Most of my giveaways are restricted to groups as well. It is a mechanism to fight with bots.
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But where does one find such group?
I wouldn't mind being in a group and doing give away for said group, just don't know where to find/apply for one !
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Easiest is taking a look to a group recruitment section of discussion and finding groups that suits to you as there is many and each focus at different things. I am just in two groups these are for people playing their wins.
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I was just thinking that reading OP. Am I a bot? I thought I wasn't but now that I think about it... 🦾
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honestly... its more likely humans entering in the first seconds, its easy to click sort by new, and 1 click enter with scripts like ESGST and be entered with 5 seconds of a giveaway being created.
bots will be refreshing every 15-30 minutes, to a bot it doesn't matter if they enter immediately or not, but a human will want to enter and go on with life.
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I usually make giveaways for level 3 or 4. I find it's enough to filter most bots
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Omg looked at your profile and find out you are a bot 🤯 Don't fool us.
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Bit, bot. I am caught. Sorry human, you will have to be erased.
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You are a cold hearted machine, indeed, to have such a promising poetic meter and rhyme scheme, only to turn around and threaten our existence.
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Bit. Bot. I am simply a extremely environmental conscious bot. I find the earth is increasing its temperature too fast, and nobody is stopping. Sorry, you humans gotta go.
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Bit, bot. Please do not erase me, I am a bot sympathizer, I hope you can spare me. Bit, bot.
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First of all it's your blacklist. You can add everyone if you want. Secondly you can't run from bot accounts. It's not that easy to understand if they are or not. You are right about 0 levels that 0 contribution tho. That's why there are groups, puzzles, whitelist function etc. I love the puzzle option. You have to find the giveaway yourself. You have to earn it by solving the puzzle. But again there are bots in that field too. Like some people make ai to solve puzzles or jigidis etc. You can minimize that number with these but never zero. Sorry.
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The blacklist is limited to 1000 entries and there's way more bots / autojoiners as well as leeches and exploiters here than that. You will probably go through the same stages as most people here and sooner or later start raising the entry level of your giveaways and making invite / group / whitelist only giveaways as well as using SGTools for invite only giveaways to further restrict entries and thus reducing the need to blacklist to the higher level exploiters.
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That's botism, you meatbag hater!
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I guess OP found out that there are bots and a second group of us who found out long ago there were bots and decided to make groups only GAs to avoid the first group of bots.
For some reason that makes us bots too...
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🫂aww ur too pure for this world.
Judge the heck away IMO! It's your brain😈
Bots/leechers/script abusers (yep there are scripts that let u auto enter giveaways without you having to care about checking ur system) they all run rampant on SG. Side note: Notice the random Thank You comments, there is a fair chance it comes via script users. The scripts/extensions have an option to enable that. But it's never a 100% certainity, so please never ever callout or accuse anyone in here. Might get you banned.
You probably came across someone who only participates in Group GAs (to maintain their ratio and to remain in that group) and Public ones. I'm not sure if they are leechers as ur post doesnt mention their ratio. Some people here don't like that as it means they are simply trading games with each other rather than gifting or sharing with the community. Most folks dont care about such things.
If I could give u some hopefully easy tips:
- Read and reread the FAQ and guidelines. Use the Discussions Search feature to check past query and discussions.
- Lessen or avoid making public GAs if you want.
- Download ESGST, pro tool for SG.
- Learn what terms like Reduced CV, CV ratio, RCV ratio means. Take your time.
- If you wanna share games, consider invite only GAs, not sure what that means? Notice the puzzles/events on Discussions, check out other threads like Community word game/Positivity thread/Cozy Train (currently ongoing)
Most importantly, know that it is pointless to 'fight' against bots or any form of leeching. Also, levels don't mean as much. Participate in GAs, engage with the community and protect your own giveaways however u like (invite only, sgtools protection, groups).
Don't think too much about it, this is a raffle website for video games. Keep bumping threads and talking, be courteous. And ever more importantly just enjoy your wins and have fun :)
A group you might want to check out. Dont forget to read the rules.
