Damn it, you found me! Now, I've to change again >_>.
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At this point it doesn't matter because they aren't selling them anymore at Indie Gala. People should just be happy they got a ton of points and move along. If you don't like the giveaways, just filter them out with SG+. Everybody wins here, regardless if you bought the games or not.
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yeah, but the same argument works at least as well for other bundles that are marked. I agree with you and so I must that that this should stop being a thing. http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/vUnIE/important-updates-to-contributor-values-and-bundle-games/page/31337 :)
so yeah, agree especially with the steamgift+ allowing you to filter them out. why look a gift horse in the mouth, people clearly want the games or wouldn't enter, everybody got entry points from the boom ect.
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Exactly, and even if the reasons some people are giving that away are most likely to farm contribution in one way or another. It's still a game someone might like and play making their day if they win, so well. It does not hurt anyone at all.
You like it? Enter them and try to win it. You don't well, then patiently scroll through them or ignore them one way or another
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THIS^ , i give them to
yes it gives contributor but people actually like this game , so why the hell not?
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yeah, but the same argument works at least as well for other bundles that are marked. I agree with you and so I must that that this
should stop being a thing. http://www.steamgifts.com/forum/vUnIE/important-updates-to-contributor-values-and-bundle-games/page/31337 :)
so yeah, agree especially with the steamgift+ allowing you to filter them out.
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It is abusive, not exploit. A person, such as yourself, who buys a crap ton of copies of those games to farm value, is abusing a cheap-method to get e-peen without putting much effort into it. Not that i give a damn tbh.
But yeah, i do agree on the exploit thingie, this is not exploiting, just abuse of extremelly cheap sales, like ignite, zeno clash, rome total war gold edition, etc.
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I didn't buy it to get contributor value. If I did I would just gave them away for the public. I bought a lot cause I wanted to give some games away for every group of people I intended to. As you can see some are public, some are in group A, some B, some C and some are for forum folks.
And if I gain $ value - well, good. If they mark it as bundle - I won't mind at all but people still will get games. Someone will always win. You want me to get 0$ value for them? Please, write to support about it and I won't even say a word. Do it.
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You say that but you did gain around $200 contrib value for them. If you had really wanted to give them away for the good of people only then you would have done a forum post.
No, i don't think buying lots and giving them away is abuse, but when people dit back and act like that isn't what they have done it makes you look foolish.
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Do you know how stupid that sounds?
Make a forum post with 20 keys so everyone can grab them? What about groups I'm in? What about high value contributors? And why would I make forum giveaways by just posting keys if I can do that properly? What is wrong with u ;D
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And there it is. Excuses. There are plenty of cheaper other games that you could have given away. There are FOUR bundles up currently but you rushed for a cheap high contributor value option. It's obvious you did it for the value and pretending you didn't, as i said before, looks foolish. You could have given away FOUR bundle games for the same price as one shadow harvest and the result would have been four people receiving games (which are a lot better and have better metascores and user reviews).
You did it for the value like everyone else, the only difference is most people don't try to hide it.
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And there it is again - accusation. I decide what I want to give away. Who are you to tell me what games to give away? If I did it for the contribution value I wouldn't tell mods to mark these games as bundle games because I'd care about my contributor value.
Sure, additional contribution is nice but people get games, I didn't pay much for them so more people got more games, everyone wins. Except you apparently because you're complaining.
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Let people farm the value if they can and want to, this is obviously an exploit, althought a huge one.
And if you count this as an abuse or do not want to share bad games, then just don't make this giveaways and ignore them.
There is nothing bad in giving away games, right?
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Whether it is abuse/exploitative or not depends on the intents of the system and the user rather than just the system itself and the user's actions. However, people's complaints are - or should be - aimed at the system which encourages such things and should not be taken personally, especially if you know in yourself that you do what you do for the right reasons.
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That is why I made that other topic - it depends on peoples reasons for making contributor value giveaways. Instead of the idea of people being right/wrong here, however, let's look at the system and ask if it's really all it could be. The system encourages giving away huge quantities of $1 Shadow Harvest and discourages giving away, for example, keys from a $1 purchase of the current Groupees bundle which will have at least 5 Steam games in it, including some very well received by existing players and still in demand by others who haven't bought/can't buy the bundle. I'm all for giving away a few copies of generally less desirable games - variety is good, and there are probably some people who really wanted Shadow Harvest, will play it and even enjoy it (even I might, if I ever actually play it :) - but I think a lot of money is going to waste.
