L4D2 and Sniper Elite V2 were indeed given away for free, but you couldn't "buy" a copy of them, it gets linked to your account and that's it.
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This is the main thing, yes. A game is marked as free when it's given away in large numbers in some regiftable form outside of Steamgifts (things given away in large numbers on Steamgifts are fine because they can track who won it and catch them if they regift them.) Lots of people got L4D2 for free, but nobody can abuse that to create a giveaway.
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You couldn't give the free copies of L4D and Sniper Elite away, since they were tied to your Steam account.
Rule of thumb: If you got it for free, don't create a GA for it.
Also - read the FAQ/Guidelines.
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The difference is that L4D2 and Sniper Elite V2 were directly linked to your Steam account. Whereas for free key giveaways, one person could grab several and give them away here, thus supplementing his CV.
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The fact that nobody could create a GA for it here. The rule is in place so people don't rise in level unfairly from free games.
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If that's the reason why, 0 points should be the fix for it. You know Not everybody can get them free on time. And problem solved not more post like this ever again :-)
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ok... for the eternity then...
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Captain's log. Stardate 2259.55
Today I purchased a copy of "sacra terra" off of HoloSteam to give as a gift over HoloSteamGifts. To my horror, I discovered that the game had been given away for free once in the early 21st century, and was therefore impossible to gift over Steamgifts. Considering sending it to the Borg as a peace offering instead.
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We.are.the.Borg... Processing.peace.offering... Negative. You.will.still.be.assimilated. Resistance.is.still.futile. Now.more.than.ever.for.trying.to.bribe.us.with.a.game.that.was.once.free.
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i'ts unnecessary, free games can be given away in the forums either by key drops or just mentioning "first to post gets this game" or something like that.
there's no need to clog the database with more entries.
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Why should you get CV for something you got for free?
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stops muching on some brains Why? What's wrong with it?
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Thank you so much!!. you are very generous.
I don't know (i don't understand) if this is an offer or not, but i reject it because i don't like l4d2 (i don't like horror games). So if this was an offer and you want, give it to another person who will play it.
The thing i say about i didn't get any of the 3 games, was only a comment. The Civ5 was a great promo i lost. :(
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What Ruaben said - it's not whether an individual could get it for free for themselves. It's about preventing abuse of the SG system by people trying to get CV credit for game keys that they got for free. We still see a flood of these GAs every time a new game gets given away like this, but they're not getting CV credit for it, and it would be a lot worse without this rule.
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ok, just don't count cv for that game - why should i create giveaway, see people cursing me, delete giveaway and, finally, give that game away on some other resource
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Why did you create a giveaway for it in the first place? Guideline state "Beta keys, guest passes, coupons, and free games should not be given away." If you were unsure of what "free games" meant, you could have always opened a thread on forum or checked previous ones. Or even waited a day or so to see if the game was removed from the list or not.
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Because you'd have thousands of 0 CV games being listed every time a game is given away for free. It spams everyone's feeds and creates extra server workload.
If you have extra keys for free games, there are threads to post them in the forums or give them to a friend to use.
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Rule of thumb: if you got it from a multi-thousand key giveaway somewhere, don't try to make a giveaway here.
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rushed in the can't create a giveaway for free games trap to give us now a nice overture on this matter.
Yes such a shame, that boosting the cv is not always possible with free things....such a shame.
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Is the deed done? I'll delete mine then. Don't want to overwhelm support.
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no....i don´t longer believe on this way, after seeing that my mr.piratesgold-ticket was just closed with no suspension for him and he also did not correct his "mistake". ...
oh funny for this guy it works....yes this makes even less sense
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my mr.piratesgold-ticket was just closed with no suspension
Because the suspension was already served previously.
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i made a ticket for Resident Evil™ 5....the ticket got closed he got no suspension an this win is from last week....how long was his suspension 5 minutes?
Why can those people do this again and again?
Will someone that does this monthly ever get a permaban?
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Unless your ticket was closed less than 1h30 ago, then it's normal that there was no suspension, since it wasn't one week old yet.
And no they can't do this indefinitely. There are users getting permabanned for non-activations everyday.
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but shouldn´t the ticket get closed with a suspenion and not before...at least that would make sense for me.
And again i really think it´s time to clarify the rules about the case "marking received after activation". yes i know i am a annoying frog, but in my opinion less potential for interpretation in rules are the better way.....cause there might be an excuse to activate a game but not to mark it, like a downtime of the site...or something else....but i can´t see any excuse for the other way....besides rules that might be not clear enough for all people.
