very pleased about this problem finally being adressed :)
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That was my reason. Having to load every page was a total pain.
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I'm curious about your internet bandwidth, SG is one of the most optimized web pages I've enter. It's not like you're still using a 56K modem using your phone line. It could be your HW and still, you'd be surprised how decent can this page load on SlimJet Browser and a Pentium 4 2.4ghz with 512mb of RAM on Windows XP (using a USB Wi-Fi card), and no I'm not joking, I entered this page on my hometown several times with that potato laptop and was enough. Time to tweak your O.S.
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ESGST doesn't really automatically enter giveaways, it simply offers a "bridge" so that you can enter giveaways without visiting them. So I think ESGST users will be fine, but I would like a confirmation from cg as well so I can remove the feature if it will be trouble.
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Scripts should not be used to automatically enter into giveaways. This includes scripts that enter multiple giveaways at once, or scripts that enter giveaways while you are away.
ESGST does not automatically enter giveaways. It simply makes entering giveaways an easier and faster process.
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I'm sure cg will find a way to make sure that does not happen.
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I don't think that opening the giveaway matters any. Auto-join scripts do actually "open" the giveaways, they can't automagically "click" the button just like that. Same goes for ESGST, it has to "open" the page and parse it in the background to display the button and/or description to you - from the server side it may be hardly discernible.
It's the usage patterns that allow for easy distinction between a real user and a bot. I just fear that once bot users learn about the changes, they will just alter their scripts to emulate human behaviour, e.g. log in once every few hours, join all GAs they can in one go and then pause for a while. Hopefully cg has enough data to succesfully fight that cancer. Thank you!
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well then just use control+left click , enter giveaway, control + w its the same thing haha the cant really check for that i guess
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A mere 24-hour suspension won't dissuade anyone from using them. As you can clearly see after the last time these were handed out, since bot usage seems to have only increased since then.
If you really want to dissuade them, set their point limit to 100 and their point regen rate to 5× as slow. Then after a while they will either mitigate their presence enough to not be a problem, or they stop using the script, upon which they can regain their standing. Since you have access to the user data, it should not be difficult to see if their auto-entry behaviour stopped or not.
Edit: Heck, you know what, I would actually not mind to be put in the restricted category as well. Would at least make me consider even more where to enter instead of just thinking about games I might play within a few months.
Edit edit: Or, you know, a damn captcha is still the easiest and most surefire way to completely and utterly eliminate each and every iteration of all autojoin scripts, ever.
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Although no suspension duration was specified I assume that repeat violations against the No autoentry-script rule would lead to to a pemanent suspension as well just like getting cought with unactivated wins on 3 seperate occasions usually equals a permanent suspension.
While I like your suggestion of reducing their point cap and regeneration as well, I think "3 strikes and you're out." would work too.
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I am more a fan of the educational hardships. A swift kick in the ass hurts for a little while but may not have a lasting impression. Making their life on the site visibly more difficult for a good while would definitely make them remember what happens if they try to use a script again.
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Well, if it's possible to implement I actually like your suggestion better than a 3 strike system. It would also spare Support from a lot of "Please unban. I really, really learned my lession that autojoiners are bad now."-tickets.
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partly +1
People that do this for years should be get the BAN HAMMER (or SUSPENSION HAMMER -for a very long time-)
People that do this not so long should be slowed done, as you adviced, and then get a second (not 3rd) chance. 2 chances to show normal human behavior should be enough.
Cavemans must not be educationed (people that make everytime the same shi*... at all places, not only here) -i count under this the people that need 3 chances to hold on NORMAL human behavior-)
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But please when captchas then not more cars, houses, streets and all such things.
In the past it give 2 words as pictures/not copy & paste possible, that you must fill in. One was known by the Servers the other was "new". The words are taken from books/manuscripts they want archived. As examples from libraries, medieval age stuff and so on.
So the users make, in my opinion, very usefull work with there captchas.
I miss this days.... (and HATE the f''''''g cars and stuff :DDD)
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Please no captcha for entering giveaways.. they are the bane of my existence. Or at least no captcha for patrons.