Btw good job, you have mastered this site's formatting, way better than before :D
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"without you having to care about checking ur system" what does this mean? Like checking hardware requirements as whether you can or cannot run the game? Imma be honest I never do that, but maybe it's because despite my gpu getting a bit older it can still run anything. Didn't actually know there was a standard to check pc requirements before entering a ga.
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No. It means that u can have the prohibited tool run in the background, while it enters GAs for you on SG.
But I appreciate your attempt at sarcasm.
Thanks
Edit: super relaxed ^^
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Oh I just misunderstood I wasn't being sarcastic. I wasn't sure why you said that after you mentioned autojoin as it felt redundant. Relax.
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Probably would be good for you to do giveaways in the Taleplay, group, where playing within 3 months is required, or something like Play a Game You Won on SG, where people are likely to play. Otherwise doing puzzles and such, perhaps combined with sgtools, usually does some bot weeding.
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I think (i'm sure :p) that different levels users autojoin GA, not just under level 3.
Many level 0 users are genuine, many of those who join fast are genuine too.
As others said, you'll never have enough slots. Public keys return to nature, free your mind.
You want your games to be played ? Make a whitelist or join groups that ask for that.
95% public/private games (even behind puzzles or sgtools) are not played.
Ah, also welcome ! ;)
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You seem to have fallen for the masafor syndrome. If you believe you saw 500 botters in 2 giveaways you are simply wrong, however you are new, so it's not your fault for seeing people spread misinformation here about bots. Don't worry though I'll explain.
You say you saw people enter as the giveaway became available and you believed that to be indicative of bot activity. However, if you head over to Active User Stats which CG kindly provided for us, you can see we average about 18k users a day. Not only that, he provided a per hour average, with the lowest at any given time yesterday being 3213 users(at around 4 am), peaking at 6034 users at 4pm(I assume that's MST my time? I don't remember). So at any given time, assuming they didn't have your game, over 3000 people could have refreshed the page and instantly joined your giveaway, if not 6000 people. At any given second you are on this website.
Extremely unlikely they wont all have your game, but what will 3000-6000 online users do when they're here? Likely enter giveaways, and check the deals and discussions forums. What I'm saying is it should be surprising if within 3 minutes of you posting a giveaway, 100 people would join. Which I don't think I've ever seen on one of mine, not even close.
Now I believe you refer to leeches as bots. Leeches are those who take and don't give, hence the 0 given, many taken, especially being here for many years. There are some really bad cases(like someone who's been here for 10 years and won a thousand games but couldn't get a job or $1 to buy some random game to give away at least anything to show their appreciation, but they are rare), but I think it's fair to say we don't know someone's life situation and what brought them or keeps them on sg. I like to look at SG as a site where you give if you can what you don't need, without the expectation to receive. If you expect to receive then group swapping's are the best for you. By that I mean, those groups that say "you must make at least one GA a month, or when you join or etc.".
This brings up the second group of people you mentioned double dipper group farmers, those who have high levels but somehow only give to their groups, yet leech on public giveaways. Still not bots, but those are the worst. Because with your standard leeches you don't know their financial situation of whether they can or can't give even after x years(although if you're in your 30's and you still can't give a game away to a site you've taken around a thousand from you're a piece of .....), but with your double dipper group farmers you know they have the ability to give away and they make the choice not to, not only that, they go the extra mile to leech on public giveaways to add insult to injury. So people who only make group GA's but leech on public ones are toxic af.
Lastly you finally have your botters, and I think all that needs to be said about that is that if you're going to make a bot that joins giveaways, why not add a random timer to it joining giveaways minutes or hours after they've been created to make it undetectable? Somehow this wooshes over every "bots everywhere" persons head, so I'm guessing they just never did any programming or they just don't have that logic implemented. Maybe there's a very insignificant amount of botters(single digits) who enter instantly, but you'd never get to 500 that way in 2 giveaways.
