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Lotsa people talking about comments. Well, since I'm a damn baby to this site I don't know much, but I can think of a few reasons why less discussions are being created?

First one I've got it less new members, so less people creating discussions asking how the site works, or maybe those that would instead just read the FAQ -- or don't even ask for fear of blacklist.

Other one might be that the site has seen a lot of changes, meaning less bugs/suggestions being made (also less complaints, heh).

And I guess finally, there are a collection of 'streamlined' threads. Discussions which have the entire purpose of being for say, listing the current bundles, or for posting coupons/keys. No need for making a new discussion altogether.

These are the kinds of reasons I can think of that aren't really that negative at all, just things that happen with a site getting older. I'm sure there are a lot more cynical explanations I have yet to learn :S

Honestly, I care less about SG when PC culture was more widely introduced. When the I'm better than, XYZ became a thing. When the Mr meeseeks users wants attention so bad is annoying because they personalities are beyond themselves.

I also get the feeling that a lot of people quit SG or stopped visiting the site regularly. They're still registered users, but probably got tired of not winning anything after entering millions (okay maybe like 100) giveaways!

I miss the time when I could check the forum list every day and find 4 trains and 2 puzzle threads at least.

Well ... maybe if people stop blacklisting everyone when they slightly disagree with a topic or comment they made ... that would help people get out of their shells :p

Trying not to offend anyone has become close to imposible nowadays , cause of the special snowflakes .
So having an opinion that may differ from the masses will surely land you in a blacklist somewhere .

Well, many of the users that actively started discussions and drove them forward had either left or stopped being that much active. Us, the lurkers, are still here but we don't really talk all that much.
There's also the very real and tangible fear of being blacklisted, even if doesn't really stop me from using the site as I normally do to be blacklisted by a few dozen users it does send me the message that my opinions aren't welcomed, I imagine I'm not the only one that thinks twice before writing a comment.
This other reason is a lot more personal but I might not be the only one so I gonna share it too, I've thought about making threads about certain things to then backtrack and not do them multiple times. Sometimes they were some dumb or quirky idea that I thought might be fun and some other times they were more personal things that I wanted to ask people their opinions about, I've even wrote entire comments in some of those threads about asking people for help but instead of clicking submit I closed the tab, and it's always because of shyness and fear of being harshly judged. A lot of people say that this site is for game related things and nothing more and lash against anybody that touches another subject in a discussion, so while at first glance this seems like a welcoming and friendly community there's always that lingering doubt that if I cross some sort of unspoken limit of the allowed themes of discussion I'll be met by the not so friendly and even a bit toxic side of this community. I must admit that I'm also guilty of keeping a facade of over politeness in here to not rub anyone the wrong way, I actually admire those brave enough to just be themselves and consecuences be damned.

Lack of interesting Steam sales and change in Steam gifting may figure into it somewhat.

It seems like blacklists are being mentioned a lot in this conversation. I said when it was implemented that there would be problems from them but it's not my website so I don't care how many hits it gets though if it was mine I would see this trend as discouraging and try to figure out what is going wrong. Are we here to give games away and try to win some too or are we here to judge others that we've never even met based on some posts on a website? That's what this place seems to promote these days. If I liked someone enough that I felt like giving them a game I don't need this website to do it on nor to brag about how many times I've done it or ask for a pat on the back because I did it.

I'm also going to take a road less traveled (and will probably get me on some more blacklists) and say that creating giveaways with sgtools is an issue for some of us old timers to the site that believe that using it is yet another way of making your own giveaway rules that are far and above that which is allowed by SG, and that used to NEVER be allowed. Just like this new trend of adding a comment to giveaways stating "if the key is invalid you agree to cancel this giveaway" (which doesn't mean squat). That's not how this site works and I still can't figure out how sgtools was allowed as an exception to the rule and I don't care anymore. Nor do I want 100 opinionated explanations of the matter from 100 different people. Emphasis on the I don't care anymore.

Then there's all of the shitposts. So many shitposts. I see enough of them just trying to keep up with friends and family on Facebook. I don't need a backup shitpost source but if I ever felt like I did this would be the first site I would come to. I never used to feel that way coming here but I feel far from welcome here anymore and there's nothing welcoming new users either except constant discussions like this one discussing the current state of the site.

Would you want to come here if you just read only the comments in this discussion before making the decision? I sure wouldn't. Not worth the drama.

As the amount of trash given away has increased, the amount of forum activity has decreased.

I see that people have already identified the reasons, but since doing that without suggesting how to deal with it is fruitless, here are some suggestions:

1) remake or ask the original creator to recreate old and important threads in order to breath some fresh air into them. Some interesting threads died because they have 100 pages of people that aren't even here anymore. Some of them takes forever to load, like the selfie thread - mostly because it's full of comments and pictures of people that don't use SG anymore. There are at least 4-5 nice threads that could use a "new coat of paint"
2) We could remove BL/WL for a week and see how that goes. For science xD
3) 2 different BLs. One for joining GAs, one for comments.
4) We could prohibit bumps or at least excessive bumping. They create a false sense of importance and makes some not-so-important threads stay at the top while more interesting ones, the ones that could generate discussion stay below and therefore hidden.

