[Suggestion] Make bans for non-activating gifts permanent!

On the first game no, people make mistakes. On multiple offences yes, i'v seen people with 3-4 regifted/not activated wins around here still entering giveaways. My biggest issue with how the system works now is that you can't even get a reroll for your giveaway if someone with multiple such offences wins but has already been punished for them.

the problem with this, and the reason why it will never happen, is because this would mean WORK for the mods here, and therefore is something that would never get implemented.

I'm all in for that. First/amended can be forgiven, but later on....
That's the reason I have unsent gift [reroll was unapproved because it was long ago...]

EDIT: I've read comments, and I feel I should explain more about the idea.
If someone made mistake, but fixed it afterwards - he should be forgiven (at least for first few of this mistakes). I mean, if user activated the gift he didn't activate before - he is all right. If he traded the gift away, he can always buy new to activate. I don't think that asking for this is too much.

Yes, it can be too much to ask. An Example:

a really poor guy registers here and wins a game. He doesn't know the rules yet, so he trades his won game. if I understand you correctly, you want to perma-ban him, unless he corrects his mistake, right? So this guy has absolutely no money, he doesn't have the won game anymore, he can't correct anything - bam, he's out.

No, I don't like the idea of fast perma-bans. Why not just longer suspensions?

Totaly agree on that, but only if user didnt activated more then one game, everyone can make mistakes. But if he dont activate 2 or more, permanent ban would be great :)

My stance on this:

1st offence: 2 weeks suspension
2nd offense: permanent suspension, with possibility of appeal if you add the game to your library
3rd offense: permabanned

Disagree, when someone wins a game, the game is his and he can do whatever the hell he wants with it.
Yes there are rules, but I don't thing they are legally obligatory, because, you can't subject a gift to a condition at least not here in Europe.

Support would need to respond to more tickets. And even now, they are replying awfully slow, as i got banned like that once, and the suspension expired before they even reached to my ticket made few hrs after punishment.

No, i think the temporary ones teach a lesson. I didn't activate 2 of mine as I traded them away. Before I was "caught" i realized that it was against the rules (I hadn't known previously) and that it was the wrong thing to do, and had I the money to buy both games, I would have. Eventually I got my well-deserved suspension. After that, I bought one of the games I didn't activate, but remain too broke to afford the other one still, but eventually will buy it.

it's funny how in real life we generally prefer moderate punishment. we don't sentence people to death for stealing an apple or something. but as soon as we're on the internet, we want strict rules for everything. in real life, the three strikes law in some american states is very questionable. many people think this is a horrible law and it should not exist anywhere. but on the internet we have no problem going even further than that. i must say, i find this really strange. :)

punishing someone for breaking the rules - yes. permanently banning someone from the site - only in very, very selected circumstances. for instance, i see a big difference between those two:

• using multiple accounts to deliberately cheat the system and gain an advantage over others.
• not activating games (this might be a mistake, unawareness of the rules, this is not necessarily a deliberate choice to cheat the system)

i would be very careful with the latter. you might perma-ban someone who didn't even have any evil intentions. a simple suspension for a few days or weeks should do the trick, if you ask me. if someone does this constantly, we can talk about measures that go a little further. but not after his first or second - or even third - unactivated game. i honestly think that's too harsh.

I agree, if it's someones first offence, give them temp ban and send them to read FAQ, but second time is one time too many. Ban that person for good and be done with it.

I think the big problem right now is that people get suspended but don't know why so they don't learn the lesson.
If someone gets a 5 days suspension and doesn't log in for a week he even doesn't realize it.
(Mind that I'm the first who tells people "Please, read the FAQ")

That said, I'm one of the guys who thinks that the current system is too soft, and I like OP idea but there must be a message following the permaban that says: "1) Read the rules 2) you have been banned because 3) you can redeem doing this"

Maybe aother way:

1. non activating one game/dlc - 7 days of suspended.
2. non activated second (two) games/dlc's - 14 days of suspended.
3. non activated third (three) games/dlc's - 30 days of suspended.
4. non activated fourth (four, and more) games/dlc's - permament of suspended.

I think if you don't activate a game after a week, you shouldn't be allowed to win another game. It's one thing if you win a game, are away for a long time for some convoluted reason, then come back, activate, and apologize, but if you simply give the game away again or enter "for a friend" you shouldn't be able to just enter another giveaway. Now, if you buy the game to make up for the copy you effectively stole and activate it to your account, that's fine, and I think you should be able to enter again.

i can't agree, banning someone like that is absoutely extreme even if it can be fixed later...

the additional step to contact support and ask for a ban removal will only add more delay to the ticket system (and drama).

