Would you at least tell us the game? It looks like a complicated puzzle and I know some of us would be rather miffed to go through a ton of work just to find out it's something we own already.

At the off chance a problem comes up, be sure to use a UTF-8 text editor. I don't think it will be a problem though, unless you start saving UTF-8 as ANSI in notepad or something... As long as it can be pasted into the online tool(s) and turn the ??? characters back into their proper UTF-8 format (meaning your browser supports UTF-8), it should be fine.

Hate these =,= but thanks for the giveaway :D

As soon as i saw what the decoded binary said i gave up :P. I'm horrible at these

tl;dr

I am getting that the header information is expecting things that it is not getting (file size and checksum) thus claiming that it is corrupt. Do I have to modify the file before I start decoding? (I hope I am not giving away too much!)

"Due to the constraints of this forum (removing single breaks..."

DERP A FUCKING HERP

Hopefully this isnt a spoiler for asking, but when i try to convert it to binary i keep getting errors on every site or if i get it to convert it just converts back to the symbols

Are you sure its not bugged or something? I tried many websites and always get errors.

I keep getting it back to the beginning, without any changes to the original...

OK, for those having problems with the first step, let's take pastebin out of the equation.
You SHOULD be able to go from text to a file to binary to text again, but let's keep it all as a file for the first two parts.

Here is a direct download instead of pastebin: link THIS FILE WORKED. The pastebin text (swear I tested it, but maybe not) doesn't seem to work.

Also, if you have a problem altering the binary file back to text, then please make sure you tick the option for "GZIP-compatible encoding" (but only if the website you are using has this option, otherwise it might work fine). I figured it would try both, but you HAVE to select it. I wouldn't haved used that option had I known this, but I used it in case it increased the ability to use more websites or offline tools.

does the .dat.ntx extension have anyhthing to do with teh format or am i looking at this all wrong?

Link removed.

meh, can't be bothered to actually break that ciphe - actually can't even find your old thread so that hint is pretty much worhtless :P

no more puzzling for me - you guys make it too hard and in the end there's only the "exists in your account" anyway :P

Nice one. Working on the last parts, trying to decipher all that rubbish. I hate twisted tongue :)

Pfff, I manipulated the file but now I'm stuck at the decoding stuff :(

If the game is not worth at least Э100 this would be so not worth the time :D Thanks for fixing the file tho, but some hints would be nice.

Gotta say your final "trivia" is pretty.. esoteric. And I don't mean the various encodings, I can deal with them.

I just realized I made a typo in the decoded instructions. The extra hint says "compression" when it should be "encryption". Sorry about that. Too late to fix now. In the context though, it should have been noticeable that it was an error on my part as I continue saying "encryption/encrypt" etc.

One single bump.

No new comments (here or giveaway) and no new entries. Still has 4 days left. I'm starting to think that is entirely too long. I dunno if everyone seen it and tried, or if some missed it since it's not being bumped anymore.

Currently attempting it, Have the clues for 2, 3 and 5 (Don't quite understand them yet!) Working on getting clues 1 and 4 but can't quite figure out the procedure to do so... YET!

After about an hour and finally getting to the real puzzle. I realized it was out of my league. Thanks for the giveaway though! Good luck to everyone else.

Sadly after trying I have to give up. I can never figure these out but good luck to all who try.

manipulating the file is easy.... decoding 5question inside it.... not so easy

"The only clue I will give you, because I feel I must or it might be unsolvable, is there is a compression I used that can encrypt non-alphabetic characters... This is all I can tell you.
I didn't use it in my last giveaway, but you might find a similar encryption used in that one; You might even call it it's "sister" since it only encrypts alphabetic characters."

LoL seems I'm late T_T got no time to decrypt what's inside...

I lost the original notepad decrypted stuff.
For those still interested in solving, I will try my best to recontruct from what I remember of it.

First, the file is binary (file, not as in 01010010 stuff) converted to ASCII using yEnc (a method used to post binary files on text-only Usenet/Newsgroups). It should have worked as text, but it didn't, so I had to use a file instead (kinda defeated the purpose of it). It can be done online or using a program.

Second, you can already see a hint in the yEnc filename (if you opened in a text editor). It's gzip. Websites use it to make pages load faster, so it too can be done online. If you are lazy, you can just use 7zip (not tested with winrar). Open it from there into notepad. I used a compression to make the hints much smaller

Now you get your 5 clues. Each is encrypted/encoded with online tools. Some can even be done in your head (like the ROT47 of morse code if you just associate the character with a dash or dot).

What encryptions/encodings were used? (In no specific order):

1. URL encoding (identifiable by %## where # is a number). I trickily used it to hide the base64 telltale symbols, among other things.
2. base64 on anything ending in == .
3. L337 speak (when you see "phvk phvk", use it).
4. rot13 (only rotates characters by 13 up or down, does NOT change non-alphabetic characters, so it's easy to identify in a sentence and can possibly be done in your head or on paper).
5. rot47 (same as above but includes printable characters up to 47, so 47-26 = 21 other characters).
6. morse code. you will need the above to recognize it, maybe.
7. binary (bunch of 1's and 0's).
8. find and replace (or manually) convert "one" and "oh" for the above to be convertible.
9. flip (up-down, left-right) and reverse words. the website/tool should do them all.
10. hexadecimal to ASCII (the very last stage to all but one clue).
11. Dutch to English

Anyways, here is the giveaway URL: http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/mReDR/dota-2
It was Dota2. Many solved it; only 2 entered (out of respect, already had, didn't want, etc).

If you have anymore questions, let me know. I will monitor this for the next few days for you die-hard puzzle solvers that just want to solve it even though it's over.

For the "trivia" part:

Fiddy Too = 52.
Tongue twister = letter "R" (only one to not need Hex-to-ASCII).
Sexty with all fingers of one hand (IIRC). Sounds like sexting (sex texting) with one hand. It's just "65". Sixty and Five (fingers).
Forgot the rest. Sorry.

I went crazy with rot13, so if you see words that don't make sense but look like they could be words, it's probably rot13'ed. The dutch words are rot13'ed so it's really difficult to tell it is decrypted/encrypted.