That's all I could come up with in 5 minutes.

Discussions here are not that easy tbh.

I see different reasons for that:

1. We, the community

   • Topics without a GA will often die without a lot of answers
   • Topic with GA will coverd in "Bumps" without any meaningfull content.
   • People are afraid to say what they think because they might be get a blacklist

2. The forum by itself
   The organisation of the forum is not that great. Group Recruitment and Let's Play Together are more or less death. Offtopic is a place for "lists" and "awareness" topics (they are not bad but not a real discussion). It would need a new organisation with mods for different topics (Hardware Talk, Game Talk, Film & Music, Events...). So a real place where we could talk about new games on steam, share trailers of movies, help on computerproblems or even have good political discussions (last one would need a good mod).

Also a simple "bump" or "like" button would be way better than thousand "Bump" posts... It would at first lower the post numbers a lot but the quality of the posts would rise.

Well, I still think the #1 cause is: Changes to Steam Gifting/Inventory system. That was a large part of giving away games (and also trading), and that is now gone completely.

Other than that, it's the usual problem of peeps taking stuff too personally and/or too seriously..

Somewhere in this thread here, a good observation: The "negativity" stemming from complaints and rants about the Bundle threads, or rather inside those threads, because THAT ONE GAME TOTALLY SUCKS YOU KNOW..
I get it.. and that observation is correct, but here is my take on it:
Don't assign too much value on it. Really. Because it's like this, just in reality. You have two people (or more), and they don't know what to talk about with each other (which is actually very common and normal, you have to realize that), so what happens is this:

• Meaningless Small Talk
• Talking about the weather
• Talking about other meaningless shit, which, okay, is basically point 1 again
• Randomly bitching about literally ANYTHING.
  But, you have to be aware, this is basically small talk as well. It does not mean that anyone really thinks so or believes completely what they are saying. So, again, you should not put too much value onto that :)

Besides.. I am still here, so all is perfectly well HEUEHHEUEHUEE

I would attribute this decline to 2 major facts.

• Many active users stopped visiting the website the last year or so.
• Blacklisting discourages new users from creating discussions or commenting. That and the fact that most posts from not that active users get buried immediately due to the lack of a proper sorting algorithm (eg. date created ascending/descending etc.).

Most of the topics now are either bundles and other deals or shitty trains. I couldn't care less for some of these topics.

Or even the positivism topic and you're not alone types of topics. When they were first created they created a discussion, a conversation, helping each other and to see the good and stuff. Now they are used to drop giveaways for "charity"(some ga have the good intent, but some of the games being given away are just depressing). I know they were not initially created with that intent, but look what it became.

Key characters in the community have left or gone inactive. Or moved to other sg branches like discord or groups and what not. I would be long gone also if it wasn't for the discord server. Characters that made things move, happen or just give me a good burst of laughter.

Last but not least blacklisting. People. STOP CARING ABOUT THAT! PLEASE! First, stop whining about that. Gosh dang it is not that bad. Do you like everyone? Then how come you expect everyone to like you. Are you somewhat special that I'm not aware or what? Second, stop blacklisting people because they just have a different opinion than you, or has bad grammar, or that he poop in his pants. Learn how to be tolerant. And if you don't want to, please blacklist me so you don't enter my gas, you *¥#@&£. Blacklist is a neat feature, I like it and it's yours to use. But you don't have to be a douche about it.

Not that I was ever super chatty here, but lately it seems like nearly every post ends up attracting drama or negativity. Not saying people always have to be super positive and overly friendly when they post, but less... harsh might encourage some more interaction. It certainly doesn't make me want to really try to interact very often.

And with how black list happy people get, I can understand why some people would rather just avoid the forums. You can't really share an opinion, no matter how harmless, without someone instantly hitting you with a BL because they have a different opinion

There's not enough drama anymore thats why,

We need to start a flame war!

When I usually (read: rarely) post on some thread, nobody responds to my post. It's hard to have discussions when nobody reads/cares about your posts

EDIT: in retrospect this reads as a cry for help or for attention. Sorry about that :)

I know from my example, comments on giveaways made a huge part of it because I used to always say thanks (for the chance) but then people started accusing other people for saying thanks because if you say thanks it means you're a bot so I stopped... and more and more people explicitly write not to comment on giveaways because they don't want spam in their inbox... and it is understandable if you have a lot of giveaway open... or an entire event...

I still try to "start a convo" in my giveaways like in the olden times, but most people simply ignore it and don't comment at all. I remember times when "What are your plans for the summer" would get 100+ nice replies over a weekend, now you're lucky if you get 1 word reply (thanks) from someone you've never seen before on sg.

Time. Patience. As i grow older and theres more and more platforms, social media, this and that fighting for time im finding both runing ever more thin.

I used to be active in a number of places. Nowadays i barely enteder GAs, much less comment. When i come i look up the first page of sg only (filtering for wishlisted games), more to look at the discussions and deals listed alongside the gas; I only look up the ones show on the frontpage, and then i click on any that catches my interest.

Then, depending on the content i comment or not.