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As someone who these days stays at 300 for the vast majority of time since I enter mostly a few wishlisted games NO FREAKING CAPTCHAS EVER. I used to think the ones with letters and numbers were awful since I pretty often had to retry or even refresh since it was clearly impossible but oh how naive I was.
For from the depths of hell from the mind of the devil himself came these new ones requiring you to select the images of cars/signs/bridges/whatever that just keep asking for more and more and more . Then error and it tells me to refresh where if I am really lucky it will forget it wanted a captcha and just go ahead when I click on it, otherwise it will ask for images again and again until error rarely lucky more images and so on until I give up.
To avoid a rant let's just say I have strong opinions on them and whoever came up with them.
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I'm strongly supportive of captcha idea, captcha every X GAs entered would only be mildly annoying for normal user - if it's once per 10 GAs for example you maybe wastew combined 1-2 minutes per day if you are activelly entering whole day, but it will stop any kind of afk bot alltogether. Wasting 1 min of normal user time and in exchange getting rid of all the bots seems like easy trade ;)
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Thank you for your very nice update, Cg! :3
Better late, as some say, than never. ;-)
It really doen't take much time or effort to manually enter giveaways and read the giveaway descriptions.
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On average, a user with scripts enters 4x as many giveaways as a user without scripts
I think that the main use of such scripts is to enter any and all possible giveaways 24/24 and 7/7, so I guess those users don't care about going through the giveaway list manually and they don't care about reading giveaway descriptions.
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atere are actually two main reasons for such scripts (remember they were existing already in old SGv1 days when there was no issue of points regenerating so fast I hit the cap before I get back to SG). First is indeed entering 24/7 to make sure they use up all points possible, even when they are afk, sleeping, at work etc. But other reason is to snipe flash GAs. Most of bots run lvl 0/1 accounts, are not in any groups or WLs so only have public GAs to enter (and possibly forum GAs if they also scan forum). Public lvl 0/1 GA running for 1 day or more will have 1.5-3k entries (for AAA game even 7-10k), flash 1h GA at the time of low activity will end up with 150-300 entries. So if bot is able to snipe these GAs when user (like most of community) is away it meand at least 10 times better chances to win.
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LostSoul not cherrypick .... he take ALL
I seen him everywhere in the GA's (cake days, new job celebrations, trains, puzzles) :DDDD
I think he sleeps lesser then i and this is nearly impossible :DDDDDD lol
Maybe he have hired a few guys that join for him each time when he is not at the PC...... o_O
BIG EDIT:
THIS WAS A JOKE :o) (LostSoul and i are steamfriends)
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I have 20 little brothers helping me out! ;-)
And if you don't believe that, I'm retired and I like being active on the SG discussions. :-)
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Those who use auto join software won't be laughing, pretty soon. ;-)
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can I ask - do you know, in your experience, if dead user accounts (as in not used in a long time) ever get culled?
just wondering if clearing out ever happens - as the numbers of accounts not used in say a couple of years must throw off the numbers when evaluating site numbers versus use etc....
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I'm only three years on SG so people who are longer here, on SG, could give you a more precise answer but to my knowledge old\dead\perma-banned accounts aren't cleaned out.
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nope, so far I don't think any accounts got cleared from db ever. As for reason - there are pros and cons, cons is that they take up db space, but probably not a lot of it (1 mil users compared to tens of millions of comments ;p), pros are that user can always return. There's been cases of ppl getting back to SG after 1,2 or even 3 year breaks - and you would like to have stats of these users, they previous GAs but also their previous infractions.
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hmmm - there must be a way to do it - perhaps adding a line to the rules that say site visit must be made at least once per year to remain active - or perhaps limit it to users with no giveaways - they can always rejoin after all (there steam account would still be valid I assume) - just a thought, if things are being changed so much, might as well go the whole hog :P
maybe have a sub layer - of say inactive accounts that get sent an email to say they will be deleted in 3 months if they don't return - as other sites do?
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look at it the other way - ok, you may think that after all this time if it's added to the rules CV could be lost, but look at the downside. You have an active rulebreaker - someone who created lots of fake GAs, lost all his GA slots because of that, he won many games which he didn't activate and traded them off for profit etc. Do you really want such account deleted and then risk that in the future he comes back and again create more fake GAs, will start not activating again (you no longer have history of his infractions so you won't give him permaban for repeated offence) etc? Keeping all data keeps things safer for such situations, no matter how rare they may be.