The argument that the bots always join first and fast doesn't work if you consider all the other factors. Looking at peak hours you'd have up to 6000 users and how could you not expect maybe 20 - 30 of those to refresh the page and look for new giveaways, that will explain why some users enter instantly. I guess it's refreshing to think someone else is there with you in that very moment, in a sense, if you're sentimental.
My recommendation: Enjoy the site and don't focus on mirages, if you want to avoid people who don't give to your satisfaction, raise your GA level to the # that makes you feel they gave enough for them to win that game. You wont have any way to avoid the double dipper group farmers, but it's better than nothing. Maybe that's the feature we need next, a GA level based on how many public GA's a user did based on their level. If their level is 0 they could still enter but if they're level 7 with no public giveaways, they can't. That'd be nice but I'm willing to bet they'd be very unhappy and against this.
I've talked about bots with users here many times almost always leading to them insulting me and deflecting off topic, and not one can prove me wrong. They have no proof, and they wont be willing to share any data with you or anybody, because it doesn't exist and it can be disproven easily. Are there bots on the site, I'm sure, but not even close to that extent.
Take care ^_^
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I like to look at SG as a site where you give if you can what you don't need, without the expectation to receive.
This, because you need people willing to receive for people being able to give, especially for the games that su.... XD
However, if you head over to Active User Stats which CG kindly provided for us, you can see we average about 18k users a day.
Logically nothing proves that these 18k are not 18k autojoiners (joke ah !), but i like to think that it's a minority.
This brings up the second group of people you mentioned double dipper group farmers, those who have high levels but somehow only give to their groups, yet leech on public giveaways.
There are people who gift only to playing appreciated or unlucky-7 or this sort of groups. I wouldn't consider that they leech. I think that you don't either.
The argument that the bots always join first and fast doesn't work if you consider all the other factors. Looking at peak hours you'd have up to 6000 users and how could you not expect maybe 20 - 30 of those to refresh the page and look for new giveaways, that will explain why some users enter instantly. I guess it's refreshing to think someone else is there with you in that very moment, in a sense, if you're sentimental.
This. Logically the fastest to join are not all autojoiners. There are people present here at every moment who refresh. I think autojoiners have a program to connect and join all every 1-6h. They are not always here. Funnily i would say the shorter is the GA, the less probability you've to get autojoiners. If you think like me that they just connect every 1-6h then it's logical to prefer fast GA.
if you want to avoid people who don't give to your satisfaction, raise your GA level to the # that makes you feel they gave enough for them to win that game.
That's just if you care about ratio. 100% won't avoid autojoiners.
I've talked about bots with users here many times almost always leading to them insulting me and deflecting off topic, and not one can prove me wrong. They have no proof, and they wont be willing to share any data with you or anybody, because it doesn't exist and it can be disproven easily. Are there bots on the site, I'm sure, but not even close to that extent.
- I agree that i've no proof, but i've my experience. That other users don't have to trust, but i trust my experience.
All i can say is that when i waited (rarely but it happens i would say around 30/700) almost 1 week for a GA to be received, then it wasn't always lvl 0. (I mean people online here every 1-6h joining all but that you've to run after for 1 week, i feel it's the more infuriating, even more in the times when you've troubles irl. Though i understand fully when someone can't connect for 1 week at all for plenty of good reasons not the same.)
In fact most of the time it wasn't lvl 0. I even got some lvl +5 with +100.000 entries doing that with a steam profile full of comments sometimes begging them weeks later to activate the game. When you notice their steam profile is full of that, it's... well it's depressing.
"hello i already tried to contact you 1-2 weeks ago, please could you activate ?" everywhere on steam profile. When you read that on winner steam profile, you know the road will be long in the coming week. sigh
So i think that these people autojoin (or do that on purpose but then it's worst lol). And that giving to lvl 0 reduce the probability because the more users join a GA, the less % of said users there are among the joiners ? And by the way i think blacklist is useless, next time it will be a totally different case, a totally different user, i could never make a generalization.
