Thanks, I take pride in my ability to sum up my feelings with gratuitous use of the word "fuck", and occaisonally "cunt". In all seriousness though? It's hardly community manipulation, and anyway, what's the reason most devs do giveaways, even if you do get a steam code? You think Faerie Solitaire 25,000 copies was just to give away the damn game? No, same reason. But I don't hear you complaining about that, do I?
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Stick with me then, this has been around for almost a year: Battlefield 3
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Right, but it's still advertising for the company. And I don't get why you're singling out Bloody Trapland specifically, you get a desura key...Desura is pretty good, and it still costs more than just giving out the download link like the last game. And yes, although it is just a small chance of it being on steam? Oh well, it's still a fucking game!
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You're not seeing the big picture. Advertising is part of the bigger problem, why such giveaways are allowed in the first place.
By your logic, every developer giveaway is "advertising". This is not a problem in itself. When we're making a giveaway for any game at all, we're advertising it. As long as the developer is giving away Steam keys/gifts on SteamGifts.com, there is no problem. The rules and the general idea of the site are followed.
Greenlight giveaways, however, offer a simple possibility of the game reaching Steam and the users actually being able to play it on Steam.
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You mean a game has no right to advertise before it's on steam?
A game is a game. If you are entering giveaways here to increase your steam library, bad for you.
Also have you seen The Greelight Bundle? Have you seen any of those games on Steam already? There were 2315 copies sold. So giving away a 1000 copies is not an automatical greenlight approval. That's just a couple of percents increase. The game should be actually good, so people would talk about it.
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I can feel my brain cells committing suicide one by one when I'm reading this thread.
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You've got a point there. Maybe it's time for this site to expand to not only Steam, but also GOG, Desura,... and other independent devs like Mojang. Anyways, I can see why you have a problem with this and I kinda agree with you. I still don't get why your downtalking Desura, it's a different kind of distribution platform, but I still like it.
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Well, you can already gift Minecraft here. Also, the reason that this site does not normally allow origin and desura keys its because they cannot track if you activated it or not!
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You can give away minecraft on here? Never seen one...
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I don't like this idea, because SteamGifts is a unique site for giving away games on Steam. Even the domain name says it. Expanding like this would require a whole new site.
I don't hate Desura, I was illustrating a point with it. It's not allowed to give away Desura games, yet apparently Greenlight giveaways can be an exception of sorts...
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Battlefield 3 is the only Origin game i know that is allowed to be given here
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Battlefield 3 and Minecraft say hello.
Also, the reason that you cannot normally gift desura/origin and other stuff, its because its impossible to track if the person who won activated the game or not.
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You cannot, but they are highly wanted games so they were allowed, simple as that. They are mere exceptions. Do that for all origin games and it could be highly abused.
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It's a developer trying to get exposure and get put on STEAM.
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Bloody Trapland is an awesome game, I'd bet money that it gets Greenlite.
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Yea, we should find whatever company made greenlight and boycott them until they put the games on Steam as well.
Also, we need to get SteamGifts changed so that it doesn't force you to enter every giveaway you see automatically.
Help, I've sarcasm'd and I can't get up
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Giveaways for non-Steam games are indeed bad, if we're on a site going by the name of SteamGifts with rules specifically stating that anything besides Steam games is not allowed to be given away.
Self-promoting developer giveaways are indeed bad as well, if the promotion doesn't offer a reward to the average user of this site, who expects a STEAM game.
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I honestly fail to see your point here... either your impenetrable logic is too advanced for me... or you're just smoking some really exotic weed...
On a more serious note: Why exactly does this bother you? Of course they're advertising their game by giving 1000 copies... so what? What so terrible about it?
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If you are not interested in that game, don't enter the giveaway! You are not obliged to vote for it if you win. You may first try it and decide for yourself, if the game is worth getting to Steam. Is there any difference, whether a game is given away for free through Steamgifts or, say, IGN Prime or Green Light Bundle? Why can't devs use this nice little pltform to promote their game? And what's your problem with game promotions?
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Congratulations, you must be the first person to tell me that I shouldn't enter a giveaway if it doesn't interest me.
Now let's go back to reality.
These giveaways will gradually continue, don't you doubt it for a second. More and more developers will come on over here barging in and pretending to be overly generous, spamming the site with useless "could be" Steam games. I'd like to see the day when you'll actually have to use a filter to not see these giveaways.
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I rarely say such things, but what a quivering pile of bullshit. They are giving their product for free, so some people will get it for free. Therefore it's a gift, and it's, oh, lemme look it up, 1000 times more free stuff that people could have not gotten anyway. The fact that you are upset about it not being a Steam game just kind of suggests that you are an ungrateful Steam elitist. Seriously, would it really defeat the purpose of the site if it was renamed to GameGifts? No, don't answer the question, it's rhetorical.
