Falling number of Steamgifts giveaways?

It comes up.

I suppose some people come here with the best of intentions wanting to give good games to be played to people who couldn't afford them otherwise or maybe sharing the love for games they enjoyed but then sooner or later they realize it just doesn't work like that.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I assumed a big part the current lul is mostly to do with the current world situation and a lot of people not having their usual amount of disposable income because of so many places being shutdown, hours cut, or laid off or furloughed workers. So what little disposable income people have right now, if any, is focusing on them and those closest to those, more than anything else.

Do not forget about the prohibition of storing in inventory
and send gifts to steam

I would assume the loss of being able to store games in inventory on Steam. It happened around May 2017, and I noticed in the graph you see a huge spike for a couple of months, and then it starts to trend down. I also noticed a slight spike and drop when Tremor games goes down on November 2018 (although that might be other factors).

There's also a huge spike and fall around March 2018, but unsure what that's about.

There's also the allowance of no CV games at around July 2017 which is what I assume causes the huge spike a couple months after that time. Maybe no CV games could be a factor, although unsure since I'm assuming owned games are hidden by default, and assumingly newcomers who want to win games on SteamGifts are also aware of and own the free game giveaways. If not, seeing a huge amount of one game, and it being one you own would be a turn off from the site.

And finally, maybe the Steam privacy policy change around April 2018 was an added factor. Everyone was set up by default in such a way that steamgifts couldn't sync your games (needing you to change your privacy settings). It's a simple thing to change, but still an extra step.

It's not possible to buy games as gifts and store them in your inventory anymore. And you can't send games as gifts if there's a big price difference of the game between the sender and the receiver. At least, that's why I stopped creating giveaways. Heck, it's not even allowed to give away humble bundle keys - at least that's what humble bundle says. Anyway, steam has made a lot of horrid changes over the years and we can neither trade games anymore nor gift them (at least not without several obstacles). I just hope that some others will keep giving away games and that they will understand why so many others have stopped doing that.

The novelty has worn off. The site simply went through a boom and is settling into a decline now.
Also, most people are cheap as fuck, and would rather trade away unwanted keys over giving them away.

Personally it also has to do with the reduced value, I think it's to much of a reduction sometimes. You spend some money buying some nice games to give away and after half a year or so, it gets bundled somewhere and the game you spent 15 euros on is now worth 1'75 CV. That's why I only give away my spare bundled keys, and seeing the giveaways lately, it seems like most people do the same.

I think you're not looking at it correctly. You're looking at the biggest year in the history of the website (2017) and come to the conclusion that giveaways have dropped.

The was a big round curve between 2015 and 2018, perhaps with the explosion of people discovering the website for the first time, or the spread of people discovering bundle resellers, but that was about it. I'd say since January 2019 all the way to today, giveaways have been steady and stable, hovering anywhere between 29k and 41k at a steady average of 35k.

That's my perception, at least.

You forgot that 2017 was the year when free crap was allowed to be given away on the website. That's why there were giant spikes and a decline later when SG got littered by free games.

Less ga's but also less 1$ crap bundles and less free games from gleam (like during digital homicide outbreak). So while there is less to enter - giveaways improved in quality i think. I see nothing wrong in that.

1) not everything can go on forever, decline is bound to happen
2) steams change in gifting policy
3) lack of bundles and their quality lately

It's great we still have troopers who make hundreds of giveaways each, we should start to worry when they start leaving this site. It's not that you can predict these things. Maybe in a year Humble says "fuck it" and others follow suit and bundles as such become very rare occasion, most people who do GA dont care anymore and not a moment later SG is a ghost site with scammers on every corner trying to exploit system for their own gain. Just as well Humble might again climb back up as premium bundler and new company arises that makes bundles and SG gets another big breath of life and we see a new rise. I just hope we dont get more of those self appointed "philanthropists" who cry over not getting enough recognition for making GAs as if thats the problem

New rules, either from Steam (with inventory and gifting) or even on Steam gift (new CV and points system) and gifting is not fun anymore...
It's just a trashbin where you drop your duplicate key from bundles. The amount of new add on the site show that too....

Someone's trash may be someone else's treasure, but to most people, it's still trash.
The number of entries for the giveaway on this site is a bit much.

Hey, thank you all. I was going to discuss what you were saying but it was looking like a blockpost and as if I was some kind of arbiter, so I'll try to keep it brief and in generalities now.

I agree with some of the causes presented here, I kind-of agree with some others, I don't buy a few. Overall, I feel like there are factors contributing to the decline, but it is not immediate to me that it has to happen. I'm very much of the opinion that it IS happening, though; a good spare month does not buck the trend, and it is not still clear whether the trend will continue declining or will flatten in 2020.