So laying it out:

1- Reduced time, other sites, etc (external factor)
2- Few topics appear on the front page (+almost random wich ones appear)
3- 50% or more of the time the content of said topics didn't incite me to engage
4- Having the time to engage (sometimes i enter really quickly before going to bed or something like that)

Its a number of barriers. How much of the content isn't anything substantial or worth of exchanging ideas is also a huge factor- deals, gas, jokes... there ain't much to say besides thanks or joking back. Another good deal of topics are common complains or doubts, some of wich are quickly closed, if not is just people joking or making drama.

I like discussions even more so on gaming- but even that runs thin here. When i used to be more present i rarely saw interesting developments- rarely anyone writes a quarter of what the op write. When people recommend something its saying a name or 'i found it pretty cool' etc- even on Steam, wich is no paramount of community i see people going more on why they like or dislike something for example.

I believe SGs nature runs against good discussions. Besides everyone's time and patience the main reason people are here are the GAs. Im sure a majority of users only enter GAs and only browse the foruns looking for more of then.

Gaming itself is a bit bad with foruns. The majority would rather be playing then typing. Im also part of it, i love a good discussion, years back i spent most of the time online on a number of foruns... but as my time got shorter so did my gaming time, and my backlog just increases. Heck, i could be halfway a level in some game right now if i didn't enter SG.

Alot of active people from back then, also left over the years.

Not just active discussions, but puzzles also really diminished aside from a jigidi here and there.

Screw quality, we want quantity! :)
No.. no... really we don't.
Is this a quality comment? Probably not. :'(

Oh boy, where to start?

The introduction of blacklists/personal stats? The unnecessary drama, that, every once in a while, keeps resurfacing publicly on the forum? The same, repetitive threads and comments lacking in originality? And I'm not blaming anyone here - I'm just as much at blame as anyone - Steamgifts just changed over the course of the years, for various reasons. It's not just the stats, either; The general attitude of the community changed immensely over the past few years.

I think that the forum used to be more of a tight-knit community of people who just happened to noticed that Steamgifts even had a forum. When I first began active here, everything felt more welcoming, friendly, and interesting. For example, people would sometimes create a thread to introduce themselves on the forum, and the usual forum regulars would welcome them with friendly and quirky banter, and I really think most users were much more laid-back and not as serious. Nowadays, I feel like a new user making a thread will get lost in the huge amount of content, and most people will just feel like it's "just another user among other".

I also feel like the forum has become a tool or an outlet for people to rant, complaint, or even sometimes get unnecessary attention. Many people use the forum for bundle threads, posting giveaway threads, etc, and while it's totally fine and good... these threads are not particularly interesting or encourage discussion. If the forum is a tool/dump for venting, posting bland threads for the sake of posting giveaways/getting attention, then this is exactly what it'll be. And really, it's not like anyone made the forum like it is now against their own will - We make the forum what we want it to be, and the majority chose to go down that path, and I can only assume most people here are fine with this and appreciate the forum more than they would have back then.

Personally? I kind of lost interest in the forum around 2-3 years ago, but stuck around for lack of better option to waste time online. There are many, many reasons I can think of why the Steamgifts community is going downhills, but I'm sick today and can barely think/type straight so you'll have to excuse this incoherent wall of thoughts and me leaving it at that (because re-reading, I realize my post makes little sense already).

I just like lurking.

I don't know, for me the forums got a bitter taste after constantly being attacked for justified blacklists (rulebreaking, played 0 wins).
A big chunk of the forum regulars are definitely still here and still very active, but no one really engages anymore unless it's a fight.

Maybe discussions went down because bundles aren't as good as they used to be and people don't really have enough material for making fun threads because of it? Even the regular PSA threads are lackluster when it comes to giveaways, not that they would have to have better giveaways, but no one cares anymore. And I guess people don't like to comment because everything's going to be attacked by trolls looking for entertainment.

I'm still pretty new to the site so I don't have the best of experience, but there does seem to be a much more negative atmosphere right now created by "both" sides: those who feel morally superior and those who rely on their own morals. And every thread contains attacks for people behaving a certain way, it just discourages people from even feeling welcomed here. At least that's how I personally feel about these posts.

For me 3 things made me come less to SG:
1) bundles had a decrease in "quality/quantity". Currently with the exception of humble bundle the rest of the sites can't make a bundle with good unbundled games. This probably happened because of the rise of the gray market, these sites would buy a lot of bundles and sell the keys very cheap effectively making the game on sale 100% of the time. The less exciting the bundles is the less likely i'll be making a post on SG.

2) Steam change to gifting/trading. By ending the possibility og buying (region free) games from cheap markets makes the deal section of SG a bit of a ghost town. When steam allowed buying games from cheaper regions I'd take the time to read the comments and share the news if there was a region that had the game cheaper then the USA/EU version.

3)The huge backlog that i have acquired has made "free" games less attractive. Right now i'm in the following situation: do I want to waste 10-30 mins on SG for the possibility of a free game or waste that time on a game i have bought from a bundle?

I do still come from time to time and if I manage to get a stable job i'll return for a few good giveaways however i will no longer use a lot of my time here anymore.