Yes, it is a business catch in where they are promoting something for some votes. You don't lose anything in it; in fact, they are the only ones who might be losing anything in it, and that's 1000 copies of their product. If you think that's not generous, then please, define what generous is because I clearly can't grasp it then.
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SirDemon, let me introduce you to this new concept, I just invented it the other day. I think it'll be a huge hit. I call it... capitalism!
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because someone gets a game, and the devs get self promotion for relative nothing, what is great for indie studios, and great for people getting the free game?
really... why you think it's something evil?
companies do that all the time, giveing their products for free, giving a service for free, free-weekends, blablabla, everything is for personal proffit, but no-one is taking your money here, so you may, or may not get a something free, but some othert people will, in fact 1000 users wil get something free...
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Well, if it's not the bandwidth they're paying for which you use to download their stuff, then it's the Desura keys. I mean, Desura is a service too, you surely have to pay something for them being able to provide bandwicth for downloads and stuff. Same goes to Steam. I just don't think that it would work to ask them for 1000 free keys and they're like, "Oh, okay, here they are". But I'm not technically into this stuff, and I'm not all that informed about their business practices, so I might be wrong.
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Developer giveaways are good exposure period. For both the developer and the site. So far the greenlight giveaways I have seen are 1k copies that state winners WILL be given a steam key if/when they make it to steam. I don't see any issues with that. Will they allow any developer that is on greenlight to do giveaways? I'll bet not and that it will be done on a case by case basis with certain guidelines that must be followed as appears to be the case so far.
You want a giveaway site that does everything exactly the way you want it? Go code your own. I know of a few other giveaway sites and this is by far the best one out there in my opinion.
You want to whine and complain about the way things are? At the VERY least make sure you know what you are talking about before doing so. Calling developer giveaways "malicious intentions" is asinine at best unless you have proof they have malicious code in them.
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The more the merrier I say. Could always have an extra section for non-Steam developer giveaways if need be. That developer bit is important.
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Advertisement=Free games
It's a win=win for them.
We get free games, they get free advertisement.
Yes, they are not STEAM games and I don't like that...
(most dev giveaways seem to be betas/non-steam)
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I'm going to play devil's advocate here. I hate when everyone gangs up on someone, mostly with ad hominems/flames, for expressing his/her opinion.
This site was founded on the belief of giveaways without rewards - from the goodness of your heart, essentially. The contributor system has certainly perverted this once noble ideal, but these dev giveaways can only change the original meaning even further.
I've seen dev giveaways created by regular people on this site who have connections with game developers. They can still enter giveaways and have won because of their increased contributor value from the giveaways. I'm sure everyone knows who I'm talking about.
One shining example of dev abuse is that of the Tryst Beta key giveaway. Not only was the dev advertising the game, but the game was never actually given away at all! Winners only got, essentially, a 2 week long demo . The rules explicitly say that beta key and demo giveaways are not allowed on this site, so why do the devs get a free ride?
If pre-steam games are allowed to be given away by developers, regular users should be allowed to do the same.
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This is a much better argument against the dev keys to me. Them.again I don't quite know steamgifts business model either. Its not like this site is free to maintain so perhaps the bending of the rules is due to the greasing of palms. That is a move I don't exactly respect, but I understand.
I think that dev giveaways also should not count against the users points because frankly a limited beta has no street value. If the devs are strictly seeking exposure why not get as much as you can and remove point values so all steamgift members get an chance to enter if interested.
I don't personally want to use my points on a limited beta because its not like I can game everything in my library 24/7. I want to play at my pace on my time.
Also no points would prevent any abuse of the contributions system.
my $.02
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I just don't get it.
First of all, here I'll state the obvious, the site is called STEAMgifts. I thought the giveaways (and I mean actually structured giveaways that use the SteamGifts system, not random key giveaways on the forum) were supposed to be for a Steam game, aka getting it on Steam, permanently in your library.
If Desura, Origin etc giveaways aren't allowed, how come Greenlight giveaways are? Since we're doing it this way, why not add coupon giveaways, too? Hey, they're on Steam, so you can't complain! And why stop here, let's add Kickstarter giveaways, who knows, might be on Steam some day...
It's not certain that the game being given away will ever make its way to the actual Steam platform. Given that fact, you're not actually giving away a Steam game, you're giving away something that COULD be a Steam game. And look at the Bloody Trapland giveaway, it specifically states they are giving away a Desura copy, not a Steam one. Yes, IF it's published on Steam, you will get it, but if not, lol enjoy dat Desura.
I like how people comment on these giveaways "OMG, SO GENEROUS, A BILLION COPIES!". The strategy here is obvious. Upvote our game, even though you may not really like it, because there's a high chance you will get it for free and this means nothing to us, because we will get a lot more money after it's published and plus we got free advertising on SteamGifts.
I think this is a nice way to manipulate the community and it kinda sucks, in my opinion... I generally agree that more giveaways is better, but not if the malicious intentions are so transparent and blatantly obvious.
Stick with the original purpose of the site, seriously.
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