not sure i agree with point 1. while i can see that since its running during sleep\etc it may lead to more ga entries i dont think thats a clear telltale sign. i login quite frequently and use up my points, so they hardly ever go waste. right before bed, wake up (a lot of times its not even back to 300 unless a monthly or something hit and you get big games worth 60p start flooding in). but since i dont enter games for the hell of it i dont end up with 300 entries per 300 points, im not trying to win more, just what i want. a script that enters every ga regardless of the game is poorly configured.
but hey, if you can figure out definitively whos using one ban hammer that ass, i just stay far from the trash pit (lvl 0). problem solved
lower point recharge, not for it, punishing those of us who check the site frequently, i dont see that as a plus
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Isn't it very hard to definitively tell someone is using a script just because of entries?
What if I enter all 1 Point GAs?
is this then 4x more entries than other users?
On average, a user with scripts enters 4x as many giveaways as a user without scripts.
Are there any proofs, that all users with 4x entries use a script? or just a guess?
I could think of to much false positives, which "do not benefit the community in any way" or even worse, make more damage than doing nothing.
Maybe the "benefit" should be measured in another way.
Lower / higher point distribution just shifts the odds towards less / more frequent users of the Site. Like "MasterJunior" said before.
Maybe you can find an average, between these two "groups".
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all users with 4x entries use a script
You're interpreting, cg never claimed that
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right, my bad, but as long as there is an average of four times more entries, there are more or less two groups with some overlap, of course.
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you forgot that the Bots/autojoiners take EACH GA (or nearly that), without at any time are over 300p.
Each human that must sleep from time to time are over 300p. At least sometimes (as right now/last night as the HB Software Bundle came out...).
On this "point spamming" times you see for sure the difference between a human and a bot/autojoiner very clear ;)
I hope the BAN HAMMER hits very much XXX k. Slows down the traffic and made a better connection for the real users :o) (and better win chances too)
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Just to make sure, userscripts and browser extensions like Enhanced SteamGifts,
which adds "Join" buttons next to giveaways are allowed as long as you manually click them right?
Screenshot of extension:
https://i.imgur.com/NdV5Lvw.png
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Lol, never go full retard :D
Honestly though I thought I bumped the thread that led me to this.
Edit: cg should implement an unbump option
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I think if you delete your comment, the "bump" date reverts back to the next newest comment and the thread falls back down on the list to the appropriate place.
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I still think the idea of a captcha system would do a wealth of good in this regard. I know people have issues over what if any should be used, but I think the key is that it only triggers occasionally so as not to be too annoying to real people. I think after X giveaways entered would be a good candidate for trial. And if the user failed three attempts, make the timeout something small like 15 minutes before entering again so it doesn't heavily impact GAs that only last an hour.
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A captcha could fix the issue but the downside is:
1: it could make the sg android app pretty useless
2: if you accidently enter a wrong answer on a giveaway that is active only for a short period of time you might miss the opportunity to enter all together.
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Why would the Android app be useless? Won't it just need to be updated to display the captcha?
Personally I don't think captchas should be displayed to everyone, but only to those whose behavior pattern strongly hints that they use auto-join scripts (or alternatively to anyone who already entered a high number of giveaways since the beginning of the day).
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I actually don't know what kind of script the app uses to enter giveaways, but in the app you don't have to open the giveaway before you enter it. It sounds to me like one of those things that is difficult to implement, but maybe we should ask the developer.
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So as a user that enters most of the giveaways frequently (haven't seen my points reset to 300 for some time) I'm in danger of suspension?
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Don't worry, noone said anything like that. Unless you're spending your points every 5-10-15 min 24/7 even when you're supposed to sleep, or enter dozens of giveaways in a second or two you're not in danger. :)
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And what if I'm on polyphasic sleep and don't need several hours at a time? :D
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I don't know, up for cg :) But this is not Youtube that solely an algorithm would decide on your fate :P
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If that's the case, then you should probably report to any interested medical researchers, since I'm fairly sure all previous studies indicated that polyphasic isn't sustainable by humans unless they still go for several hours each cycle. At the very least, sleeping 14 out of every 15 minutes ought be impossible, given the requirements related to entering REM sleep and the fact that breaking out of it very early is perhaps more damaging than not going into it at all. On the other hand, I suppose if you've got a specialized form of sleep-walking involving repetitive, semi-mindless mouse-clicking..
..in which case, handcuffing yourself to the bed (or perhaps, taking a second job in Steam customer support) may be the best way to resolve your issues. :P
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If you truly want to help us (users) for not making this site a part-time job, why not make subscription (donors of SG) to make them automatically add all games on wishlist. That way we can have big wishlists & get automatic adding of the game -> which will also get us games from our wishlists. I'd gladly donate $1-5 / monthly for that option.
