I was temporary suspended for not activating a key. The thing is I received wrong key and didn't remember the rule "When should I mark a gift I won as Received or Not Received?" Below are my thoughts on how the site's UI can be improved to highlight the rule, and few follow-up suggestion.
I hope at least some of them will reduce amount of time moderators spend on handling issues like mine.

1.

If suspended, user receives a message about suspension's reasons, suspension's end date, and link to the problematic giveaway he/she can't visit because Suspension limits the site functionality.
Suggestion: add to that message pretty standard (at least for mobile games) text ~"In case if you think you was accused wrongly you can create a Support ticket (link)" - I overlooked Support button at top menu and tried to contact moderator on Steam, and via comment at Steam group (because of #2)

2.

The first place to look for Contact information at sites is at very bottom of a page. Knowing that, I overlooked Support button at very top of a page.
Suggestion: duplicate a link to Support page at bottom of a page, at Help section

3.

While suspended, user doesn't receive Messages notifications because the site's functionality is limited
Suggestion If it's impossible to unlock Messages for suspended user, maybe it's possible to add the same red counter above Support button

4.

There is a message at the page where user marks gifts as received / no received: "Please remember, all games you receive need to be activated on your corresponding Steam account to remain in good standing. Users failing to do so will receive a suspension."
Suggestion: I see that place as a perfect place to remind the difference between "Receiving a key" and "Activating the key". Twice I marked wrong key as Received because, well, I received a key. I forgot about the rule I mentioned earlier, shame on me.
Suggestion: Additionally, I suggest to rename statuses for gifts user won from Received / Not received to Successfully activated/Not received or something like this. I'm not native speaker so I bet you can find better option to highlight the need to Activate the proper key on your account, not just Receive a key from any game

5.

Suggestion: highlight the difference between "Received" and "Activated on winner's account" at guidelines.

Currently it goes like this:
"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."

Should be like this:
"Winners will need to mark their gift as received, if a gift corresponds to giveaway user won, and successfully activated on winner's Steam account, - or as 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."

I think that's all. Thanks for your attention.

7 months ago

Comment has been collapsed.

Or, you know: You could just check your activated game against the advertised game instead of just rage clicking it into your account and therefore missing it is the wrong game over and over?
I mean, it's a lot of work to fulfill all your requests just so you can be as lazy as can be. And maybe next user can be even more lazy and there will be more work needed to be done for them, and so on in all perpetuity...

Just check your wins man, problem solved.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

sorry I didn't get your idea in first part of the comment. At receiving a key, I can check if it's from "promised by giveaway" game or not only by activating it in Steam. So I did (I don't see at which part of this simple process I was or even could be lazy). And I instantly saw that's wrong game.

But this is not the point. The point is that from my POV the entire UI and even guidelines are about just "receiving a key", not about "successfully activating the very promised game". Thus at receiving a key, even if it was wrong key, I answered "Received".

The difference between Received and Successfully Activated is highlighted only at FAQ section. But still can cause suspension.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Maybe it is off topic, but how do you check a steam key without trying to activate it? I know if I try to activate it via the browser and it does not work, I can see the game's name in the response of the AJAX request. But I really like a method to identify a game by the steam key that does not require possible activation.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

you cant check what game a key is for before actually trying to activate it.

but i believe what RCSWE meant was that after activating a key you can check if the game that you activated and the game you won the GA for are the same. just go to the the GA and click on the steam logo after activating. the games steam page opens and you can see if it tells you that you already own it or not.
the reason behind that is that sometimes names can be similar or even the same or some keys have some weird description when activating and you can never be 100% sure that what you receive is the same game that you won.

if its the same game, all good. if its not the same game then you need to contact the creator and work it out with them. if they arent responding or not cooperative then you should mark the GA as not received

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Yes, like I wrote: You could just check your activated game against the advertised game
As there is no way (that I know of) to check before you activate, you activate the key. If the key activated a different game from what the GA advertised you contact GA creator for a solution, or mark it as Not Received.

The issue here being you marked the wrong game activated as received. It's an interpretation error perhaps? You read it as "I have received a key" but it is written as "You have received the correct game when activating the key"?

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I definitely can imagine that's an interpretation error, maybe only existed for those who's not a native speaker. I don't know how frequent it can be in scale of full user base

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

All this, which means the most of the work of the mods, a lot of the user reports, your suggested things etc., wouldn't be needed if a automatic check, if a win got activated on the winners account or if it don't got activated after marked as recieved, would happen.

A small thing for the owner + only programmer, that would save thousands of hours of work.

The interesting question is why it never got implemented....
And never will...

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Not saying this as a mod, but as someone who can see what automated or AI driven tools can end up with, it would be a terrible idea. It would only take a another mass store delisting as happened recently for automated tools to ban thousands of users, because they won't have the information beyond X = missing = banhammer.

People aren't perfect, but if we respond on a ticket, you know someone looked at it and thought on what needed to be done before deciding to act. A mass store removal is something we will notice as users and won't ban outright the moment people are missing those games.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I agree with point 5. The guidelines would better serve the community with the clarification between receiving and successfully activating.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Point 2 seems silly. The support button is big and obvious.

Points 4 and 5 are redundancies. They do beg the question of what you're planning to do with a won key if not activate them though.

