I use ESGST because it improves the experience (maybe it's not a polite thing to say to the site's admin, but it does), but I don't autojoin.
And I'm strongly against captcha, it's a curse that I can't wait for everyone to realize how outdated and annoying it is. However, since bots are also a curse, if the winner of a GA would have to fill a captcha to get the code or the link, that would make sense.
Also, although I haven't looked into it yet, maybe it doesn't even exist, if there were a script that would notify me for wishlist GAs (not autoenter, only notify me) would it be ok?
As other people pointed out, having to load less pages is very important to many regular users but a person using a bot by default doesn't care about it.
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if the winner of a GA would have to fill a captcha to get the code or the link, that would make sense.
Actually no, it wouldn't. Folks, would just let their bots win the games and then pick them up manually. That does not mean, I'm in favor of captchas though. I, agree it would be like a curse, if I had fill out a captcha every time I wanted to enter a giveaway. Guess there is no ideal solution.
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Yes, you're right, I didn't think of that.
I'm pretty sure if we have a captcha for each giveaway, the lower point distribution won't be even needed. Because we'll all hate it.
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Personally I think the lower point distribution was overdue. I'm just stuck with my 300 points most of the time, with no clue where to use them up anyway. Points are intended to make people think which games they really want to win and which ones they'd rather leave to others. With the current/previous point distribution, they can still enter way too many games to make any choice at all, some even juggle them around by banking in high value long term giveaways (something that bots are especially good in). So, regardless, of captchas or no captchas, I'm all in favor of lower point distribution. Let's just see how well the new system works and if the admins are able to identify bots well enough so we don't need captchas. I certainly would hate them just as much as the bots and bot users.
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"even juggle them around by banking in high value long term giveaways (something that bots are especially good in)"
I didn't get that, sorry.
Personally, I'd be happy with no more than 150 points a day on regular days.
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I didn't get that, sorry.
Okay, let me explain. When you enter a one week 60 point giveaway for a game you have no interest in ... you can remove your entry later on, when you spent all your points and need some extra for a giveaway ending in few minutes. People do this manually, even I redistribute my points sometimes, when there's an abundance of giveaways due to a bundle or something, but no matter how well you manage your points, you won't beat a script or bot build for point optimization. Drastically reducing the points in general reduces the problem a bit, but bots still would have more points than humans.
The only way to remove the "banking" problem would be by not refunding any points at all once they're spent. But that would be harsh, eh?
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Oh, I see. The work people put into bots... sigh.
I'd rather get no refund than not enough points when a "high profile" game is suddenly available in many GAs and I get to only enter 1/5 of them. Or maybe only refund 1/2 of the points, so people put more thought in where they spend them?
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Or maybe only refund 1/2 of the points, so people put more thought in where they spend them?
Nice idea, but still, even if folks can "bank" only half the points they spend, that half still might give them an advantage when they can have more than 300P exactly when they need them. Especially when those people are actually bots configured to store points and use them up in case there's a mass giveaway (e.g. Humble Monthly reveal day) for a game on their predefined enter-list. So the only thing that would stop "banking" is no point refunds at all. But that would be harsh. Just think of a situation that you just spent all your points then there's a quick one hour giveaway for something you have wishlisted for a very long time and you have no points.
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ESGST notifies about wishlist giveaways as well (you can find this feature under Header Refresher), but there's no autojoin feature in the script, so I think it's safe.
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perhaps suggest to CG that an area be created - as a tab at the top say - for scripts approved by CG - I tend not to use them, as I cannot be sure that they are site approved; it would be nice if there were a safe space people could get them and know they are already approved - just a thought
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fairly surely all scripts with threads here are fine, bad ones wouldn't be tolerated to be promoted
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Generally, I love the idea to punish autojoiners! But I'm a bit concerned how you'll find these people.
I use ESGST, I never ust the entry button though, I always open the giveaway, look at the description, I rarely spam a "Thank you" (because I don't fancy a mindless copy and paste), but what I do is open multiple tabs of giveaways before I enter and if there isn't anything to read, or write, I can enter a lot of these giveaways in a really short time. When I also consider how much time I sometimes spend here, and that there were a lot of wishlisted games, or such that I follow on Steam, I do tend to spend my points efficiently, you could say.
Does this make me look like I use an autojoin script? ._. Will october welcome me with a suspension?
Like I said, I don't autojoin, I do not even use this feature of ESGST because I like to see the description and it feels, for me, wrong to skip the actual visiting of the giveaway.