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You're forgetting the people who only contribute for the sake of winning even more, (i've seen people on here clearly state they see it as an "investment") don't get me wrong here, just made my first contrib. a couple of days ago and it's because of forum people like you that i decided to start giving back, but then the game ends up in the hands of some dick who doesn't even decency to thank you for it.
Contrib. value would be a great system to avoid running into people like that if it wasn't so easy to manipulate it, since 5 bucks gives you 100 value (in some cases even more apparently) it loses it's use when creating giveaways, if the intention of the giveaway is rewarding all the people that really put some time/money into this site.
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I don't know why people complain.
For the ones that don't need the games: be happy about the points you get.
For the ones who want the games: be happy about the many chances to get it.
For all: be happy that someone GIFT (!!) something.
Why are you complaining about someone is GIFTING something? Great discounts may raise your contributor value heavily, but encourages people to actually give away games.
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I'm seriously contemplating deleting all my Shadow Ops and Crazy Machines giveaways and then waiting for them to be marked as bundle games just to give them away then. Or never if that never happens. Cause seems I'm a "contributor value farmer" which wasn't my intent at all.
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With people saying buying Shadow Harvest/Crazy Machines and giving it away is abuse. Who is exactly abusing what?
Some people here are more interrested in your private life and how much you've spent for giving a game than the fact you actually are giving a game for free. They are the same ones who talks about equality and stuffs when they actually only think about their contributor value and find that inacceptable if someone gets a $10 value if he bought it at, lets say, $5, even if these big bosses could have do worst by giving a lot of non-bundled games and all from sales but will not say it or ignoring it.
They are the same interrested in your private life who finds that because they are rich and can give for hundreds of dollars of games, they are doing more efforts than poor peoples who gives for much less of dollars games (or less games at all).
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There are so many logical fallacies on that post.
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Intent (though I do not think that is quite the word you mean) does count as far as "goodness" goes. In other words, if there were some scorecard for good deeds, a poor person giving $10 might be equivalent to a rich person giving $100 so far as "goodness". However, it's fallacious to say that someone that has given $100 has not given more than someone that gave $10.
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Well, it's not abuse or exploiting, strictly speaking, for the reasons you mention. But to be perfectly honest, it's hard to shake off the impression of contributor value farming if you give away so many copies. Sure, you want to reward your chosen groups and forum posters, that's great. Yet you mention that you're not doing it for the contrib value, but if that is the case why don't you buy, say, multiple copies of the Groupees BMA bundle for a dollar apiece and give away the individual keys? You'd be making many more people happy for the same amount of money spent (and arguably giving away superior games), without inflating your contributor value. (Apologies if somebody raised this point, I haven't been following the discussion closely).
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Which is almost impossible to measure though. If someone gives away a hundred copies of Crazy Machines, everyone will assume he's contributor farming, but that doesn't change the fact that he's giving away 100 copies! However high his contributor gets, everyone will know how it got there.
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Impossible to measure? You mean, ascertain / discern :P
Anyway, come the fuck on dudebro, if someone's giving away loads of copies of a game like that, and has little to no other games given away, it's pretty damn clear what their intentions are - make it so the value of the non-bundle games they've given away is higher than 80% (easy enough, for example, with packs like Serious Sam full pack atm) of their contrib. stat, so they get the full value out of their bundle games and have a higher contrib stat. and a better chance at free games. They don't give 1 crapola about generosity / altruistic intent. And those kinds of people aren't what the ability to create contrib. giveaways was implemented for. That's exploiting the system, as it wasn't made to reward cheapskates consciously planning on ways to try and to get more free stuff by squeezing every last drop of contrib. value they can out of the system for the littlest possible expenditure, nor was it meant to be farmed like that. Period.
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I think what is bothering people the most is that people who have given away 10 games that cost a dollar can now enter their Giveaways of $100+. The whole idea of a contributor limit is so that people who giveaway can choose who has a chance to win.
what will probably happen now is large contributors will up their giveaway minimum and people who gave away $100 of actual games that cost them hard earned money will have to fall back to lesser giveaways when before they would have probably been able to enter better games.
The truth is, when stuff like this happens, it's always the people who are generous that suffer.
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I think ppl says that it's abuse because
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The desire for owning crazy machines and Shadow Ops isn't exactly high (after all, that's why they're in the bundle). So why not just buy and giveaway several copies of a game people actually want? I can afford to giveaway lots of Crazy Machines, but why would I? If people want it, they can afford to buy the bundle themselves.