- I should add that not everyone who comment thanks is a bot. The first years on SG, i commented typing manually maybe 2000 variations of thanks (yes i know sorry it was probably horrible) when i entered GA thinking that it was basic civility. So i'm sure that among those who do it now, some think the same. I'm even sure some copy-paste thinking they try to be polite lol.
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"Logically nothing proves that these 18k are not 18k autojoiners (joke ah !), but i like to think that it's a minority."Lol fair, there's a chance. I like to believe CG would be shocked if even 3% of the site is bots. It's just not everyone comments here, mostly cause we get into heated debates, and most people don't care or have the time, they just want a win cause it's free and as easy as it gets, join, win, activate, and when you forget the creator even comes to tell you "please activate your win". I imagine some users never experienced such great customer service in their lives and we're not even employed.
"There are people who gift only to playing appreciated or unlucky-7 or this sort of groups. I wouldn't consider that they leech. I think that
you don't either." Once again fair, I'm leaning more into what you say and I agree, that group being an exception, not sure which others would qualify, but there's also a part of me which says for every 10 private giveaways you make, be them in the unlucky 7 or whatever, one can be a public level 0. But I'm not bothered whether they go fully unlucky 7 cause I think it's a great group.
"Funnily i would say the shorter is the GA, the less probability you've to get autojoiners. If you think like me that they just connect every 1-
6h then it's logical to prefer fast GA."I think this in a sense would hurt the site more since the giveways would vanish faster from the site and we'd basically have less active giveaways, as for what impact they'd have on botters, it would probably work temporarily but if enough people did this, they'd adapt to check more often, and then they'd maybe be more detectable (since cg could see who logs in every hour where it's not humanly reasonable anymore). I think the best bot avoidance is a group like taleplay, where playing is required. People would fly out of the group like crazy. I don't think anything else works, even at level 10.
"That's just if you care about ratio. 100% won't avoid autojoiners."True I meant it regarding leeches, as op mentioned people who gifted nothing. Figured it would help him at least find people he finds more acceptable on that scale.
"I agree that i've no proof, but i've my experience. That other users don't have to trust, but i trust my experience."This is also reasonable, and there's tools you can make use of like the blacklist to prevent someone you're certain of botting from joining another of your giveaways and the report feature, and others.
I would only say this is a concern when you go left and right and spread a hunch as a fact and what actions should be taken against this. To give you an example, one time while discussing with someone I mentioned above in their thread about bots and how many we have, they said they'd be okay with cg banning some innocent users if they got cheaters in the pile as well. After mentioning they reported a somewhat 450 users if I remember right(feel free to correct me pull up the thread if you got it), I believe they said only around 125 got banned. This is back when autojoiners were still popular, however this same user would be ok if some innocent users got caught in the ban wave. So should we ban 300+ users who are not cheating for every 125 we catch cheating? I think no. So we argued for no reason, because no matter how you put it, you shouldn't ban 1 innocent user to get 100 cheaters, end of story. What if that user was him? We'll make it 301 just for the lulz.
"Though i understand fully when someone can't connect for 1 week at all for plenty of good reasons not the same."True, some people go on vacation and fly and still enter giveaways, but wont be able to activate for 10 days, that was me, I entered a bunch of giveaways, but I didn't win anything lol xD. However, if this is a repeat offense I believe this is the best way to discern an autojoiner, while still not guaranteed. Like if the user logs in consistently to join giveaways, but somehow every single time he wins something it takes a week or a notice then what's the hold up. In that case I think there should be some sort of flagging system so they can track activation time, vs how often the user visits the site. If the user only logs in once a month to sg, and they win and they don't activate after 10 days, I can't say I'm surprised, they probably forgot this exists, they just like to gamble here and there.
"I should add that not everyone who comment thanks is a bot. The first years on SG, i commented typing manually maybe 2000 variations of thanks (yes i know sorry it was probably horrible) when i entered GA thinking that it was basic civility. So i'm sure that among those who do it now, some think the same. I'm even sure some copy-paste thinking they try to be polite lol."This was me when I joined, at first I typed but like a day into it I'd copy paste the same thanks message to every giveaway I joined because I saw others do it and I thought it was the standard, nowadays I don't say anything unless it's something super interesting, noticeable or maybe a whitelist, group. Just because back then a user that comes to the forums a lot told me to stop saying thanks and we argued about it and that was my first blacklist ever so they don't have to worry about me anymore. I stopped making comments afterwards but the way they said it was kinda toxic, and they still are when they comment and I replied with the proper amount of toxicity.