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databases get cleaned up - not deleted - I said obviously not banned ones, and steam account ID names would obviously remain - so the data would still be available for interogation and to protect us against those users who try to game the system - they are after all tied to steam (but their account would no longer be visible as a user and can be removed from the overal statistical makup of the site)
I have a database of historical sites that is 23 years old (even started as a paper version in my younger days) - nothing has been deleted from it - but old data that is no longer required is no longer visible at the front end - doesn't mean I still cannot parse that data when, and if, required :)
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ok then, misunderstood you then ;) hiding dead accounts from frontend and not including them in the stats if they still remain in database in case that they ever decide to come back seems totally reasonable ;) Maybe you should make a suggestion topic about it ;) It would actually make SG stats much more useful, if we were be able to see how many actual active lvl 0 users are here instead of having data corrupted by stats of all ppl who registered and never came back ;p
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yeah - I was looking at the stats when it occured to me that there are a lot of dead user data hanging on, which could be hidden away. Thought I would throw it here, in case CG glances back :) Anyway, got to go back to my own work now, as time is xmas advent calanders it appears (I really hate Christmas when you have to makes things for it) sigh !
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Hi Loupou22, thanks for the comment. Inactive users are not removed or hidden at the moment. Which data do you think they're negatively affecting?
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Sorry - was so busy today I did not get time to get to it
but I had made comments in the thread
such as here
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/Xs9ANA9
and others have also concurred that if you are going to make the changes indicated, then now would be the ideal time to thin the herd, so to speak. Other websites regularly do housekeeping, if just to keep better tabs on the overall user base (without the 0x0x0 dead account holders still on the books).
hope that at least helps in enabling this, or some variiant - as Yirg says, the username issue a number of people have mentioned in the forums on more than one occasion in the past (really wish I had get the stats I did when we first came to this site from steam companion - sorry)
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Robot will not be stop , but more try to check and more rule is good to distinguish.
Yes , I think more puzzles is useful.
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I think a combination of SG filter and userscripts is already quite efficient to spending coin.
But the trends automation might caught us pretty soon, and it no necessary bad, and maybe in few year like auto fight in mobile game.
Maybe official autojoin function for SG if only if the user active and chat on discussion or chat, and should only for user which is active, and maybe for normal giveaway etc. Any method that can benefits user and the site (some discussion or chat website have more ads rate etc, or fixed priced ad banner that will go through ads block). Internet still pretty young, and the "features" can be teaches to users with (official and non addition malware installed like recently chrome extension). Benefits for non using any third party features.
The time save for user can be allowed for them to documenting game, creating game guide, and Wikipedia crowd editing game guide. Maybe just need few member of SG and open source community to create a more centralized sibling site but keep to open source with point benefits (for autojoin) or voluntary for non SG member to bring more value to game community rather than just focusing the core giveaway features.
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sorry but it's a terrible idea - not only inb4 ppl make scripts to +1 random comments in discussion for the SG autojoin to work but also monitoring 1 million user for activity then running constant autojoin for them would require a lot of server resources for basically no gain at all.
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It just an ideas. Discussion might not work as you mentions.
But wikipedia style should at least work by review each others. We have too many contents some of them rarely useful.
Review Internet Contents is a must in coming year.
Most of people just consumption of the internet but we know we can make the consumption better and time saved.
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no problem with the reduced points distribution here. i am usually not able to spend them all anyway. ^^
i personally never had a problem with people using those scripts. but i am clearly in the minority in that regard. so let's just see what happens. i am sure we would all appreciate some feedback from you on how much user behaviour changed after a month or two.
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Is that just a trollish attempt to annoy people, or trollish-like opinion about original thread's "it's my thread, go make yours"?
You might be right and it was just a troll, especially seeing how it appears both OPs have some history (don't follow SG drama that much, but comments do suggest that).
Could second OP make normal post instead of trollish one - yup, probably even should. But he wrote it how he wrote it and now he'll reap the BLs and WLs for it.
