Should points of deleted giveaways be returned to those that entered them?
With points now at a premium, I agree with this.
Even non-dodgy giveaways get deleted because of reasons like human error and not knowing the SG rules.
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Anything deleted before end should be refunded. After no.
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Do you just mean GA deleted while still running or finished too?
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Bit pointless to make a poll for this, as nobody can deny that this was necessary, even two years ago, though it became less important as points inflated. Now that the new system is in place, it's critical that this is fixed soon. Hopefully attention can be brought to this issue.
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...it's critical that this is fixed soon
This made me lol. I get that its hyperbole but still...
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The poll was also to check if people thought that full points should be refunded or just part.
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A partial refund makes even less sense than voting no (which the poll, admittedly and thankfully, also represents). It should be completely obvious that the only correct action is a full refund, which we'd also been promised a fix for for two years without anything happening.
It costs exactly the same amount of effort to implement a full as a partial refund, and since the entrant is under no circumstances at fault and got completely nothing out of his/her points if a giveaway is deleted prematurely, the only logical outcome is to refund all of the points. (Not to mention that on the off chance that the cap is reached, part of the refund is automatically trashed as well.)
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I think this one is a no brainer especially with the limited points generated. Just one 50 point giveaway being deleted is going to be 2.5 hours of point regeneration to get those points back.
EDIT. Would like to know why people said no as I cant figure out why.
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Possibly they just mean "other features are more important."
(Hence why "partial" is the least popular, since that would imply spending the time to implement this and then not implementing it fully.)
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I haven't bothered to vote, but maybe a possible reason for voting no is that they don't use SG like it's a job. So the amount of points they generate is irrelevant. Since by the time they check sg again, they will have already hit the cap. So "missing" points for a deleted giveaway won't have really registered on their radar.
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I don't get this at all to be honest.
I am exclusively entering wishlist giveaways and I have yet to run low on points.
Furthermore I only check SteamGifts about once a day and I believe this is all you really need, since even if you had like 30 giveaways to enter I do believe 500 points should be enough to at least enter the ones ending in the near future.
Frankly I cannot fathom a satisfying reason for your shortage of points other than "I absolutely need to enter every other giveaway I see".
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Thanks for your suggestion but this is not really a response to the question the OP talked about or the point I am trying to make. All I am trying to say is if a giveaway is deleted the points are lost and not given back to the person entering the giveaway which is unfair. The example I used was a 50 point giveaway which is a large chunk of the 480 daily points we currently receive. This is through no fault of the entrant and is usually an error of the giveaway creator. Before with the glut of points, some lost points was negligible and no one cared but now it does make a considerable difference. From the poll currently, 93% of people agree with this as there is no downside to this occurring. I suspect that if humble bundle release a wishlisted 50 point game and there are about 30 copies available to you to enter then, if say 4 or 5 get deleted then those points will start to matter to you more.
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Well, I guess the point I was trying to make was that after the change I still don't care much about points. And I believe you'd have to be rather unlucky to have all 30 copies end so fast that you couldn't put at least some air between you and the deadlines. Think two copies and one ends in 30 minutes and one ends in 1 day and you only have enough points left for one giveaway; Obviously you'd enter the former so you'd have enough points together by the time the latter draws close to the end, if you get what I mean but on a larger scale. (TL;DR: ¯_(ツ)_/¯, also: what eternalLocket said)
To get back on topic: 92% of people (me included, btw) agree with the suggestion because frankly it's just plain obvious. I don't believe it's necessary but rather that that's how it should've been from the start simply because it makes sense.
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I felt like this should be the case even before points became more restricted.
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I hope this gets fixed. Since it's apparently planned we can only wait.
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Points to consider. Could people then create fake, high point GAs for other people to use as a point banks which would then be deleted at a fixed time? Is that necessarily a bad thing? I know I entered giveaways when we had that rash of 100point games 6-12 months ago that I would then remove my entry from and spend elsewhere when things took my interest.