& you, can also get a donors for the site maintenance. ;)
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@cg what if I have script to notify me about new games in my wishlist? If I get notification from script to my phone and I personally enter into giveaway - it's illegal or not?
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Scripts like ESG/ST are fine, answered earlier. As long as you manually join (even with a script added button) it's allowed -- this move is against those scripts or addons that join giveaways without any user interaction.
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Okay - sorry but I do not have time to read whole discussion :) Thanks for answer
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I am not sure if I understand how the points regenerate, but if I am correct, I think the 1$ for 40+ games bundles of Bundle Stars are to blame for this huge point regeneration trend: people are gifting entire 1$ bundles once they debut
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what matters is not number of GAs but rather their point cost. 5% of points are generated to all users each time new GA is created. So 1 GA worth 10P (aka 10$ steam price) will generate the same amount of points (0.5P exactly) as 10 GAs for 1$ shovelware. What is responsible for biggest spikes are not necessary 1$ bundles but rather bundles with a lot of value, like HB monthlies, or big value in low tiers - like current HB Software bundle - 1$ = 201P so each person creating bundle generates 10P for whole community - that's much more than any 1$ bundle from bundle stars.
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That is really interesting. Then I guess the way of creating new points is thought really well. I agree, the last two weeks have seen a lot of Rise of the Tomb Raider, and stories untold.
Thank you for the info
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I don't think that would hold water. I don't believe being a member of the group alone is proof they're using the script.
It's certainly likely, no doubt, but anyone can join the group whether they use the script or not.
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Exactly. The case I had in mind was someone who joined the Autjoin group for a few minutes to see if there were any hidden threads or forums. No one would accuse them of using Autojoin any more than they'd accuse you of using an entry script.
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While being a member of that group alone is not proof they're using a script, that discussion certainly is. They are discussing openly, how to make that script less detectable, after all.
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Hmm, I still don't think so. Telling someone else how you'd rob a bank doesn't make you a bank robber. I'd actually have to catch them using the script to be convinced they're using it. The whole "innocent until proven guilty thing."
At the same time, though, this site is privately owned and operated, so realistically speaking, CG can do whatever he wants, however he wants. But there's a point where his credibility as a "fair and just" person would come into play, too.
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Telling someone else how you'd rob a bank doesn't make you a bank robber.
Well, yeah, but if you openly discuss the schematics of the bank safe, it's very likely that you'll be arrested when there's an actual bank robbery. Some of these comments are much too specific to be anything but proof that they are using that script, e.g. how exactly they'd change the timer to make it look more random.
I don't think, that banning them would punish any innocents. However, I am aware, you'd only catch the most stupid/bragging ones. It's still hard to catch and punish those who use their scripts/bots in secret.. So yeah, you can't solve the problem like that.
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It's very likely that you'll be arrested when there's an actual bank robbery.
I certainly agree with that -- you might be arrested. But would you want to be convicted of robbing a bank merely for discussing the schematics of the bank safe? So, with that in mind, I have to stand by what I said -- discussion of breaking a rule or (discussion of) committing a crime isn't proof enough of guilt for me.
It would most certainly give me justifiable cause to keep a closer eye on them, though, and I wouldn't blame anyone for doing that.
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But would you want to be convicted of robbing a bank merely for discussing the schematics of the bank safe?
Assuming those schematics are something only the bank robber could have known to that level of detail, then yes, there's a good chance you'd be convicted for aiding and abetting with the robbery. Anyway, as I've said before, it's not a good method of catching culprits, as you'd miss out the larger part of folks who are just using their scripts quietly. Still doesn't stop me from blacklisting them, though (in case I can find out their SG username from their Steam profile - sometimes it's different - sneaky bastards...hehe)
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Eh, I don't want to get too much deeper into this. The analogy we're using is introducing more and more detail every time we go on with it, haha. Pretty soon we'll be naming the bank robbers and giving them families.
But, given what you've said, I could go over there to that discussion (and I would like to read it later today), learn everything that's there, and post it here on SG. Is that proof I'm auto-joining? Proof enough that you'd swear with certainty that you'd banned an auto-joiner? I just can't allow my mind to work that way. Now if I came over here to SG and said "Bahahaha, I'm letting auto-join enter all the giveaways for me!" and there was some evidence to back it up -- well, that's a different story. That's not discussion, that's confession.
But yes, I go through the members list with Mully occasionally (or what we have time for because it's huge), and look for avatars or names I recognize and blacklist them. That's just how I deal with it on a personal level. I still can't prove they're autojoining, but my blacklist is mine to do with as I please, and I'm not banning them from all of SG with that decision. ;)
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I personally know a lot of people in the group who don't use anything that violates the rules. Features like infinite scrolling, buttons besides each giveaway to join/leave, pinning of header/footer, notifications of won giveaways, night theme.