Nah, I wouldn't go permanant for a first offence, but I do think the current standard of 5 days/game for the first time you get caught is very much on the light side. Personally, I'd like to see that bumped up to somewhere between 45 and 90 days. EDIT: Maybe that's a bit harsh, but I'd definitely like to see it significantly longer than 5 days.

My reasoning is that it often takes 45-90 days to win something if entering public only giveaways, certainly longer than 5 days. If someone has the patience to come here every day, entering giveaways (and they might not need that if they're using an entry bot) for a few weeks with the intention of trading away that game then 5 days is nothing to them. It's akin to giving someone a £1M fine for stealing £9M in that it would actually be well worth it. If looking at the site from a game theory point of view with a big ol' cynical hat on where the aim was to exploit the site for personal gain with maximum efficency, I'd certainly recommend that new users don't activate their wins until they're caught for the first time as things are currently.

I think the bigger issue if you ask me is the lack of support not so much how they do the bans.

As even if they made them a perma ban right away it would still take awhile for support to get to it,i think slow support makes it seems a bigger issue then it needs to be and because support is so slow.Support needs more support when it takes a week or two to get to a ticket no 2 ways about it,and why they do not add more i am not sure why,i just hope where not losing good members because of the lack of support,like if i was to do a GA for the first time and saw someone who did not activate it or re-gift it and is weeks later and there still winning or entering GA's i might say you know what screw this site.

I do think after a second time of doing it,after being suspended/warned the first time you should get a ban,but then again this all still falls on support,if they can not even take care of first time offenders in a time manner then even a perma band will take just as long.
More support is needed and i do not think auto bans are the answer i think each report has to be checked to make sure someone is not being wrongfully accused or banned because of a mistake on the reporter.

Anyhow in the end no matter what people suggest unless there is a lot more support it will still be the same thing ...weeks before anything is done if not longer if they are not caught right away.So they can still do it for a long time.I also think this leads to some not reporting knowing that something may or may not be done in weeks if not months so why bother.

Again more support is needed....sad a good site like this has so many complaints because of a lack of simple support.Almost reminds me of Gaben and all his broken promises about improving support just to shut up the masses.

Although I somewhat agree on harsher sanctions than it is now, this simply can't be done since there are many holes in proper steam library tracking. So it would result in many false alarms. I was victim of this false alarm once already (wrongly banned).

i rather have CG make it so when the gamekey is sent through SG, that it doesnt show you a key, and instead you click" activate" and it automatically activates to your account

would be way safer

I don't have the time to read through the entire thread right now, but some additional considerations you aren't considering.

1) The game given to the winner was a dupe key, fake giveaway, etc. The creator contacts the winner and gives a different game and asks to mark the game received in the mean time.
2) Developer giveaway gives the wrong game - the game is marked as Received automatically and a lot of people don't know that you can clicked the Received radio button to unmark it.
3) Misleading giveaway/mistaken giveaway. Creator makes a giveaway for Darksiders 2, but gives Darksiders 1. Giveaway winner doesn't realize the mistake and marks Received. Creator makes a giveaway for Dark Matter. Guess what - there's two games in the Steam store with the exact same name.

Probably additional scenarios I'm missing.

I don't think the system is broken the way things stand now. I'm on tour a lot and can't always get to Steam to activate gifts. I don't want to be banned because of that.

Before we start messing with that side of things, we should really address the more important issue of people re-gifting stuff they've won (which has happened to me twice so far).

I won a game and when I activated it through my email the game got added to my nephews steam account because he was on my pc at home using family sharing.
Been waiting around two months already for a response from Steam to see if they can move that game over onto my library. I am trying to fix this mistake but I don't even know if Steam can or will help me fix this.
The only other option is to buy a copy and add it to my library.
I agree that re-gifting is a serious problem but there needs to be a way of filtering out the genuine mistakes that people do make rather than apply a permanent ban because a won game is not showing in their library.

Completely disagree with such harsh measures for a first strike, mistakes happen and they are usually made in the first months on the site.

That would drastically decrease the amount of new members, not knowing much of the site or its rules i highly doubt most would bother doing the right thing and would just move on with their life. That doesnt mean they came here with bad intentions, after knowing the site, some of them would eventually activate all their wins and even contribute to it.
There is a couple of good reasons to ban people from the site, i dont like seeing people that got suspended and still didnt take the opportunity to buy the game either, but one lousy game is not a good reason for a perma-ban

Though, i have a different opinion for members who broke the same rule before, i think in these cases SG shouldn't be so lenient.
For this situation in particularly, the offender should be banned until activating said game