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shouldn´t the ticket get closed with a suspenion and not before
I have a bookmark folder with profiles I need to chek back later. Other staff members do that too. So there's no point in leaving the ticket open, it's better to bookmark the user and close it to move it out of the queue.
It does happen sometimes that an user is not able to activate immediately (because they are on a trip abroad, for example). Allowing them to mark it received immediately without being punished is more convenient for the gifter.
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....and on the otherhand supports encourages creators to check if the winners activated their gifts.
Unfortunately, people give away their gifts and keys without first checking the winners of their giveaways for failed activations, and then also fail to ensure those gift are activated. Later, they complain that their gift has been misused, absolving themselves of all responsibility and dumping it on Support. Everyone has the power to make things better, but nobody wants to take action themselves.
and i totally agree with that, cause it would work fantastic! With a not received that I can always check later, I can track my giveaways.
With a "temporary" received, I have to keep in mind there is something pending. If a winner has no time to activate it right now...no problem he just can do it some days later (maybe even two weeks later if the creator agrees)...but this pre-"received" is simply the wrong way in my eyes.
I can´t see more convenience. I want´t to be sure the gift or key worked....and don´t want to get a surprise afterwards.
But just my opinion, we may disagree here....at the end we all have to live with the side-effects.
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how about donators that never re roll? i already made 2 tickets ( for my duplicate oveture win. 1 got answered saying i should contact the donator ) and even after i contacted the donator no response and no reroll... by next week if i dont get in actual response or the reroll done ill make it is unrecieved and i wouldnt even care if i got temp banned for it. cuz if that ever happenes there well be a pretty big discussions going on about that lol
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You won't get a suspension for marking the 2nd win as not received. That's what you're supposed to do. "Not Received" wins don't appear on your profile and won't show up as non-activated wins.
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if you mark it received, you will be suspended for multiple wins.
if you mark it not-received, you are cheating since you actually got the second key.
since you won the second GA accidentally, leave it without feedback (don't mark any options). you will have to deal with the win notification on the navigation bar till support and the creator sort this out.
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Ah my bad, thought if you ask the creator for a re-roll and the creator doesn't request one after a week, you're supposed to mark a 2nd win as not received and move on (letting the system know you didn't use the key).
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i don't know what happens if the creator ignores or denies a reroll request, but i assume your unwanted win is either force-rerolled or deleted by support... not sure really.
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No idea lol. I don't win enough to win multiple copies of anything. :P
EDIT: Nvm, BrandeX answered it below.
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No, you mark it as unreceived. I had this same problem and that was exactly what support said to do to me.
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Ideally it would be left with the feedback pending, since neither Received or Not Received reflect the situation accurately.
The important part is that the key remains unused and that you let us know about it, as long as this is done the feedback doesn't matter that much. Just marking it Not Received without letting us know what happened kinda looks bad.
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thats litterly why im complaining here... its been over a month since the 2nd win, yet theres no rule saying " donators should reroll if asked by the giveaway winner". so no lazy butts are going tomove anytime soon lol
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I have to say I don't get this holier than thou attitude from some of the people here. Especially since quite a few of them have once "free" games in their gift history.
Would it be so horrible if someone who may or may not have gotten a game for free got a few cents worth cv from a ga? If that's the case you must really hate it when people are able to buy those 98% off games on steam and get a couple of dollars worth of cv in return.
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I am assuming, you are talking about me. Please look at the dates. I created GAs and sent the games before there was a promotion. I did not keep track of the timeframes, but my gut feeling is that it was weeks-months in each case.
IMHO it is more about respecting the rules of a community. If you take a look at the thread's creator, not following one rule coincides with not following another, hence the suspension.
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Someone needs to put the riff-raff in their place.
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when people are able to buy those 98% off games on steam and get a couple of dollars worth of cv in return
No, because any of those will end up on the 'bundle games' list as well.
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I don't follow that logic. Are you saying that games that are considered "free" wont end up on the bundle list?
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No I would think they can be, however free games often just get removed from the giveaway list entirely when offered in significant enough quantities.
As far as the other thing goes, the rule of thumb was that any game observed to be at a discount of 95% off or more would be added to the bundle game list, thus greatly reducing the CV value attained from it.
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paying even $0.09 on the steam store and grabbing free keys are totally different.
a free game will be exploited since it's "free". people will grab as many keys as possible from sites that give them away, leaving everyone else with nothing, then come here to get a few cents worth of cv.
so it's not just a matter of people raising their CV in an unfair way, they are also stealing chances from others of getting those keys from the sites that gift them.
