you don't need to spam anything. pick one way to contact the winner (email, send the key on sg, add on steam, comment in his profile, etc). if you can't reach him, then ask for a reroll and send proof.

if the key has been revealed, just send a request feedback ticket instead.

If they are not using this site, how did they enter to begin with.

the magic of autojoin ┐(ツ)┌

Autojoiners, bots, extreme leechers that have no basic manners.....
best way to avoid much of them are at least set on lvl2+ by the open for all GA's.
Or, better, use sgtools, the forum, ITH, jigsaw puzzles or anything like that.
I ma sure you know that on your level but i explain it for other ones too :o)

I'm personally not really interested in using a bunch of extra tools just to avoid a problem that could be fixed if winners who make no effort to respond to their free gift were penalized. I've been waiting a month (they've been active) for one of my latest GA's to be confirmed and I was basically told too bad for not wanting to add a total stranger to steam, or email them which I am even less interested in. It really should not be my responsibility to chase after some stranger to click a simple button.

So, I'm inclined to agree... winners who don't respond in a timely manner should be penalized and/or gifter's should be able to request deletion without the winner's compliance.

Personally, as I said here, I believe it would be a good change to SG if you were unable to enter any GAs if you have unclaimed (but sent) gifts.

Would help in the battle against auto-joiners
Would help against those in groups with ratio requirements abusing the ratio
Would save on irritation of waiting for a user that's clearly online in SG and Steam from waiting a week to mark as received.

This occurred in 2 of my GA's and it took 8 days for reroll , its pretty stressful for the GA creator the way it is...

This more than ever since saying SG on Steam gets you banned. If people refuse to use SG they forfeit won games automatically, done. No more spam, no more bans, no more giver blaming.

I never have this problem because of how I gift my games.

1. I post in the description that the winner will be contacted by Steam.
2. Once there is a winner, I sent them a friend invitation on Steam.
3. If my winner does not respond within a week, I am free to file a ticket for a re-roll.
4. If my winner does respond, I give him or her the game/key/gift link after having received that response, and I now have a chat log of the receipt of my game.
5. If my winner does not mark the game "received," I file a ticket for it and include the screenie from #4.

I am only giving away a handful of games at one time, so it is not a problem to withhold the gift until after I am in touch with my winners. Some people give away hundreds of keys at a time, however, so they will distribute the keys automatically instead of manually.

Returning to your suggestion, it is not your responsibility to force your winners to claim their gifts. Getting a re-roll is as simple as showing you have contacted your winner, and that is in your hands. Seeing as how SG now has automatic notification of wins via email, it would make sense to allow re-rolls one week after a giveaway ends. (If a winner claims no email notification was received before a re-roll was granted, whose fault is that?) The only sticking point seems to be if you give out your key or gift link and your winner does not mark "received." This may happen for several different reasons.

1. The key was invalid.
2. The key was to the wrong game.
3. The key was never actually received.
4. The key was received, but the winner simply did not redeem it.
5. The winner redeemed the game, but did not mark it received.

It is because people give out the key/gift link/whatever without contacting their winners that re-rolls are not automated. So, it could be argued that re-rolls should be automatic in those cases where the Grace Period has expired and the gift has not already been given (e.g. the key has not yet been viewed). In practice, that is the protocol SG Support currently uses.

So nobody still has any legit reason for this crap? We could start by figuring out what the ??? is in

1. Punish people for making the site work and grow by giving
2. ???
3. Profit

If I understood correctly, you're arguing for giving the GA creator the power to auto-reroll the winner after 1 week, without showing proof of contact. If the gifter does not like their winner for whatever reason, this rule can be abused by gifters to just wait a week and reroll. (Although gifters do risk report from the winner.)

Another potential issue I see is people use this to gain level by gifting gifts to their own account. Have 5 bot accounts, reroll a few times (taking weeks) and ensure the game goes to your account of choice while earning the level for whatever account they use. With the current system, to achieve this, the number of reroll requests would raise a red flag to support.

Since new users with no idea how this site works are coming up with scenarios that have absolutely nothing to do with my suggestion, let's make it as simple as possible:

1) GA ends and winner is picked
2) Winner doesn't even log in SG for 2 weeks (this is required and the whole point, people who don't use this site at all)
3a) Creator waits a week and then has to spam their Steam and email for absolutely no reason at all and show proof of it and wait for the ticket to be handled manually.
3b) Creator waits a week and presses re-roll button
4) Creator gets a new winner who accepts the game right away (or we go back to 2 with more bad luck)

Literally the only difference is in step 3 where a is the current model and b is my suggestion and it doesn't suddenly give you a mystical power to pick any winner unless you have some guaranteed way to keep every winner until that one in a hospital for that exact week.