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no no no, there has to be 0 entries on all public giveaways of these games so that you can refute their reasoning. if there's even one person out there who bothers entering a crazy machine giveaway then we'll have no stone to stand on. in their perspective.
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It takes 2 seconds to enter a giveaway. One second for someone to decide that they want a free game and the other second to click on the "enter to win" button.
The only reason people will enter a giveaway for a bundle game (that is currently on sale), is because they have very little interest in the game. They lose nothing by entering for a chance to win, whereas they lose pennies if they buy the bundle. Use logic to draw a conclusion from that.
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Yeah, they won't have problem going to their local grocer to pick up items. Unfortunately, the internet discriminates against several countries pretty badly and currency exchange won't work in their favour if Steam calculates in USD (which it does for nearly all countries outside of Europe, NA/AU/East Asia and some specific outliers - RU and BR). What of middle-east/west/north Asia, Africa, the rest of South America and the islands in Oceania? Meh, they don't game, right?
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I understand exactly what it's like living in a country that falls below the poverty line. The last thing people in those places care about, are indie games. And as much as I hate to say it, they shouldn't be on Steamgifts if their only intention is to take and not give.
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to paraphrase a friend, getting free stuff is sometimes the only way they can obtain games legally besides pirating. and for that, they would rather leech off sgifts than not be part of it.
naturally, i disagree with them but it's difficult to change mindsets. ultimately, to them, being able to win free copies means better supporting the developers than simply pirating.
i told you not to pull the "oh but then they shouldn't game" thing on me. it's a stupid and fallacious statement. why do we support child's play? because it lets kids take their mind off more gruesome, worrying issues. same applies to people below the poverty line or in second/third world countries. gaming is a respite, an escapist dream for them. they support the games however they can, whether it be word of mouth or urging people who have the money to purchase and play the game.
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Alright, so because your friend can't afford games, other people should simply give them to him? That doesn't seem right to me. There's a level of generosity that should be given to those less fortunate, but where does that generosity end? Bundle prices below $1? F2P games everywhere? Tell him he should take up football as a replacement hobby, much cheaper and better for you.
I've seen firsthand what gaming does to kids in third world countries. It turns them into ignorant little shits that waste away whilst developing an aggressive attitude. There's this internet cafe where I grew up that was always filled with people who smoked and children who played counter strike all night long. The way they shouted at each other showed me exactly what that game was doing to them. Or at least, in your context, what it wasn't doing for them.
Child's Play is for sick children, not poor people. Now, I never said "oh but then they shouldn't game". Carefully reading what I wrote will clear that up. Gaming is a provided service, and like most provided services, it costs money. Indie bundles have given so many people the opportunity to get games for dirt cheap. Most people who benefit from this are no doubt already capable of buying the games at retail price, but it still helps out people with tighter budgets. I'm sorry, but you can't expect developers to go much lower. There's a tiny margin of difference between free games and $1 bundles. If you can't afford to game for that price, you best be checking to make sure you've got enough food to eat.
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Counterstrike turns people anywhere into ignorant little shits, surely? :) Gaming's much more than one game/genre and if Steamgifts ends up introducing people from all over the world to an interesting variety of games which could potentially inspire the next generation, I think it's a good thing. I also think that while nobody wants people to be on Steamgifts purely to take and not to give, 'giving' to Steamgifts can be done for free (whether due to lack of money, lack of payment options, or even just lack of desire to pay), in ways such as taking part in and respecting the community or promoting the site to others who may end up contributing more.
However, I do feel nobody has some kind of human right to paid games, regardless of health/poverty status - there's a world of excellent, free, legal gaming outside of Steam and that should really be enough for anyone.
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Please don't attack CS. Please. I've played it since the very first iteration, ever, before there even was a 1.0 affixed to it and it was nothing more than a non-working mod for HL with some scientists thrown in some simple maps as placeholders for later implementation as hostages. And I'm sure Jonex can attest to the fact that I'm far from an ignorant little shit, aside from me going "hey! I'm not an ignorant little bit of feces!"
As for the arguments posited, both quite good arguments but you're missing a few key points - sometimes, lack of a form payment is an issue, so people can't buy games to give away. I, for example, never buy bundles purely because the only form of payment available to me is PaySafeCards, and thus the Steam store.
Other times, it is simply being a bit on the scant side of the coin. And honestly, imho, people with some rough times financially don't necessarily deserve anything more or less, but as far as the relationship between the giver and the receiver goes, surely the satisfaction is greater when giving to someone less fortunate than yourself as opposed to giving a 60 dollar game away to someone that spends that amount of cash at lunch / dinner every day. In fact, I'd say that people who have that amount of solvency shouldn't be entering giveaways, period. I sure as hell wouldn't - only give games away.