Autojoin is disabled by default, both in background and by clicking a button. In an update since this announcement ability to show descriptions without opening a page (and with default settings it loads description when you're joining from main page) was added.
It's weird to me that you want to blindly suspend everyone in the group. It's not even a majority of extension users, it's people who joined to have a conversation, suggest new features etc.
By the way, I'm wondering how forcefully disabling autojoin to every user of this extension affected stats of autojoin users that cg must have :)
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you have to love the fact that people in the dicussions - even in the comments - on that thread are saying openly that if they alter the settings slightly can they avoid getting a ban - do they think CG is not capable of looking at users of that steam group? Cause they just openly said that they intend to try and flout the rules !!! :P
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According to the OP CG will go after the bots\auto-joiners\script users in two ways. Firstly by changing the giveaway point system so bots have less points or fuel to spend and secondly by suspensions.
So we had already the change to the giveaway points because of the bots and hopefully there will also be the suspensions to come.
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yeah - I just kinda found it sad that people don't want to stay within the rules if they think they can 'get away with it'
made me a sad panda :(
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Out of 3 years experience on SG I can say that re-gifters, auto-joiners, giveaway and puzzle leakers, CV boosting in private groups, SGTools gate crashers, homophobic users, anti-Semitic users, nazis and fascists, racists and the like have always been on SG during that time but I do believe that they can be thinned out if CG and support will do the necessary because when not firmly dealing with them they will believe and think that they can get away with it and try again.
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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.
This is a good thing, but you have to be deliberate & put the penalties in. Is it 2 weeks, 2 days, 2 months? ;)
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I didn't see a single suspended scriptuser till now... and i see alot of that users...
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Neither do I see some "BLACK listed members". & you should list them "publicly", so to shame them! ;)
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No, a dedicated area on site where all Black listed members are listed. Those with times served & those with current status.
That would keep them away from this site. ;)
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i know what you mean, but i never wanted to spend time on that... :P
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Well, people used to own millions in my country. But guess what, only when the "blacklist of tax evasions" have been listed, have they changed your mind. Not only that, but also with a people who you do business with. etc. ;)
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Bloodbath Kavkaz - Khovan Revenge STEAM WLXCL-DYZDR-BLA6?? - number 8
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Thank you...! <3
Remember you from the handmade store... :3
I hope i get some money to order the Advent Calendar quilt...
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I hate Captcha almost as much as I hate bots, but reCaptcha is actually really easy to deal with. For the most part it's a single click, and you're done. I could easily deal with that, and that may make your job easier too.
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Did they ever add a workaround for the fact that the single-click NoCaptcha feature was based around cookies, and thus always spawned captchas when using work/school/public computers (or for anyone who obsessively cleared their cookies, for whatever reason)?
Not that that's necessarily enough to justify not using Captcha, but it's certainly a consideration to keep in mind (if it's still an issue).
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I have never seen a single click captcha, I didn't even know it worked like that until I was just reading about it. I always have to select pictures out of the 9, but I do clear my browsers very often and block all the tracking scripts, maybe that is why.
Edit: I don't mind, I love the recaptchas where you have to select cars or street signs, it is so much faster than the ones where you have to type the text, usually only takes 2 or 3 seconds.
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From my phone, reCaptcha sucks. Maybe it's the locations I use my phone but it sometimes takes a full minute to load on another site I use. It almost always requires me to pick from pictures and the low resolution means I often get them wrong and have to redo it again. And even just using it every hour seems to be giving me longer and harder reCaptchas throughout a day. Imagine going through that for every giveaway one wants to enter? Not to mention the ones which add pictures in the middle of it, often hang and timeout, forcing me to start over. It once took me 15 minutes to pass one reCaptcha when the connection was particularly bad.
It's not bad from my home computer, but I also imagine even home, a reCaptcha for every entry would become very annoying. Imagine waking up bleary eyed. Pop on the computer to spend your overnight points and doing 20 reCaptchas to spend them all. No thanks!
It's definitely not as simple and easy as everyone makes it out to be and the more reCaptcha calls from one's IP, seems to evoke more and longer picture selection each time.
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Yes. Even at home, due to the escalating length to solve picture captchas, excessive captchas quickly become ridiculous. Frequent captchas are not a good thing.
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Huh, I've not had such a bad experience with reCaptcha, either on my PC or my phone. It's possible I have a better phone, and I'm almost always connected via Wifi, or maybe I've just had better luck.
Doing a reCaptcha repeatedly would certainly be a hassle. Most sites I've seen using it only have it come up once a week, at most, and a single click/tap once a week seems reasonable.
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There is also a no-click captcha (officially named "Invisible reCAPTCHA") which is also very nice
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I like that. Now I want that to be on this site. But it seems it will never happen and the bots will continue to have a field day. =(
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Not really 100% invisible anymore after going through several times it will be visible again, actually.