Above all I feel like, just in this thread, there's a big variety of reasons for participating in Steamgifts, and sometimes they are at odds with each other. The Steamgifts ecosystem is even bigger, with even more diverse reasons; this can be enriching but makes for more difficult community consensus on potential steps to be taken.

Thanks again for giving your opinions, this has been quite insightful to me. I will continue reading the answers but most likely I won't post further.

So now that we've established the downward trend, how do we revitalize SG?

There was similar discussion in the past. Will not write all reasons, but for sure there is a direct connection between number of bundles and on one hand how good they are price/content (for not cheap bundles), and on other hand there are much less cheap bundles which some users made to get numbers/CV (which increased a statistic a lot). With every new bundle we see many GA with this games.

Why there are less bundles? Some says there are lower number of bundle sites, but this is not a problem but effect of situation. In my opinion there is less market for bundles mainly from supplies side. I guess developers/companies are less willing to sell their games in bundles and if they sell they want to do it in higher prices. It means it is harder and harder to get good games in cheap bundles. It also means worse bundle site just went down and there are only most know remain. We see decline in bundles quality even in HB (best bundles are monthly, but some says they quality also goes down - and it is not that HB dont want to put great bundles in purpose :) ). Ale from consumer point of view they are less likly to buy bundles as they remember bundles from "gold bundles era" also bundles games are often bundles many times and more and more bundles contains 2-3 new games and rest are repeats (and sometimes when there is too low new games you dont buy this bundle at all). Also such user hva huge backlog which is also important.

Of course there are many other reasons like:
1) Steam gifts (you can not buy game on promotions to inventory)
2) Economic situation
3) On one hand some users are bots (= some user prefer to set higher levels or group GA = harder to start for new users).
4) Dont know also how hard is to join SG for new users. I saw s thread that it can be a barrier. But it should be a barrier to reduce number of bots. If site will be flooded with bots it will be much much worse and it can be end of this site. Maybe there should be some monitoring to delete bot users?
5) Even such things like novelty of site or how easy new user can find information about site?

And i guess much much more.

for me personally.. the groups giveaways killed it...i can't enter in any of them... Then the montly games started to be bundled...I live in Argentina... 3rd world country and now we are in Default.... 1 dollar is almost 140 pesos.... and our minium salary is around 16k... so is a lot harder to me to giveaways games... Apart from that well..i feel that i don't match here anymore so i try to not enter more gives, but always stalking the forum or that =P... If i can give something away i do...But i stopped buying games too... A lot of factors. I think this is a really good comunity anyways.(one of the best TBH). Thats just my situation at the moment... Apart from what the people say already, humblebundle, steam doing things harder to giveaway, bad bundles or too expensive bundles... thint that a 10 dollar bundle is like 1000 pesos ARG...and minium salary is 16k so.... is harder to buy games too....

We're all gonna die

Too many same game repeat bundles, too many rubbish games added by valve, and now Economic meltdown? Also region lock on steam gifts, keys. Cannot Give away from steam store as you cannot store gist in inventory anymore. Youc annot give away a discounetd gift on steam store and hope a winner responds in time frame of the discount to be given.

for me it seems too that #1 reason has been growing region-locking
also seems like bundles aren't that popular among devs/publishers anymore, they earn more with greater sales (which in my eyes have been better year-by-year)

I see a lot of people mentioning region lock and that's a big issue at least with my gifting. I'm trying to work through 3 months of Humble Choice games, a few bundles, and some normal unbundled keys for a train. But they all have wildly varying region restrictions and its too much to stay on top of. At least the Humble ones sensualshakti has forum posts for, but its like 30+ non-Humble keys that need AppID found, back to Steamdb, its been a while since doing giveaways have to remember where to go to find info, omg there's 15 packages for this one key idk which one it is why can't this be simple.

Do that about 10 times, get frustrated and contemplate marking everything just to my region so someone doesn't win a giveaway then find out it was a region-restriction that I missed and I have to let them down. Again. Because this has accidentally happened before I realized just how many bundles and keys have restrictions.

Man I just want to throw out keys left and right but its like homework to get it right and then a week of waiting to make sure they can all be redeemed. Maybe its just me but I can't take the stress.

1) growing region locking
2) fewer bundles (HB is not happening every week, fanatical doesn't have bundlefest, nothing active on GMG)
3) bundles are getting more expensive (e.g. everything on HB after tier 1)
4) fewer re-bundles with new games (e.g. 3 of 5 games in bundle are rebundled but people buy it for 2 remaining)
5) a lot of bundles that are active are not attractive in any way
6) with how expensive some bundles are it is often not worth buying the bundles for Contributor level points in some cases