What you said about free gaming though, I must disagree with. For two reasons. 1) Just because a game is free doesn't mean I enjoy it, and just because there's a number of free games available doesn't mean they're games I want to play. And since it is indeed purely enjoyment and escapism we're talking about here, subjectivity cannot be commented on, period. 2) When there's a site like this available for someone to win games on for free, why would someone be, in your eyes, morally obligated to forego such a site and instead only play free to play games, purely because they can't afford to give back much? Especially considering what you said about "other ways" to contribute, such as adding to discussions on the forum, helping spot / report abuse / keep the site clean, being a helpful member in general, maybe helping moderate / admin for some private groups on here?
Also, it's not like they're leeching games off of one entity. You might feel it that way because it seems like they're leeching off the site / community as a whole, but really, they're winning individual giveaways, off individuals. Sure, if they win 20 games off one person and never contribute anything back to that person, that's leechy behavior, but to win those 20 games off 20 different people is a whole different thing. Across those 20 people, none of them spent a lot of money on this one winner. As long as this winner is an upstanding sort, and a nice / helpful person to others who might not have money to give, but does try to contribute in whatever way they are able to (say, an IT tech like me who has some IT related knowledge / insight and tries to help people in IT related woes out), I don't see the problem.
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Yes, same here.
I'm in China atm, and my only payment method is Alipay (Chinese PayPal ripoff) which is only available on Steam. Even though I can afford the bundles, I simply can't pay them due their limited payment methods. You could argue I could trade it for a Steam Game or something... but I would probably end up losing money in the trade, so it's simply not practical. SteamGifts is my only source of bundle games (and other stuff outside Steam).
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I was just kidding and haven't actually played CS - I was just arguing against Jonex's example based on one game/genre known for some aggressive and overcompetitive players (who are not, of course, the only players) since it's the kind of thing that gives gaming in general an undeserved bad name.
As for the rest of your message, I'm a little confused by the conversation now here, haha, I think there's a whole bunch of separate arguments which got mixed up into one and I think we're actually agreeing on some points.
To clarify my opinions:
Some people can't contribute games, either due to lack of funds or lack of ability to make payments, and some don't want to. This is fine by me, especially if they contribute in some other way, but even the all-out leechers - as long as they follow the site rules - don't really bother me.
If I were to give away a game in a public, non-contrib giveaway, I don't care about the status of who wins it. Yes, a richer person could buy it any time if they really wanted it and a poorer person might really want it but never have the option to get it themself, but I like the fact that everyone who qualifies to enter a giveaway is treated equally, and I'm certainly not saying that anyone should be expected to forego entering. As for the satisfaction, as long as the winner appreciates their prize in their own way, I'm satisfied. I would not feel satisfied if I ever felt that I was obligated to give things to the less fortunate (or to any group I didn't choose of my own free will) - not that that's going to happen, of course, just saying how I'd feel. :)
On free games, I meant that any reasonable person who's a fan of gaming in general, but who don't have the money for stuff on Steam, would surely still find entertainment in free games. Of course, some genres are poorly represented amongst free games, and in many cases paid games are better. However, everyone following the rules is welcome here, and is subject to the same chances. Anyone who wants Skyrim can join a Skyrim giveaway, but if someone told us we were obligated to give them Skyrim because they really want to play games but hate everything apart from Skyrim, we'd just laugh, surely?
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Surely, but that's a very polarised hypothetical person you're describing :P
Anyway, I agree fully that it's great that everyone is treated equally by the roll of the dice, and everyone can enter - I am not making a case for entitlement, I am just saying that, basically, life isn't principles and hypotheticals.. Allow me to go a bit Zen here.. While you're musing over these things, it happens. Life. So, you should also look simply at how things happen, and what the experience is, aside from these musings and philosophical thoughts on the equality of random chance, for example. Like I said, it's hard to deny that the eventual gifting of the game, after the enjoyment of the anticipation of the roll of the dice and the concept of its' equal chances, feels better when giving to someone who doesn't have the option of purchasing it themselves. Although, obviously, gifting to anyone should feel good, as long as - like you say - "the winner appreciates their prize in their own way" (and that way is genuinely apppreciative of the gift - not just the gesture).
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Ah, I see the confusion. My reply was directed at you both, hence "As for the arguments posited, both quite good arguments but you're missing a few key points" - as in, both 'of you' and you 'guys are' ;).