The winner has got 2 notifications already about their win, both a red number here which they would see if they ever used the site for anything other than autojoining bots and the email they get about it if they want. So why aren't those notifications enough for everyone?

Bonus question: how does the current system exactly prevent the evil creator who doesn't want to give the game away after all from doing this: spam a notification on winner's Steam and still refuse to give the game to them? How is that spam proof of them giving the game and not just exactly what it is: useless spam?

I suspect that this mostly happens with newcomers and low-level users but out of curiosity, do you guys commonly get this issue with people that are level 3 or higher? From a data perspective, it would be very interesting to know what level this kind of thing mostly plateau's at (if at all)

I think it makes sense to allow an automated re-roll if the key has not been viewed by the winner after 7 days.

*

Here's a question about the current system:

For key giveaways (as opposed to actual "Steam gifts" of course), does clicking the "send key" button count as "proof" that the winner has been contacted? Or is a separate form of "proof" required?

*

Also, just for the hell of it, I checked my own experience on this topic, because this has not been an issue for me, and I was curious to see the actual numbers.

Total giveaways = 3,967
Total re-rolls requested because the winner did not view the key and could not be reached = 1

I've had have maybe 6-8 winners who didn't redeem the key within 7 days, but I sent them a message and they eventually responded. A couple of them were on vacation with no access to Steam, not sure about the rest.

As far as moderation goes, this site has relied heavily upon our users to police themselves and take personal responsibility for their interactions (both with the site and with each other). With the introduction of "bots," some users have attempted to shift the burden of interaction away from themselves, and whether or not they succeed in doing so, the burden of responsibility remains. The creators of the giveaways have things they need to do, and the entrants/winners of the giveaways have things they need to do.

Up until now, there have been good reasons why the process of re-rolling has not been automated, but most of those reasons are no longer applicable. It then becomes a matter of what responsibilities each user has, and to what extent the required interactions should be automated. Specifically, ...

• Creation of a desired giveaway is upon its creator. (A manual process, but there are tools to help facilitate it.)
• Entering a particular giveaway is upon its entrant. (Supposedly a manual process, but a "bot" would make this automated.)
• Handling of a particular giveaway's ending (deletion or delivery of gift) is upon its creator. (Can be an automated process.)
• Contacting the winner of a giveaway is upon its creator. (This has been automated by the site.)
• Accepting delivery of the gift is upon the winner of the giveaway. (Still a manual process as automation is complicated.)

Looking at that list, the creation of a giveaway requires an active creator, and the ending of a giveaway requires an active recipient. Those are the two "sticking points." The suggestion of automating re-rolls after expiration of the Grace Period is a request for a tool to help with the process of handling the giveaway's ending should the process become "stuck" at it's final stage. We have a precedent of such tools being made available to both parties, the giver and the receiver.

• The automated email sent out to notify a winner helps the creator by removing the burden or contacting the winner.
• The toggles of "sent" and "received/not received" were added to track the status of the gift for both creator and winner.
• The addition of a field for "game key" in the giveaway's creation removes the burden of manually distributing keys and tracking whether or not those keys have been "viewed" by their winners.

All of the above being true, it would make sense for two more tools be available:

1. A "button" for the winner to request a re-roll. Such a re-roll should be granted automatically if there is a key entered for the giveaway and that key has not been viewed by the winner. Otherwise, the re-roll should be handled by Support.
2. A "button" for the creator to request a re-roll. Such a re-roll should be granted automatically if there is a key entered for the giveaway, and that key has not been viewed by the winner, and the winner has not marked the gift as "received/not received," and the Grace Period has expired, and two additional days are given for the winner to mark the gift "received/not received." Otherwise, the re-roll should be handled by Support.

While there will be situations which result in a legitimate winner being unable to claim his or her gift in a timely manner, it seems to me that 95% of all cases would be resolved fairly if implemented as detailed above. Support would still handle all cases not resolved by automation, and the burden of creation and participation would still remain on the respective parties.

That is my current opinion on this matter.