And, Steam tells you what license you just redeemed when activating a key, so you know immediately if you received the proper license. If you didn't receive the proper license, then your win hasn't been received. Marking it as received becomes a user error scenario.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

yes, it's user error scenario. I was dumb enough to go through it. Now I'm looking how to improve the situation for moderators.
IF they receive a lot of tickets about suspensions like mine, and IF additional reminder right next to Received / Not received columns will reduce number of tickets to X%, then they should be happy to add that reminder

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

I think 99.99999999% of users understand to only mark a game as received after receiving the game they won.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

sadly i came across multiple ppl who failed to do exactly that... so yeah... OP is not the only one with that problem

the problem is that the site is used by ppl all over the world, some with good, and some with bad english skills. having everyone need to read between the lines to understand the rules even with bad englsih skills leads to problems, so im all for clarifications.

i actually have for a longer time now thought that the rules are in need of further work on them. the fact alone that the FAQ contains information that isnt avaible in the guidelines and vice versa, meaning you need to read both of them to complete the lacking information for the other to understand the whole picture, makes the guidelines/FAQ worthy of redoing.
and i believe the problem OP had with receiving the wrong key is one of those parts that isnt clearly stated like i explained above.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Nah. You win game. You redeem game. You immediately realize game you won and game you redeemed aren't the same. You reach out to the giveaway host to fix problem. If problem remains unresolved, you put in a support ticket. At no point in that process do you think, "let me mark this as redeemed despite not having received the game I won."

Let's not pretend the process is mysterious or in any way vague. It's definitely not. And the OP has been here for many years and many giveaways. Any issues users might have with really, really basic site rules is their own. Nobody else seems to have these problems. It's less than a fraction of a percent of users that don't seem able to grasp the simple concepts outlined above.

And the OP also doesn't seem to have any issues with English or English translation.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Thanks for your kind words about my English. I check my writing with help of Google Translate

If you want to believe that I'm the only one with this interpreting issue, I'm fine with that. AiKirika says, I'm not alone - well, okay too.
Only moderators know how often they suspend people for similar reason, so it's on them to decide whether described is a real problem or not, and if it should be addressed. I actually don't know if discussions exist to highlight the most anticipating fixes, or it's only a way to store suggestions in one place (in that case comments will be ignored). Do you maybe know?

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

The only one? Probably not. An incredibly incredibly tiny fraction of members? Certainly.

The reality is adjustments or fixes to the site almost never happen. There are many discussions about fixes. Nothing really ever gets done.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Nah. You win game. You redeem game. You immediately realize game you won and game you redeemed aren't the same. You reach out to the giveaway host to fix problem. If problem remains unresolved, you put in a support ticket. At no point in that process do you think, "let me mark this as redeemed despite not having received the game I won."

well, like i said, i met ppl who didnt think that way, some of them being winner of my giveaways i checked for not activated wins.
the ones i can think of were simply happy to have received a game even if it was not the same game advertised and were thankful either way, so they marked as received.
when i told them about the rules, they were confused because they misunderstood or said they couldnt find the rules i was talking about. at that time i had to piece together passages from both guidelines and FAQ to explain it to them. they were on SG for many years as well.

also apart from getting an outright different game, there are also cases of games having similar or even same names, different versions or editions, wrong part of a series, etc. where the GA creator mistook the correct game when creating and the winner might not have noticed it being a different game. this is the reason why i always check my wins beyond just reading the activation message on steam. but some ppl may have not come across a situation like that and dont double-check.

btw... once a GA creator also tried to make me mark as received after his first key failed and giving me another game as "compensation/apology" (i wasnt interested in that game but still activated because i didnt knew it was a different game) but still wanted me to mark as received because i received "something of similar value" from him. after explaining that i cant due to the rules he was quite butthurt.

yes these are just my experiences and im not trying to generalize. im just trying to say, that there are ppl out there who may not understand the rules like you and me do. and there might be not that many... but if i happened to encounter a few already.... how many more might there be out there who never were corrected or have never voiced themselves in anyway.

And the OP also doesn't seem to have any issues with English or English translation.

yeah he seems good enough for that... but my point is, there are ppl out there who arent as fluent and might have more problems understanding those rules.

also im only advocating for changes in the rules here. i dont see why someone would be against further clarifications to the rules if it might help even a few ppl... its just changing some text, not the code (we know that might never happen), and changes t the rules have already happened before.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Suggestion: add to that message pretty standard (at least for mobile games) text ~"In case if you think you was accused wrongly you can create a Support ticket (link)"

Do you know it's standard because you get suspended from a lot of mobile games?

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

because I was involved in their creation for a while and saw legal team approved texts for banned users

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

This seems more like a you problem if you cant understand simple instructions and follow the rules.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

ofc it's mine problem. But maybe not only mine, since AiKirika in a commented above knows more people with same problem

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

if you get steam gift instead of steam key... You can't mark it as received because you didn't recieve a key??
The rule is quite simple, you need to activate your wins and you enter giveaways for that game(and you get it by gifting trough steam or get a steam key)...

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

What can I say, simple thing can be confusing too.

Now I know there is the rule a question in FAQ about handling the situation.
Now I can see between lines what the rule was about.

Before that I saw only question whether I received a gift/key. I received one so I answered Yes

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

You entered for a specific game and your only thought it's asking if you received any gift/key?

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

yep. AiKirika covered the issue in that huge comment slightly above, when part of people just happy to get any key even if it's not for promised game. Since I didn't noticed The Rule explanation in FAQ in time, I even answered the giveaway's creator that I'll cover his mistake by answering "Received" to don't make him troubles with moderators. Now, 2 years later, I experienced troubles instead of him )

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Did you receive the game that the giveaway was for or not? I didn't think that this is confusing, but here we are.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

With the minimal amount of changes and effort currently put into this site, I'd prefer if that effort would be spend on something more useful.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

This is a good reminder to everyone to check your wins.

7 months ago
Permalink

Comment has been collapsed.

Sign in through Steam to add a comment.