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I hate bots as much as the next person, but I'm worried about false positives here.
Sometimes I spend almost 24h straight logged in. Usually I can't sleep, I have nothing better to do, so I spend the whole night browsing SteamGifts, even if I have no points left (just reading the forums, blocking shitty games... sometimes I'm lucky and there's a flash giveaway for a cool game so I relocate my points, etc). I'd consider it a "suspicious behavior" myself if I didn't know for sure I'm a human being (lol).
I think implementing captchas are the answer, really. I wouldn't mind taking a few seconds more to join a giveaway if that means a fair approach to the bot problem.
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Make a mobile version. my eyes are very tired😩
then the scripts will not be needed
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good point idk why ppl want to cheat even in free giveaway website lol
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I believe that a third measure would be welcome to win the war against autojoin scripts: increase the minimum giveaway duration to a couple hours or even a day. This would result in people browsing the site once/twice a day to be able to join awesome giveaways without worrying to have missed some great giveaways.
Advantage of browsing the site more than once a day would result in no point waste, more giveaways to join and thus more chance of winning.
<(^_^)>
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This is a long thread, so apologies if this has already been mentioned but:
I have had about 5 winners in the last few weeks that have won a game, but have taken up to a week to claim the win all the while still entering other GAs. I understand that some enter on mobile and need to get home to activate, but I believe that they are a minority as those same users are still active playing games in steam. My conclusion is that they are using auto-joiners.
Solution: You should be unable to enter any GAs if you have unclaimed wins that have been sent.
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they can use this link to register keys from a browser: https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey
the "i'm on my phone" excuse isn't valid any more ^^
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Funny thing. I honestly thought that link didn't work on mobile
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Solution: You should be unable to enter any GAs if you have unclaimed wins that have been sent.
Won't work.
First example that comes to mind: the giveaway creator sends a "bad key" and the winner and creator are trying to work with support to come to a resolution. This clearly isn't the winner's fault, so he/she shouldn't be limited while it's being resolved.
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I see the problem Tzaar, but don't believe it's insurmountable. Perhaps if a bad key is given, you could mark as "not received" prompting the gifter to correct the mistake, and allow the winner the ability to still enter other GAs? The "not received" blemish would only be final after a week perhaps. AFAIK, I think you can change "not received" to "received".
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you can't mark a win as not received until a week has passed since you won. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The suggestion would require site changes anyway... and that'd be an easy part of the change. But ideally, perhaps a 3rd option along the lines of "Activation Issue" that allows the gifter a week to rectify whilst allowing winner to enter other GAs. Any abuse of that would be easy to detect.
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"those same users are still active playing games in steam" !!!!
no they are probably not - they are running ASF and that shows them as playing a game on steam when theey are not doing so :) - in reality all your seeing is them farming cards and made an assumption that those who are doing this are using auto joiners (which is likely, for the majority of users in this situation, incorrect)
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You are probably right that the majority are farming, but in my case (the same winner x2) was playing CSGO - doubt he had much to farm there still ;) But the point was, he was still entering GA's here whilst waiting a week to mark as received.
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Isn't CS:GO the shining exemplary example of a farming game, though? :P
Even a game like Rocket League gets a ton of idlers for its purely internal cosmetic drops and crates; meanwhile, CS:GO's skin and crate drops are actually steam tradable and worth wallet funds. I don't play CS:GO (I really don't care for the Counterstrike games at all), but from what I've heard, idling it is quite common.
The topic comes up quite often, and each time there's the same notable list of reasons why it's not a good idea to make assumptions about what's happening on someone else's end; between idling, farming, family, travel, bugs, and lovecraftian mysteries, we simply don't know.
Personally, I generally try to inform the GA creator if there's a delay- but I only do that when things become especially uncertain or drag for more than a couple days; otherwise, I figure it's best not to bother them. Certainly, dragging things on for a week is a different matter, but unless you specifically asked in your description to be informed of delays, you can't really hold that against the winner- they may expect you to find communication to be more rude than waiting.
It's the old, "don't leave generic comments" scenario- if you have a preference, state it. Then, if it's violated, you know the user isn't being respectful. If you aren't expressing your own perspectives clearly, then you can't hold it against the other party, as you have no idea if their intentions were intended to be sincere and respectful or not.
In any case, while such matters are generally vague affairs, there are the occasional telltale clues that benefit of the doubt may not be warranted. For example, if your winner's entry was within two seconds of your giveaway being posted, that's not a positive indication for them not having used auto-joining. Likewise, if they're not respecting your perspectives when you've detailed them in your description, that's not only another good sign, but it also leaves the alternative that they just don't respect your perspectives enough to care- meaning you can justify feeling negative toward them either way.
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I wish i took notes of everyone who admited auto joining stuff and said they are not doing anything wrong eh ...
Also ... Unlimited blacklist ...ty >.>
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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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