Came here to yell at n00b for not reading FAQ, left puzzled and wondering.
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This is a legitimately good question, so I'll bump this thread to see if a mod responds.
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Don't know what official support answer to this question is gonna be, but can tell what I know - sa you mentioned polish community, and I'm part of it - so yeah, I've seen plenty of these GAs as well. But the thing is that I'm aware of at least one case when guy posted a GA in group called Poland with description "it's polish region locked" and so on and on, but as group is public and there were a lot of non-polish leechers, someone from different country won and wasn't able to activate. Even thou group was "polish only" description clearly stated it's "polish only" etc - guy didn't receive a reroll. So I guess anyone in same situation won't receive reroll as well.
So if you want to screw with these people just enter their GAs and in case you win demand a region-free copy ;p
Also a lot of users tend to falsely inform that their GA rules are "accepted by support". Support has literally no way of checking each GA to catch all such a cases, so people use it to their advantage. I've seen a lot of these "fake rules" even in public GAs, so don't necessary believe that something is support-approved just because someone post it in GA description. User may be posting false info just to make sure that "people from other regions won't enter", even if they would be eglible to enter.
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So if you want to screw with these people just enter their GAs and in case you win demand a region-free copy ;p
The OP is giving something for free and has clearly indicated who can use it.
Kind of unfair for someone ( who is getting something for free ) to mess the the guy / gal giving it away for free !
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The OP is breaking the rules. End os story.
There is a rule against giving away region-restricted copies.
There isn't a rule that will force users to read description of the GA. (not to mention users who for example doesn't fully understand english).
So even if you say so in description, there is no guarantee people will read it, hence you shouldn't do so (unless you're stating a support approved rule, not your-own-non-approved-rule).
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I am aware it is against the rules, I'm not arguing on the rules here.
My statement is about responsibility.
From my point of view, giving away a game is "an act of kindness". You statement implies that he should be punished because his "act of kindness" didn't follow the rules.
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You statement implies that he should be punished because his "act of kindness" didn't follow the rules.
Yes he should. That's the reason why we have rules. If your opinion is that someone shouldn't be punished for breaking the rules, because he did so in an "act of kindness" then why do we even have rules? Also by this logic all GA creators should start breaking rules creating GAs - give region locked, exploited, free, beta, guest-pass or other than stated in GA games - who cares that they are breaking a rules? We shouldn't punish them for doing so, because they only do so in an "act of kindness"...
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No one is losing anything when a GA is created for a region locked game - assuming the OP clearly mentions it in the description. If the winner didn't read the description, they both can decide for a re-roll. I don't see a need for a user to enter a GA just to punish the OP.
We cannot create GA's for free / exploited games. So there is no question about following the rules.
A beta access / guest pass is not a game but a demo. So it's not the same category since all winners will lose access after some time. And these are almost always free.
I remember reading in the forums that the reason steamgifts does not allow rules in public GA is because they do not want to deal with the possible number of re-roll requests. Rules are normally created to protect a group. But there are always rules for convenience like this one.
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noone is losing anything in all situations I mentioned. Also for We cannot create GA's for free / exploited games. So there is no question about following the rules. You cannot create GAs for region restricted games as well - it's also in the rules. All these things are in the rules so I don't understand how can you in a single paragraph both agree and disagree with creating GAs breaking site rules.
Also as bobo mentioned somewhere below - even if you put description, someone may still enter it after reading description and then decide to try using VPN for activation. SG don't want to encourage - even not directly like in this case, any usage of VPN.
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Sorry if it was not clear.
You cannot create giveaways would mean that the game is missing from the giveaway list. Hence, you cannot create a giveaway.
With respect to region restricted games, you can create them, but it's against the rules. Which is why we are having this conversation :P
noone is losing anything in all situations I mentioned
The winner loses the game once the beta/guestpass is over.
The VPN reason - agreed. Some people can try to cheat the system which is one of the reasons why we have this rule. On the other hand, if everyone was responsible, we wouldn't need this rule. But, that is out of the scope of this conversation.
My point was simply that it is unfair to mess with the OP who is in fact trying to do a good thing.
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Well, if there would be a way to remove only region restricted games from the list (like if they would show different entry in library each time and item ID would have different name than a region free game) they would be removed. To counter your argument about free/exploited games - they are given away until Lina or cg comes and removes them from the list. In the meantime mods are manualy Deleting the one that are being created. Same as some mods do, like bobo mentioned, with region locked GAs. Both types break the rules, both gets deleted ;p
And people are not and never will be responsible. You simply cannot build big internet gaming community without strict rules and strictly enforcing them and just trust everything will be ok because people will be responsible. Even more you cannot build gifting community like this - because due to thing being "FREE" even more people will not behave responsibly and fair just to get free shit.