Anyway, I trust you to not just suspend someone, so I'm looking foreward to the changes ^^
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May you did some changes for opening gift-page in new tab when click?
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nice. :)
Is it "reCAPTCHA" implementation?
reCAPTCHA: Easy on Humans, Hard on Bots https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/index.html
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Can you please let me know if ESGST is good to go? All the script does is add an "Enter" button to giveaways on the main page so that you don't need to open each giveaway in a separate tab to enter them, so it does not enter multiple giveaways at once or enter giveaways while the user is away. It would be nice if you let me know so I can make any required changes to the script.
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ESGST it's not autojoiner, there are other scripts that just leave the page open in the browser can automatically enter the giveaways and that is where this new rule is addressed.
currently these scripts have the ability to even leave a thank-you message in the steam profile, I have in my profile several thanks that are identical:
"Thanks for the game (game name) on SG, thank you."
or
"Thanks for the game (game name) on SG, you blacklisted me so I couldn't thank you there."
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In addition i want to know if the same goes for extended steamgifts enter button
i dont mind, but i need to know if it is not allowed.
just to mention. there will be no change in "entering" time for me. before i opened all the giveaways i wanted to join in seperate tabs and then entered... (still this takes much longer than any script would do ^^)
but just wanted to mention it.
thanks cg for all the effort :)
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Hi rafaelgs18, ESGST is fine, and I tried to ensure the new guideline covered it as well. Since users are selecting and joining the giveaways individually, I don't see an issue. It's also nice that you provide the option to see the giveaway description.
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Does this mean that if I join the giveaways individually with the Autojoin extension installed, it wouldn't break the rules? I tried to install ESGST but it basically wants all the permissions chrome could give it(because tampermonkey), and on top of that it told me it can't install an extension from steamgifts.com and it just downloads some notepad file that I got no clue what I'm supposed to do with so I just gave up on that. Since I'm not using autojoin's autojoin features, and it doesn't break my privacy, am I still okay with that?
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So moving forward people don't need to even open giveaway descriptions?
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Great news! 😁👍
It's a little too early to celebrate a win against auto-bots, but it's a step towards a fair giveaway system. I would like to see some random captcha kicking in, based on user behavior eg. when someone is hammering the site with entries like there's no tomorrow, when someone is entering giveaways 24/7 etc. Auto-entering bots have quite a distinctive behavior, i'm sure cg and his team have already logged
On a side note about scripts in general,
Let's not demonize all kinds of useful scripts because we -well, most of us- don't approve those auto-entering scripts. I'm using ESGST here and lots of scripts everywhere, mostly for cosmetic enhancements -dark themes- or for data parsing, statistics and notifications. Some apparent computer illiterate people in my country feel quite offended when i say that in public, they might think i'm a hacker hiding in dark rooms or the BatCave. 😛🙄
.
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I can't remember the last time I managed to get my points under 200. The change will force people to be more discerning with their entries and will hopefully reduce the number of entries in each giveaway. This means better odds of winning on every giveaway you enter.
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I have 690 games and 16 on my wishlist, plus I don't enter GAs just for +1 or cards. That leads to me being at 300 points most of the time, big forum events aside. So one doesn't need thousands of games to be unaffected by a point reduction.
Though I don't really care if it is changed or not.
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I only had 8 games in my library when I first joined Steamgifts 5 years ago. I was spending more points back then but still very rarely ran out.
Anyway, less entries = better odds so it's still a positive change.
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As long as it doesn't add annoying captcha with 3 bridge pictures, 8 road signs and 4 with cars ones, I find it good idea
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Can you also do something about the script for Suicide Squad while you're at it?!
O___o
...no?
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My two cents on this subject:
I'm against autojoiners and I consider the giveaway entering part as being part of the joy of playing against the odds while being selective enough to fit your tastes such that whenever you win something you can also enjoy your win, meaning that regardless of when you're playing it, that something that you won is something that you were interested in. An autojoiner means mindless entering without the slightest interest regarding the giveaway and this defeats the giveaway purpose. Therefore, a policy against these practices is a good thing in my opinion as long as it is clearly defined and specific rules that can be verified are specified.
But, the problem is the identification process and the prevention of abuses regarding the implementation of the new rules. If there are no clear definitions and enforcing mechanisms then this is useless because genuine users will get flagged as using autojoiners even if they're not, while cleverly constructed scripts will fly under the radar and remain undetected.
An identification based on the number of giveaways entered is flawed from the start unless it only targets those obvious requests that happen at the same time, meaning a user entered like 15 giveaways at the same time. Otherwise, within human achievable limits there is no way of distinguishing between a human and a script unless a captcha system is implemented. And even when a captcha system is implemented there's no guarantee that a cleverly implemented neural network based attack cannot bypass it and pose as a human.