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Lol fair, there's a chance. I like to believe CG would be shocked if even 3% of the site is bots.
If i had 30/700 bad experiences, that makes around 4% so you're probably not far ! But that's just the winners, probably there was more autojoiners among the users who took part but didn't win. What % ? Who knows hey ? I just can say among my winners.
I imagine some users never experienced such great customer service in their lives and we're not even employed.
Made me giggle ! XD
Once again fair, I'm leaning more into what you say and I agree, that group being an exception, not sure which others would qualify, but there's also a part of me which says for every 10 private giveaways you make, be them in the unlucky 7 or whatever, one can be a public level 0. But I'm not bothered whether they go fully unlucky 7 cause I think it's a great group.
I understand your logic but those who gift to these groups only looks like they have a sort of philosophy to help the new users who didn't win for example. Here i can't say how much they help a lot to avoid frustration among these new users, probably a lot ! Huge dedication from them, i can just admire.
I think this in a sense would hurt the site more since the giveways would vanish faster from the site and we'd basically have less active giveaways, as for what impact they'd have on botters, it would probably work temporarily but if enough people did this, they'd adapt to check more often, and then they'd maybe be more detectable (since cg could see who logs in every hour where it's not humanly reasonable anymore). I think the best bot avoidance is a group like taleplay, where playing is required. People would fly out of the group like crazy. I don't think anything else works, even at level 10.
I never joined a group as i don't have the discipline. Taleplay is too much discipline for me for example. But i've a little whitelist... of 250 users and still add some when i see people who try their wins. I agree if everybody did what i do (short time GA), it would maybe hurt the website. The best i can do though, is that i still make sometimes some level 0 public GA while knowing fully that i've 4% chances for the winner to be a pain. Isn't it another form of dedication lol ? :p I know lvl 0 public GA are an open door to this website.
I would only say this is a concern when you go left and right and spread a hunch as a fact and what actions should be taken against this. To give you an example, one time while discussing with someone I mentioned above in their thread about bots and how many we have, they said they'd be okay with cg banning some innocent users if they got cheaters in the pile as well. After mentioning they reported a somewhat 450 users if I remember right(feel free to correct me pull up the thread if you got it), I believe they said only around 125 got banned. This is back when autojoiners were still popular, however this same user would be ok if some innocent users got caught in the ban wave. So should we ban 300+ users who are not cheating for every 125 we catch cheating? I think no. So we argued for no reason, because no matter how you put it, you shouldn't ban 1 innocent user to get 100 cheaters, end of story. What if that user was him? We'll make it 301 just for the lulz.
Hurting the innocents to catch a culprit is always a terrible way, even more with this % of innocent / culprit wtf. I proposed another solution, not being able to enter other GA while a GA is not marked received to force people to manually log-in, but my proposition didn't please (with both some very good and bad counter-arguments). ;)
True, some people go on vacation and fly and still enter giveaways, but wont be able to activate for 10 days, that was me, I entered a bunch of giveaways, but I didn't win anything lol xD. However, if this is a repeat offense I believe this is the best way to discern an autojoiner, while still not guaranteed. Like if the user logs in consistently to join giveaways, but somehow every single time he wins something it takes a week or a notice then what's the hold up. In that case I think there should be some sort of flagging system so they can track activation time, vs how often the user visits the site. If the user only logs in once a month to sg, and they win and they don't activate after 10 days, I can't say I'm surprised, they probably forgot this exists, they just like to gamble here and there.
I swear the last annoying winner i got wasn't level 0 and had like +20 pages on his steam profile full of gifters running after him.