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You're right, you'd get a lot more return from those cheap steam games. I guess I can see your point about "stealing" chances but even then you'd have to make some assumptions about the gifters and is it really your/our job to police other sites ga's? I'll have to admit that I've not been here long but from what I've seen so far there's not really a problem with people hoarding free keys and giving them away as a shortcut to level 10.
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I'll have to admit that I've not been here long but from what I've seen so far there's not really a problem with people hoarding free keys and giving them away as a shortcut to level 10.
No, but given how many free games are given away these days it would be easy to make the lower contributor levels, which is where the majority of the giveaways are at. That's why free games are often removed from the giveaway list.
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I'm willing to concede that if someone would be willing to spend time and effort they could save a couple of cents getting to level 1 or even maybe level 2 but wouldn't those cv be removed once the contributing games eventually got added to the appropriate list just like the retroactive bundle adding works? And even if not, I just don't see the need for users policing free ga over a few cent in eventually "ill gotten" cv. There's always the possibility that I'm too naive though.
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Apart from people farming free CV, there is another big issue with people mass-giving free games, and that's server load. If you've followed the GA list when a free game gets added, you'll see that there will be a lot of GAs, so many in fact that the servers can start to buckle. So from a pure "site health" point of view, it's good to have a strict policy against free keys.
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I guess I own all of the free games that's been released lately then, or maybe I've not just not been around because I've never seen what you're referring to. I guess i find it a bit odd that you're not allowed to give something away just because it's has at one time been free in limited quantities. It's like the site is more about earning cv than giving games away.
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this is a 98% off game that was given away 1315 times in the last 2 weeks.
if people are willing to create that many GAs for a $0.21 game, just imagine how many we could have for a free one...
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You say that as if it would be a bad thing. I just can't get into that mindset.
There's also Gravilon, Particle Mace and Defy Gravity that people have been using to boost their cv over the last couple of days and it's pretty obvious who is using them to boos their cv rather than just giving them away for the sake of giving when it's exactly 5 copies to avoid the cv degradation. From what you're writing one would think you would look down on such behavior while other evidence suggests not.
If I'd try to imagine how many giveaways we'd have for the game that sparked this topic I'd say probably less than 100 due to it's limited availability (from what I've seen it was 2k keys)
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i don't look down on anyone giving away anything unless it's an exploit. people are paying for those games, even if they are on sale.
free games are just that, free. they shouldn't give us anything in return.
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From what I understand they wont, just like the bundle games wont give full cv
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Then what's the point of using SG's giveaway system for it? If people are looking to simply give away the game and aren't going to get CV for it, then dropping or raffling it in the forum grants the same result. The only difference is they won't get a +1 to their giveaways made.
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I'm guessing because this is a site for giving games away, simple as that. I refuse to think that everyone on this site has cv as primary focus. Although there's a stronger and stronger case building against that with every interaction I have or read...
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It's like the site is more about earning cv than giving games away.
It's the people who only are after getting CV that are the problem in this case, because they are spamming free games. And by having a clear cut "If the game was given away for free (in a giftable form), you're not allowed to create giveaways for it", you don't leave any room for ambiguity.
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Really? There's no one spamming free games. If you'd say spamming cheap games you'd probably have a case but I'd be hard pressed to say 5 games constitutes spamming.
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You are here for one month and telling there is no spam of free games to users who are here for years? Nice!
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I don't follow your logic. Is it that I'm not allowed an opinion because I've not been around as long as others?
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You are allowed to have an opinion, you just haven't seen enough, so your opinion is not based on experience.
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It's based on my experience, but I guess you were trying to state something else?
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What I saying is that 1 month experience is not enough to judge. You haven't seen 2-3 pages of giveaways with the same free game, but it does not mean that this was not happened before, it just means that you are here for too short period of time. Everyone who used site for a year or more have seen this. And then you come and say "I haven't seen that, this means there is no such thing".
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It's enough to judge about the past month though. If the problem is just the inconvenience of seeing a lot of the same unwanted game there's a simple solution for that. I've used the hide feature a lot for game bundles I already own that for some reason doesn't get hidden by the regular filter.