All in all, this will mostly flush out the script kiddies out there using various primitive approaches that are easily identifiable. If the target is deeper than that then you'll definitely run into lots of false positives resulting in a not so great end user experience.
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I guess there are things like these in combination.
- Amount of points user spend per day (not the number of GA, because its too vague eg; 60X10P GA per day vs 10x60P GA per day)
- Efficiency of Point spending ie never letting Points hit the 300P or the cap
- Amount of time online.
- Entering GA at same time
- Same scripted "thank you" comments
- others (I couldn't think of other)
As cg said "On average, a user with scripts enters 4x as many giveaways as a user without scripts." He has the data collected over time, so I guess he has thought about what is consider as normal user or what is considered as user with auto-join scripts.
I guess they have already thought of issue regarding false positives, cg and moderators will come with good definitions for "autoscript joiners".
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As I said, once you get within human achievable limits there is no way of distinguishing between a human and a cleverly constructed script and no level of behavioral analysis can safely identify them.
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i think you should implement a system like valve's VAC BAN for people autojoining, putting a huge red text in their profiles saying "This person uses autojoin".
since most people LOVE to name and shame on steam and they agree 100% with their anticheat system, they should also be ok with this. and using their own logic, it will be 99.9% accurate so it's fine.
i also hope you use obfuscated ways to detect if people autojoins and never reveal how they got caught, no fun if they let script developers what to fix for others
that plus a nice 1 month suspension for the first time, and the second time a perma ban. no excuses. <3
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Great idea Mullins, have a star !
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I think they should do the same for people who spam the forums with useless bump comments 24/7, too.
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This is a welcome change! The site will be a much more pleasant and rewarding experience for users with the removal of the autojoin menace.
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I wonder if Public L0 GAs will still get 1000+ entries after this change? We'll soon see ;-)
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What kinds of suspensions are offered to auto-joiners?
As user statistics would be probably self-explanatory, and there will be all kinds of states from 'not using' to 'heavily using automation', wouldn't be bad to assign larger measures for heavy bots and smaller for them who use scripts slower, but still use. Not in a 'threshold' manner. So no one remains unnoticed :)
And are additional non-suspension things also up for discussion?
E.g. after suspension is served, user may have a special mode (extra slow point regeneration, captcha) for some time. Or until acquiring +1000 to real CV to show a goodwill to community :)
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Instead of suspensions, how about requiring users that are suspected as using auto-joining scripts to enter captchas? Cool them down with a day of entering captchas when they enter GAs, then give them another chance. If they continue to auto-enter, extend the captcha-entry period.
The advantages of this approach is that it can be completely automated, and that it encourages good behavior without annoying already-good users with captchas.
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The good thing about this is that someone who's flagged by mistake will still be able to enter giveaways.
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This is brilliant. That other giveaway site experimented with required captchas and it was horrible. They quickly go from a checkbox for "not a robot" to drawing outlines around vehicles and road signs. It's a great dissuasion from botting while still allowing those with false positives to enter.
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How about linking point distribution to won/given ratio? This way users who gave more than they won will have more points to win more stuff and catch up, while those who won a lot and barely gave away anything will barely have points to enter a few GA's unless they start giving.
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CV is very approximate ratio, and if "amount of free games to get" will depend on it, some users will find a way how to trick CV system even worse than now. Now at least CV gives only levels which are not so important, most GA are for 0-5 lvl which is not so big amount of CV.
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It wouldn't be perfect but would still hinder those users that gained levels a long time ago and then just put up an autojoiner to reap games.
Hundreds of games won and last giveaway created years ago.
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The site is about giving equal chances to every users. Levels were introduced so users have the option to make giveaways that reward those who gave something.
Steamgifts is not some pay2win affair and everyone should be treated equally.
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what do you mean by "do not benefit the community in any way" ?
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That people using autojoiner scripts are garbage. They do not participate in the Forum or do own GAs. They just let their bot enter as many GAs as possible to get free games.
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Im entering ga's, sometimes i comment, but not a lot. Why should you ounish me cause im mostly entering gibs?
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I don't. You obviously are somewhat active in the forum (at least you read this thread).
And I do not comment on every GA as well (I don't like "spamming" thanks).
Even if you only open and enter GAs quickly thats not what I meant. Especially if you read the description
I am talking about people having a bot running on their rasppery PI and checking once a week if they won something.
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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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