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Could people then create fake, high point GAs for other people to use as a point banks which would then be deleted at a fixed time?
They could, but they would be breaking site rules since creating fake giveaways leads to a 5 days suspension.
Some deletions can be valid and not warrant the 5 days suspension, for example if someone makes a giveaway and forgets to mark the region restrictions. However, imo, staff should only delete the initial giveaway after the user makes the new giveaway with the regions restrictions.
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I'm sure staff can take notice of trends of specific people/groups making loads of GA's then deleting them. But even if they do, people like that will then just use legit GA's as point banks. No reason the rest of us have to suffer. I mean a 5p GA who cares if it deletes it, but if it's a AAA game or something and then deleted that can sting, especially now. Giving points back to any GA deleted before it finishes is just fair.
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Considering most of the fake giveaways are AAA games (50P=2h30m), I voted "Yes, full points". Before the changes we were getting 300P every 1-2 hours so it didn't matter but now points are scarce and have value.
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I don't particularly care either way since points are "free chances to enter giveaways", but since I can't see a downside to it, I voted yes.
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Why this wasn't fixed before the new system was implemented beats me.
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There are many options, few of them:
Ask friend or family member to create account on Steam Gifts, and create only month-long GA for AAA titles so users like you can store points there. Would be so generous of them.
Also you can join this new group, Steam Group "Official point Bank of SG" or something, don't remember exact name. It requires from every member to keep long active giveaways worth at least 300 points all the time, and they are allowed to be deleted in the end (so users also must generate GA slots with trash all the time). Then members can just enter group GA page and invest honestly earned points there, accumulating thousands of them. They call themselves.. "bankers". New times, new cares, right?
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Ask friend or family member to create account on Steam Gifts, and create only month-long GA for AAA titles so users like you can store points there. Would be so generous of them.
Not all Steam accounts are viable to be SG's accounts, since they need $100 worth of games that were not free nor bundled. Also, each time a giveaway is deleted the user loses 1 giveaway slot, they start with 3, so unless they do giveaways in those accounts too, they will run out of slots if they are not suspended or banned before that for creating fake giveaways.
Also you can join this new group, Steam Group "Official point Bank of SG" or something, don't remember exact name. It requires from every member to keep long active giveaways worth at least 300 points all the time, and they are allowed to be deleted in the end (so users also must generate GA slots with trash all the time). Then members can just enter group GA page and invest honestly earned points there, accumulating thousands of them. They call themselves.. "bankers".
That is up for staff to start distributing suspensions for fake giveaways, they are in the rules and first offense is a 5 days suspension.
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Oh, sorry, I thought both things look ridiculous enough.
If your close ones could give away gorgeous games, they could give them straight to you, right? So you could forget the whole thing. And another level would be to give them something yourself.
It is just sad how important points are for some users, as well as opportunity to "check in" every GA. For centuries people are valuing money much more than it is worth, but here.. here is a battlefront for points. A struggle of life and death.
I understand, it may be not so obvious for a lot of users what else they could do in life, how earn themselves things they need, or how to learn to earn etc., when points are reaching cap. These small things take your attention from everything else in the world you could choose to care about. Good grief.
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Oh dear, I replied to right comment :) Two things I suggested in the first place were too freezing funny.
I don't see downsides of returning "points" if someone deletes GA since it happens not by the will of entrant. But this is fairly rare to have any power. Considering that users don't know when something is deleted, it probably happens often when points are capped anyway. But all this becomes more important for someone who is spending all the points few times a day not to accidentally reach the cap, and about this were my comments :)
On global picture, we get things we are coming for, inputting intention and effort. If you want to get/create/do something, you concentrate your efforts and you reach it, and simultaneously you don't reach things you have chosen not to care about; and then plan further. Always best is to have more controllability, preferring own doing to chances. Can't win even more and more games from SG? Well, one way to approach the issue is to get more points from deleted GA to have advantage over people who don't spend so many points that it would matter for them. And implement all kinds of small things getting advantage over at least someone, to increase your chances by epsilon. But how about buying games and doing a lot more of different things? Just saying. These may not be comments you are looking for. Have a kitty -_-
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There is no need to do that. There are tons of public giveaway that are available for days or weeks that you can bank points to and swap them out daily.
