Privated games will BAN you.

I believe setting game to private and removing it is treated equally. As there is no way to separate those actions.

Yup, I've been there already. I didn't even understand what happened at first. Thankfully, I sorted it out, and they lifted the ban.

https://imgur.com/a/MEifYzA
/\ This is the difference (they don't specify it on the rules)

I agree, it should be stated clearly in the rules that setting a game to private isn't allowed. Only excuse: Steam added this feature relatively recently.

Same shit happened to me 1 month ago. No warning, 5 day ban (and a permanent strike) for something not explained in FAQ.
This was my support ticket:
..........

• Gladmore

Why are you suspending me for a game from 2019.. that has been activated?
It's in my account. But was marked as private, since it's a nudity game.
I have never gone against the rules on this site. Yet a 5 day suspension for this crap?

come on 🤣

• XnameX
  (Senior Moderator)

Hello Gladmore.

When a game is hidden as Private, only you can see it. For everyone else, you don't own it. If you don't own a game that you won, you are suspended. Doesn't matter how old a giveaway is, if you haven't been suspended for a missing win, you are suspended when we find it. I hope that explains this outcome.

Since I can't reverse the suspension myself, I'll leave this ticket open while also forwarding it to higher tier support members.

• Gladmore

Could start with a warning.
I've seen users and mods behave like pure evil, and receive less penalty.
But hey, this is the way.
.

• XnameX
  (Super Moderator)
  Hello Gladmore.

The rules and proceedings of Steamgifts as outlined in the FAQ and Guidelines are the warning.

According to the rules, all wins must be activated on the winner's account.
By marking the game as "Received" you acknowledged that you indeed received and activated the game you won to your Steam account. When we see the "Received" mark among your wins, we assume you've received the game, and if we don't find it on your account, you get suspended for violating one of the basic site rules which I quoted below:

Won gifts must be activated on the Steam account used during registration, and they cannot be regifted, traded, sold, or removed from your Steam account after activation.
Winners will need to correctly mark their gift as received or not received within one week of the gift being marked as sent by the giveaway creator. It is also necessary to keep this feedback up-to-date if the status of the gift changes.

XnameX has already given a short explanation, I'll elaborate further on it:

• There isn't a statute of limitations and there isn't an automatic system to check and suspend users.
  If someone reports your profile then we check it and apply the appropriate suspension. *

Steam's help article about the feature explains right at the top that

Description
Marking a game as private hides your ownership

and

What does "Mark Private" on a game do?
In general, marking a game as private will cause the game to appear to other users on the Steam platform as if you did not own it at all.

Furthermore

How is this [setting to private] different from hidden games?
There’s already an option in your Steam Client Library to hide a game, which prevents it from appearing to you. It’s an organizational tool for those games you still want to own, but want to take up space your client's game list. Private games are essentially the opposite, they are visible to you in your Library and not to anyone else.

Consequently by settings games to private, outside of yourself they are no different from unactivated or removed games. We check accounts and these games won't be found - therefore they are treated like non-activated wins.
In other words, you setting a win to private achieved exactly what you intended: You made it seem like you have removed it from your account. Which is against Steamgifts' rules.

• As I've confirmed your win back on your account, I'll lift the suspension; the strike will stay though. Be careful about this in the future - we will not lift a suspension again after you had set a win to private. Meaning you cannot set past or future wins to private again as you will be suspended again when doing so, without the chance to get that suspension lifted.

Have a nice day.

Oh, and of course they refuse to change the ban reason, even after printing and proving that EVERY game was activated a long time ago. That's totally unfair.

Sorry, but I disagree with your argument, it was just a strike.

If SteamGifts requires users to own the games they’ve won and you set your games to private (making it appear to everyone as if you don’t own them), you’re effectively violating the rules. This is because failing to show a won game as activated on your profile is against the platform’s policies.

You can see how this could be abused. For instance, someone might win the same game multiple times or sell the keys, only activating the game if they’re caught.

Sure, you might have proof that you activated the game, but this would demand manual verification for every case. That would take a significant amount of time and effort, even if we discount all the false claims.

I understand that some users will want to hide certain games, but wins must remain on your account and so a feature that reports they aren't on the account will cause issues. There isn't an override for SteamGift mods that allow us to see those games, we are treated the same as everyone else.

My suggestion here for people that didn't want to have adult games visible on their account was to check the giveaways, and in the case of users with only a few single copy giveaway wins hidden, I recommended they contact the creators to ask if they could have the giveaways deleted, and explain their reasoning. While not all creators will allow it (it is lost CV, no matter how minor), any giveaways that are deleted mean a game that is no longer required to show on your account.