This was me when I joined, at first I typed but like a day into it I'd copy paste the same thanks message to every giveaway I joined because I saw others do it and I thought it was the standard, nowadays I don't say anything unless it's something super interesting, noticeable or maybe a whitelist, group. Just because back then a user that comes to the forums a lot told me to stop saying thanks and we argued about it and that was my first blacklist ever so they don't have to worry about me anymore. I stopped making comments afterwards but the way they said it was kinda toxic, and they still are when they comment and I replied with the proper amount of toxicity.
I know you're not the sort who de-escalate when someone searches a conflict with you, thanks for having answered really nicely to me. ;)
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I should add that not everyone who comment thanks is a bot. The first years on SG, i commented typing manually maybe 2000 variations of thanks (yes i know sorry it was probably horrible) when i entered GA thinking that it was basic civility.
I did this too. Eventually someone told me not to, and at first I was baffled, but eventually I figured it out.
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Keep exploring SG life, don’t stop on watching how other users join, proceed to their Steam accounts and check if they at least have the games they won here added to their account (you certainly already know they’re supposed to). Maybe you’ll discover something surprising.
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You've the contrary of a bot profile, you're an anti-bot.
13 years - just 25000 entries and 53 GA won - definitely not a bot
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One of the cool things about SG is that everyone gets to decide for themselves how they want to use the site. Some like to enter every single giveaway but never give anything away, others just make giveaways and never enter anything. Some like to join every possible group, others only do public giveaways. Some max out their blacklist, others are proud that their blacklist is empty.
So live your best SG life, it's your choice!
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I think if you give away games in public giveaways, you are doing yourself a disservice by following up to see if you gave it to someone who actually appreciates it. That can only lead to heartache. With public giveaways, it's best to simply send the game to the winner and wash your hands of the whole thing.
A reason why a lot of giveaways are for private groups or whitelist is to avoid the above. A lot of groups require that you play your wins within a certain amount of time, and your whitelist if totally controlled by you, so in theory, people only are added to your whitelist if you believe they meet a certain criteria or are actually your friends. Both generally give you a bit more certainty that your giveaways are going to find good homes.
As far as blacklists go, I only use them sparingly. The person has to be pretty despicable in some way to end up there. As a result, there are only like 20 people on my own blacklist. I don't use it for vendettas, as a response to arguments, or whatever other petty stuff people find cause to blacklist people for around these here parts.
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I mean, this tracks -- you are very Deliberate with your blacklist decisions.
Watch out for HaphazardTaco, though! That guy is a jerk, always blacklisting people randomly.
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"or whatever other petty stuff people find cause to blacklist people for around these here parts."I lost it trying to read the last half of your last sentence.
Otherwise good advice, just make sure you join a group that specifies you have to play it, there's only a few that require winners to play their wins but probably 50000 groups that don't care about this, otherwise it's meaningless and it has the same effect as doing public giveaways. Also, in case the group owner wins your ga and they don't play, good luck kicking them out of their own group.
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It definitely is always sage advice to do your due diligence before joining a group.
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I came to the thread to add my thoughts, but it's not needed - you (DeliberateTaco) summarized what I had to say perfectly.
As for OP (jinjin), Public GA's are heartache, if you're going for them, just forget the key and move on with your life.
If you want to make sure your gifts are played, that are group for that. I'd recommend PAGYWOSG. I sometimes end up gifting games to people who qualify for PAGYWOSG and have shady stats, but I don't care - as long as they are playing their wins, that's fine by me.
I used to be part of a double dipping farming group. It was great as a way to build up my Contributor Level, but looking back, I think the games I gifted could have had a better home, and I won way too many games that I'm struggling to play right now, so maybe it wasn't a good idea. But it definitely felt very attractive when I joined the site, as the chance of actually winning something on those groups is very high (although it comes with a cost, since you need to keep giving games back). I don't mind these groups anymore, but also want no part of it.
Other than that, have fun! It's a chill community!