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+1, as I suggested at patreon - captcha every 10-20 GAs would mean that even most active users will waste total of 1-3 minutes on them. In the meantime they would totally block all bots, so actually give you all better chances to win. 1-3 minutes of your time for better win chances and getting rid of bots seels like a good deal.
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Yes, let the hammer down.
But stay away from those points, some people like 1500+ points a day.
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per entry? nope, too much, captcha per 10-20 entries? yes, please. It would only take 1-3 minutes for normal user, while getting rid of all bots (who needs bot which can only enter 10 GAs? you can do it yourself ;p), plus because of no bots these normal users who get captchas also get better win chances (bots not entering).
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I do visit the site over twenty times a day to use the points efficiently, So lowering point distribution would affect us guys with no life as well..
I think creating many dummy giveaways either hide it or just hide the entering button, Who ever enters gets instant suspension with no exceptions would solve the script users problem without affecting the rest of the community..
Some games requires lots of points tho it would sucks to either enters like 10 giveaways per day or never entering it and go for cheaper games..
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problem is that quite a few users on SG do not speak nor understand english. Someone introduced them to SG, explained how it worked, they saw online tutorial or something etc, so they know how it works yet do not understand any text. A lot of such people would fall into these honeypot GAs despite not being a bots.
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Yes I know that's why I've said.
either hide it or just hide the entering button
A simple script can hide the button for normal users, Not a description or something not all of the people, won't say don't understand but might not even notice it.
Script users do not enter through normal ways but through the code. That's how you catch them.
This happened in Scrap.tf They created a raffle with no enter button and how ever got in gets a perm ban for using a 3rd party program or a script.
I'll try to find it and post it here.
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This happened in Scrap.tf They created a raffle with no enter button and how ever got in gets a perm ban for using a 3rd party program or a script.
Ohhh.. that's devious. 😈 I love it
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ok then, lovely idea ;) but sadly you can perform it only this many times. Scripts will be able to adapt - if you use it once, twice etc in next iteration they will have an extra check to find whether GA is honeypot or not. Or in hypothrthical extreme case - someone just writes an AutoIi script that will not be botting via http requests but rather will be clicking inside browser ;p
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Gotta agree, But it will sure reduce the number of bots before they get the chance to adapt. As for the clicking bot, It's not hard to create but the ones that I can create would require the Site to be always open and not minimized, No one would waste all that time for some games. I don't really have that much knowledge about it but that is as much as I know.
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Yeah, that's one of the reason I didn't repeat the experiment. We don't get enough space in our blacklists to do many of these. :P
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Yet there are people who do it over and over again with just a slap on the wrist...
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Not really over and over again. First time they get caught they get normal suspension 5day per GA. If they do it again and get caught again its double suspension aka 10 days per GA and third time they risk permaban. I remember some support stating, I think it was jatan but not sure, that over 98% rulebreakers after first suspension do not repeat it so its hardly a problem happening over and over again with just slap at wrist.
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I recall someone saying someone won a GA and had 7 unactivated games.
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big difference - number of infractions and number of suspensions. Guy could easilly not activate 7 games if noone checked him before and noone reported him, but the moment he got reported for the first time he would receive 7*5 days of suspension so over a month, but it would still copunt as his first suspension.
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I have had several winners with 20+ unactivated games, and I've also gotten a lot of people perma-banned after reporting them. Mods will rapidly lose patience with repeat offenders - but the system relies on people actually reporting regifters, etc so they can be dealt with.
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Hi SG,
I want to remind everyone that using scripts to automatically join giveaways is against the rules. To help clarify, I updated the site guidelines today:
I would like to try reducing the usage of these scripts through two approaches...
The last few weeks I've been logging and reviewing data. On average, a user with scripts enters 4x as many giveaways as a user without scripts. I believe this happens because users currently receive a high number of points, and scripts are able to use those points more efficiently. To fix this issue I want to lower point distribution to a more reasonable amount. This will allow users casually visiting the site a couple of times a day to use all of their points, and therefore reduce the need and advantage of using such scripts.
Secondly, starting October, I am going to start assigning suspensions to users that are using these scripts. I feel they do not benefit the community in any way, and I want to try to ensure SteamGifts stays a fun and social place for everyone to visit. Of course, that only happens when real people are interacting with the site.
If you have any thoughts on the topic, please leave a comment.
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