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You are sure don't understand what are you talking about. You know, there is level restricted giveaways. It's kind of gratitude to the people, who did something good to community. Sure, this system is not perfect, but it's what we have. And now think about someone, who want to giveaway a ton of free games to get level free, and then enter to those gratitude giveaways. Do you still think it's good? It's exploiting the system. And that's why free games are not allowed to giveaway.
And also, if it's a limited giveaway of keys somewhere and someone takes the game just to exploit level here - he is actually taking the game from someone, who actually want to play this game.
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There are people who spam free games, but as soon as the game gets removed from the GA list, support also close down GAs for those games. And once a game can't be given away anymore, the spam stops (for obvious reasons ;) )
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I think we might have differing opinions on what constitutes spam. From what I've seen there are a lot more posts with cheap games than "free". I recon you'd say even one "free" game ga would be considered spam.
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I'm not talking about posts, I'm talking about giveaways.
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Sorry for being unclear, I meant posts as in posting giveaways
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The "spam" was big enough for the site admins to find it to be a problem. When something is posted in such large quantities that it's able to slow down a server, I would constitute that as spam. You've not been here for very long, so you've not actually seen how bad it can be.
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It would seem then that even non free games constitutes spam from my very brief experience. But that's besides the point. It's not like people (users) are up in arms because someone might crash the server, its because someone could be getting something for nothing.
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It would seem then that even non free games constitutes spam from my very brief experience.
Yes. This is rarer though, but it can become a problem. Not as big as it has been in the past with free games, but the rat bridge thing did reach silly proportions.
its because someone could be getting something for nothing.
And this is also part of the problem. You were not around when it got really bad, but you had people who grabbed 20-30 copies of games for giveaways, thus basically giving them a sizeable bunch of "free" CV (this can, under the current system, bump you up to level 2-3, without having spent a dime).
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But it's easily fixed without user interaction, by just removing the cv gained from those games as I'm sure they are doing already so is it really a problem?
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Yes, because people take the games, create the GAs, and then notice that they don't get any CV, thus you still get the server load issues.
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Then it doesn't really matter one way or the other if people just let the admins deal with rules and policies right?
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Not really, no, other than people having issues with people trying to "game" the system, and unwittingly causing needless server strain.
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I'm just not seeing the "holier than thou" in this thread. I see a lot of people answering the OP with knowledge found in the FAQ/Guidelines that the OP could have read on their own. Had he read those, he would have saved himself a suspension.
Also, there's a difference between "free" and "once free". People would exploit the system more than they already do if CV were given for free games ...
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What's the difference between free and once free in your opinion? Let's say someone hoards some free keys, which I have strong doubts that it's even possible, then waits a week, or even a month or two to give them away, would you consider that a fair deal then?
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Let's say someone hoards some free keys, which I have strong doubts that it's even possible, then waits a week, or even a month or two
Steam keys usually don't expire so it is entirely possible. You weren't here back in the days when things like Metro 2033 and The Ship were given away free en masse and some people put up a dozen giveaways with those for example. And forget hoarding for weeks or months.... try years. You underestimate the lengths to which some people will go. If I've learned anything on the internet when it comes to free stuff, it's that.
In a way it's sort of similar to the lengths to which people will go to try and make insignificant amounts of money without 'working', when they would be far better off just going out and getting a job. It's quite amazing how hard people will work not to work.
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What I meant was you still get CV for games you give away before they're given away for free, and people should still get that CV (because they paid for the game). Just because someone had a game on their list of GAs that's now free doesn't mean it was free when they made the GA. (Perhaps I misunderstood what you were getting at there).
And no, I wouldn't think holding onto keys you got for nothing to give away later for CV is fair at all. Typically those games, once given away for free, are removed from the GA list anyway, presumably to prevent people waiting til it's no longer "free" and farming CV with those keys. At any rate, it's right in the FAQ/Guidelines. Don't give away "free games." Not my rules - I just follow them.
Besides, giving away a key you got for nothing amounts to little more than re-gifting, in my opinion.
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Well, the thing is I've seen quite a few "free" games in users history that I know for a fact have been given away for free before the giveaway, however what I can't know is if the game was free for them or not. I still don't think it my or any other users job to police these things though and if the site admin finds that a game are to be considered free and not giftable from a certain date I'm pretty sure it will be handled like the bundle games are. Hence we don't need anyone calling out possible offenders.
Also I cant really see the re-gifting rule covering anything other than this site, I might be wrong though.
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Some people go a bit overboard with reporting everything ... I don't bother with it anymore ... repeat offenders end up on the blacklist. If I'm not too busy and they're new here I might let them know it's against the rules. I figure that's enough.