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There really is no reason to vote no or partial point refund.
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Is there a reason why a number of people think points should only be refunded for running giveaways and not closed giveaways that are deleted? For example, I know there are giveaways being deleted because they're closed, and the giveaway creator realized the key was region restricted, or a duplicate, once checked by the winner. In these situations, the keys are not going to a user that entered, so it seems their points should be refunded.
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It's ended and as such they should be gone.
On other hand I'm actually against allowing deletion of giveaways after the end. We have Not Received feedback for a reason don't we?
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It's ended and as such they should be gone.
I think whether the giveaway is running or closed is irrelevant though, and the important part is whether the points the user spent provided them with a chance to win the gift.
On other hand I'm actually against allowing deletion of giveaways after the end. We have Not Received feedback for a reason don't we?
I agree with you there, and I've tried to debate that point in the past, but I was in the minority. Nonetheless, it might be worth another discussion on the site in the future.
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As long as the deletion happens with the winner's agreement I don't think there's anything wrong with it. With Steam one cannot check the validity of a key and many giveaways include keys that have been invalidated or even used by others, or even by themselves, without the knowledge of the giveaway creator. As long as no bad intentions are involved and one has no history of abusing this option I see no reason to punish the creator for something he was unaware of, as long as the winner agrees with it.
The 'Not Received' status, in my opinion, should reflect those fake giveaways that their creator never intended to give them away or even at a later stage for wtv unreasonable reasons they refuse providing them to the winners.
On a separate note, in my opinion, one shouldn't be able to create a giveaway unless they are providing the key/gift link when the giveaway is created. The current system makes the creation of fake giveaways easier that it should and many are abusing this well intended feature of adding the activation key/link at a later stage.
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My viewpoint is that not received feedback is simply not a big deal. If you buy a key believing it is region free, and then it turns out to be region restricted and the winner cannot activate the gift, they mark it not received. I think that's fine, to be expected at times, and no one should be punished.
However, like you said, a lot of users think this is an issue that needs to be resolved. Users want to maintain 100% received, and they're afraid of having that red mark on their profile, so we end up taking time to review and delete giveaways when the winner agrees. I don't consider it a great use of time, and I find it odd that a random winner determines whether a giveaway will be deleted, and if not received feedback will or will not be visible on a profile.
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Users want to maintain 100% received, and they're afraid of having that red mark on their profile, so we end up taking time to review and delete giveaways when the winner agrees. I don't consider it a great use of time
Perhaps having a 3rd neutral option that users could mark if they feel the creator intended to deliver the gift but encountered a genuine unforeseen issue would work.
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If we refund points from deleted giveaways anytime after, shouldn't we also refund them from not received? Which would have similar idea behind it.
Then again this would lead to undesirable approach of gaining extra points when needed by marking past wins not received. And then lead to some stranges in peoples points as they are refunded, but then refund is repaid... Specially near the point limit.
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Yes, the same logic applies to not received giveaways, but as you said, this would not work in practice because it gives people an incentive to mark a giveaway as not received, which we want to avoid for obvious reasons.
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Before it really wasn't a big deal, but with the new point system, I can see the purpose of this. I'm all for point refunds from deleted giveaways.
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Right now when a giveaway is deleted, those that entered the giveaway don't get their points back.
This is something that has been announced to be implemented for over 2 years. (Source: 1 and 2)
Due to the changes with increased point cap to 500 and decreased of points given to users, shouldn't this be implemented now? Specially since points will become scarce and when a giveaway gets deleted it feels like a punishment to those that entered that giveaway.
What do you guys think?
Edit: This was implemented, so no more need for this thread. Closing it.
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