As for OP just trying to do a good thing - he can easily do a good thing by creating a forum topic (there's been quite a few forum-run GAs "I have XYZ game locked to ABC region", people wrote and creator gave game away to random person. The only difference is that it's not run as normal SG GA hence not generating Contributor Value. But if your sole reason is to just do a good thing and make someone happy - CV shouldn't be something that should stop you from doing so.
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People will not be responsible, hence we need rules - agreed - the reason I made the statement "out of scope".
The GA creator has other ways of giving the game. He can even create a group with the location rule and get the CV if he wishes to do so. But, I'm not discussing about alternatives.
You can even report the GA which is what I do regularly.
My point is : Do you think someone is "responsible" if he enters a giveaway he knows he can't win just to mess with the OP ?
I think this is where our thoughts differ.
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they should - so what? You have public groups with thousands upon thousands of members, following any member location, any group GA is next to impossible for these groups staff - your solutions basically means punishing these groups admins because people are idiots.
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If it's region locked and mentioned in the description, I don't see a problem with it.
I am aware that it is against the rules, but why take something you can't use when there are several others who would like to use it ?
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Because people don't read the descriptions. You can write something like "go fuck yourselves, you're getting nothing and I'll use the winner's e-mail to subscribe to every porn site in the world" and you'll still get genuine comments saying "thanks man, you're awesome :DDDD". It's also the reason (well, one of them) why you're not allowed to put special conditions in public GAs.
Like zelghadis, I'm not 100% sure of the official stance, but a safe way would be to either 1) make a private GA and only invite people you're absolutely sure live in that region, or 2) make a group GA for a private group, and invite only people from that region.
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The reason you can't put special conditions in public GA's is because :
"If steamgifts allowed re-rolls in public GA's, they would have too many requests and that's all they would be doing the whole day".
As the the GA, that's my opinion. I think people should be responsible enough to read the description when they want something for free :)
As I said, it's my opinion. People don't "have to" but it would be better if they did :)
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If its in a private group that's aware of the region-restricted games, I wouldn't see an issue with it. Its not like there's a Polish or Russian version of Steamgifts, so that's an easy way for them to have their own little corner, while still being part of the larger SG community.
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well it's pretty much like here - if you don't contribute you won't win a lot there as any normal GA will have thousands of entries ;p the good chances are only with higher lvl GAs, gold GAs (yet I don't participate in these - I'm not so crazy yet to directly pay for a chance to win ;p), DLC GAs (as only ppl with base game may enter) and best ones - event GAs ;p out of 38 GAs I won on GM, 13 were from a single event won on a single day, 14 were for DLCs, 5 had level requirement and only 6 were "public" ones ;p
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It is against the rules, but unless someone does report those giveaways not much can be done about it.
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I assume it's still against the rules. Some people will enter even if they aren't from that region seeing it as an easier chance to win since there will be less people due it being region locked. They use a VPN to activate it and the game gets removed or they get banned and blame steamgifts and/or the gifter and it becomes a mess.
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Here's my official answer: Kinda?
When I first joined support, I was told that recently they had quietly given PL users permission to gift PL keys in their groups, due to the high number of PL keys that were coming to the site. However, if someone won that couldn't activate, the giveaway would not be re-rolled; the groups would need to control their own members.
Problems with this though. The Poland group on Steam is completely public, and users from any region can join and potentially enter those giveaways. If they win, they may be tempted to use VPN to activate the key, which is something we definitely DO NOT want them doing. Many PL keys have been gifted to this group.
But why PL only? The RU/CIS group is huge too, and lots of restricted keys there, so shouldn't they be allowed? I, personally, have seen RU giveaways in private RU groups and have looked the other way. And there have been a TON of Dark Souls / Valiant Hearts giveaways in these groups lately that I'm sure are all restricted. But again, the Russia group is public and gifting restricted keys there is a bad idea. Then, what about everyone other region? I don't think it's a good idea to let this continue.
However, among groups of friends, I think it might be acceptable. Say, you have a small group of real life friends and you want to make a giveaway for them, you know for sure they all live in the region, why shouldn't it be okay? Problem is WE don't know that information, or something can say they're "pretty sure" they're all from the region. Again, someone could use VPN, put their account at risk, we don't want that. I've seen other mods delete private giveaways for region-locked keys between supposed real life friends.
Probably something we should get ironed out before SGv2.
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Interesting answer, even if it wasn't really an answer :P.
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Thanks for the explanation, Bobo. It's nice to have this information.
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Here is a suggestion which shouldn't be too difficult to implement ( maybe in SGv2 ).
After choosing the game, give a drop down to let the user pick the regions available to the game.
It should be easy to get the list of regions available for the game Example.
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I know, I have read the FAQ and I know you aren't allowed to give away region locked games, but I have seen a lot of giveaways of region locked games in certain groups of some countries (Polonia and Russia mostly). Some of them even have "Support approved" in the description so it made me doubt whether it's allowed or not.
My question is, should I report these giveaways? I dont enter them because I wouldnt be able to activate the gift if I won anyway.
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