But if someone is going to make a post complaining about not being able to give away a free game and draw attention to their profile ... well ... I can't really blame whoever reported it. LOL.
No idea about the re-gifting rule covering other sites or not - that's just my opinion on it. :P
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Just as I was about to post my comment got suspended, lol
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thanks for reminding me that I missed all three of those promotions
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I got none of them. :( Bought Civ 5, won here L4D2 and still looking for Sniper Elite 2.
You've got a point there.
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i need sniper elite!! seeing him suspended reminds me of my suspension too in my early days here. It was painful not being able to accumulate and spend all them points.
On a serious note, maybe just maybe, the site can create a system that act like how it deals with the bundle game and gives 0 cv to those free games retrospectively. But it will create a problem of people flooding sg with free games just to increase the amount of points they will received. Or maybe a new page where we can post giveaway for free games rather than in the discussion page because i think most of us have those free games that came in later bundles and some of us miss out on those free games.
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Ignore everyone and create the GAs. Who cares what people think?
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Everyone actually, unless they are a sociopath and I'm guessing there aren't many of those around
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I was reading the comments looking for a chance to say something creative and yours was the lucky one.
Haven't you ever seen any "No F***s given" gifs or memes? I am pretty sure everyone does Not care what others think.
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Well then you are simply wrong. What you are referring to are people acting like they don't care but in reality everyone cares unless they have a brain defect, it's just the way our brain works.
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*sigh* "another rules are for everyone but me" type.
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if it's on the list, it means he can give it away. If it is a game that has recently been given away for free and hasn't made the list yet, obviously not.
All in all, he can give away the games he mentioned, it's not against the rules.
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The games he mentioned he can give away I think, but the rules specifically state that you are not allowed to give away games that you could get free keys from. So even if it is on the list, you are not allowed to create ga's from them (even if the are still on the list, they probably will get removed soon anyway)
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now this is a different rule... usually I repeat first part the bundle rule on F.A.Q. that "anything can be bundled any time and be marked with any date retroactively" but this time I have to say the last part of bundle rule of F.A.Q.: "anything can be included or excluded for any reason".
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Civilization V was free? :O Oh NO, why didn't anyone tell me? :'( I want it so much and now I learn that it has been given for free. :B
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l4d2, sniper elite 2 and civ v... i miss all promo T_T still hanging on my wishlisted
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I haven't got neither of the three D:
Haven't got L4D2 or Sniper Elite V2 or Civ 5 D:
sobs in corner for missing the free giveaways for it :c
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The L4D double pack was like $5 during the last Steam sale :)
(Though free would have been better :( )
I've no interest in the other two, but I've definitely missed my fair share of good games..
Though I'm more saddened about the humble bundles I missed in 2011 (didn't know about the site) and 2013 (didn't have internet)- especially ones like the Telltale Bundle from 2013 :X
$1 for like 6 Telltale games? Siiigh.
It hurts me inside :X
:passes you a bottle of wine:
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Telltale... takes the wine
My first bundle was in 2014 january, before that I didn't even know about bundles :D
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So you are one of the guys that stolen the keys from those who really wanted the game just to give it away later?
I love you so much! Whitelisted!
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Amnesia: The Dark Descent was free, still can see giveaways on this site :D
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you couldn't get extra keys to give away, you could only add it to your account
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At least you tried x) It was free to buy on Steam, and as Stoner said, can't be gifed, so there wasn't a problem. But for example first time Blockstorm got a lot of free keys given away on Facebook, there was like two pages of it given away here on SG
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yes, it was given for free with Mafia 2 by GMG for voting in that golden joystick thing
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Was the fourth of fifth civilization given for free ... two? years ago on goldenjoystick? Maybe because that, but I'm not sure.
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every time i try to create a giveaway of a spare key that i might have i see some prick telling me this is a "free" game and i can't giveaway it here.
i am not going to study by heart 19 thousand steam game list, so i think simply - if system allows me to create giveaway - i create it. if game is not found in "create giveaway" list - i do not create giveaway.
left 4 dead 2 was free for everyone on steam, but system does let me to create a gift. sniper elite 2 was free for everyone on steam, but its accessible as well. civilization 5 was given for everyone voting for games awards but its still accessible - how many thousand users got these games?
but a small poor "sacra terra" that was indeed given away - 5 000 (thousand) keys for 75 000 000 (million) steam users immediately becomes "free" and i can not giveaway it on steam gifts.
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