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Picking up every one of Indie Gala's store bundles this weekend would have cost someone $15 or more (depending on if the person had bought IG Colossus or not) alone, not to mention $5-6 each for IG Colossus, Indie Royale Valentine's Day, Groupees Be Mine Anniversary, Groupees Digital Tribe, and the possibility of a Humble Bundle and more Indie Gala store bundles before the end of the month.
Just because a person can budget for internet (maybe HAS to budget for internet because they are in school or their children are in school) does NOT mean they can budget for all or even one or two of the bundles available at any given time.
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I still recieved many enteries (consider that its a private giveaway that made for few chats), and most of the people who entered probably could afford the game for themselves. I don't think that its something bad.
If you contribute to the community and from time to time win a game, its not a bad thing.
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My point on it is this: These floods of games tend to happen when a game is dropped in price or offered cheap, yet the SG value stays the same. If people cared about sharing more than value, why don't we see more games like Fortix, a game users actually want, show up? It's only $1 forever. But it only has a $1 contributor value, so it'll never be flooded. Why give away quality when I can veil my greed and give myself an edge over others?
Honestly, I could care less about contributor value itself. I'm unemployed, have been so for 5 years now. But when I had a spare Superbrothers key, I gave it here (on the day I opened my account before knowing contributor value existed, mind you) instead of trading it off for another game. Had $0.24 in my wallet during the Christmas sale, so I bought a DLC and gave it, more to clear $0.24 out of my Steam wallet than anything. On my birthday I gave away 3 Fortix when I could've hunted down a sale going on and gotten 3x the contributor value. Were the Fortix worth the Alpha Protocol, Magicka and Galactic Arms Race I've won? Perhaps not, but those six ramen packs are hopefully being played and enjoyed, and I think that matters more than being able to enter $100+ giveaways because there's a loophole in the contributor system.
Sorry, I went on a tangent. I won't remove it, but my point is that a game that could be purchased in bulk for $1 per unit should be valued at $1 per unit. By that same logic, yes, my contributor value should be reduced for that SB key since I could have bought it for $1 (though I didn't the chance was there), and I would welcome the reduction. It's only FAIR to every other user that's honestly appreciative of the fact that a service like this exists in the first place. It's not exploitative, unless you count it as using a broken system. It IS abusive as it degrades the intent of the contribution system.
And one final note, to the comparison to weekend sales: there's a vast difference between, and obvious intent behind, a handful of games on weekend sale popping up, and literal pagefloods of gala $1 throwaways.
/rant
POSTRANT EDIT: After rereading my own post, I will say this. I don't think everyone posting the games was being abusive. A forum private giveaway I'm currently in with a steam store value of $313 is proof that some just give things away, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm sure some bought the games with the sole intent of being nice. But that still doesn't make $10=$100.
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I think they abuse it, because you buy a game that cost you $1 and giveaway more then 5-10 copies (for $10 - you got $200 contrib. value) so they can join contributor giveaways... I'm not angry at these who make those giveways, simple because I don't care ;)
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But you forget the part that I needed to do something to get these copies? Yeah, and I translated the SS3 BFE and they gave them to me. The giveaway wasn't really a developer. Did you saw it on the first page? No? Well, because it was simply a dept from them to me...
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There is a very easy solution and I don't understand why SG doesn't implement it. A user should only receive contributor value for the first time they post a game. Any subsequent giveaways of the SAME GAME give you no contrib value. Eliminates the flood of shitty 10x giveaways and increases variety across the board.
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Needs some more details on how the contrib values will work (in particular I think the bundle list would need to be abolished) but this idea is interesting. Of course it means an individual might be less interested in giving a quantity of the same game (which could be a good or bad thing depending on the game :) but that would also encourage some trades with people who want to give away a particular game.
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off topic, did you ever get any word on that whole King Arthur collections debacle?
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I wonder what dear Lina thinks about my two posts on this page. You can PM me for privacy :3
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I did look up "exploit" and in the context of video games, an exploit is getting an advantage in a manner not intended by designers. Exploiting is not cheating. The contribution system is intended to reward givers that give more expensive games. So while no rules are being broken, giving a heavily discounted game with the goal to earn a large amount of contribution points is not the intentions of the contribution system. Therefore, it is exploiting.
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With people saying buying Shadow Harvest/Crazy Machines and giving it away is abuse. Who is exactly abusing what?
You buy it legally for a price set by IG store. You give it away and you get contributor points and moderators approve it since they do nothing to change it.
Some of you need to look up in the dictionary and understand, acknowledge what words abuse and exploit mean.
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