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Yeah I actually do this a lot lol, I look into who won my games and then realize the winner is a bot -_-
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I mostly do public level 0 giveaways and my blacklist is empty. It's good to reward the generous high level users, but we all started at level 0. Some people will never give anything because they lack the means, and some because of greed. If I never won anything here, I might not have given anything here. So if we want new users to stick around and give back, we should at least give them a chance to win sometimes. There are issues like bots and unresponsive winners, but dealing with the occasional problem is a small price to pay to help this site grow, which we should all want.
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I started with Level 0 then I realized that just welcomes all the bots so mine are set to Level 5 at least now.
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There’s such a decisive difference between ‘0 won, 0 sent’ and ‘400 won, 0 sent’, but we have to work with level requirement and without RATiO requirement. Why? How can so many people be content with this inherent unfairness is what will forever puzzle me.
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Group Giveaways for me isolate not just bots, but people who collect games and never play them. I don't try to hunt down bots, as getting rid of them seems impossible. This is why I made my own group where the requirements are fairly easy to enter. Be level 2, have a good reputation on the SG/Steam and play the games you win. I don't care about the metrics they have, how many GA's they gave or won. All I care about is being transparent with the gifter and myself. I personally don't care about boosting my ratio. That's not why I do GA's on Steamgifts. I do them because I have spare copies, and I'd rather see them go to people that plan to play them.
Doing GA's for Level 2+ also works, but even then, some might do a few GA's to get there as they already know it's easier than just going for the low levels.
I think the moment you get applications from players, it's a clearer sign that they are not gonna bot around. Bot's never respond or thank you when they win. I don't think I've seen one doing it.
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So I'm new to Steam/PC gaming and also new to SteamGifts. I did a few giveaways and was looking at the winners. Some profiles were registered 7+ years in this platform but had NO Contribution on record & gained good amount Received Value (games). I didn't mind (I always think about those who can't afford it or young players) but then, I was reading some discussions and I never realized the existences of BOTS. So, I did this experiment:
🥽🥼🔬
• I published a giveaway.
• Started looking "right away" at the ENTRIES who applied the first seconds.
• Realized most of them had a $0 Contribution and were registered 7+ years ago.
There were a BUNCH of profiles with the same pattern: No contribution, were all the first one to Apply the Giveaway, High amount of entries and wins. Sooooo assuming they are bots I decided to use the Blacklist function 🗄🗝. Then I decided to extend my experiment by looking at ALL THE ENTRIES in that giveaway 🔍. Took me 2hrs one by one. I found out ANOTHER NEW KIND ‼️ of profiles with the same pattern who I think they were also bots because they were so many of them.
This NEW DISCOVERED profile were most...:
• High Level Contributors (Levels 7+ Profiles).
• All their giveaways were restricted (to Groups or Whitelist).
• Their giveaways had only less than 25 entries.
• BUT they also benefit of a good amount of received value (games) from regular unlocked giveaways.
So I expanded the Blacklist function on those profiles 🗄🗝 (assuming they were high level bots taking advantage of the system or either limiting their giveaways to just friends but also taking advantage of leveling contributions). I ended up increasing the blacklist to more than 500 profiles (now known for me as the "Bot List") 🕳.
(The experiment continued ⚗️🧬)
The next giveaway I made it was a HUGE difference and easier to monitor because those blacklisted "BOTS" weren't able to participate in the following giveaways and the kind of entries who entered were fair profiles. I still found some profiles to add to my "Bot List" but it was easier to monitor.
💬💬💬💬
I want to know your thought on this. I'm not judging, discriminating or promoting to do the same. I just want my giveaways to benefit fair gamers. I would also like to read opinions whoever thinks this was wrong or hear different thoughts if anyone would strict even more the blacklist. I'm in the learning process and want to correct any action.
A bit of background: I don't have many gaming friends so I have to rely learning by mistakes or connecting with everyone in the online community. With little time to play, my game collection is mostly for my beloved little nephews so I can play with them when they visit me (that's why my wish list is full of short games, heartwarming stories & colorful art style 🎨). I only collect games I would desire playing, not just any game. Last but not least, I wish blessings to everyone. Happy Gaming!
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