Why do people contribute?

General philanthropy or wanting to expose a game to people.

Just to be nice

It makes some people happy, making other people happy.

And why shouldn't anyone thank the people giving away games that are worth money? =)

well not that you should not thank but the generic thanks seems odd to me as a newbie.

There are people out there who just wanna make others happy! It brightens everyone's day! I'm definitely going to start giveaways when I get my next job.

Because it's fun, and making people happy makes others happy. I personally love seeing a collective of gamers rewarding each other :D

Making other people happy makes me happy.

One of the biggest problems of youth is the whole "what does it matter?" attitude. Who gives a fuck what it matters, or whether or not it seems useless, petty, insignificant to YOU. It is not FOR you, is it? You do it because that is the utter minimum that would be expected of you. By not simply offering a generic, spam-style "thanks", you are showing that you really could do less, while attempting to accept something they are giving freely. (I recognize that this may not be your actual attitude, but it sure as hell IS for a great many people here.)

Why do gifters give away a free game? Do you have a dollar? Would you say that dollar is "much" or "little"? If you cannot think of a great many things to do with that dollar besides buy something super-cheap that you could care less about having, then you can see why gifters give away games. That dollar may not be much to you, but it could very well be a helluva lot to someone else. Offer that dollar to a 5-year-old, and they'll act like you just gave them a thousand. And it was barely noticeable to you. That's why. You feel good for making them unexpectedly happy, they feel good, and other givers feel good seeing another person doing good things for strangers.

Don't know but you feel good giving away. ^^

I heard that when you achieved 100th giveaway, you will be enlighten O.o

I gave away the copy of Portal I had from Portal 2, and the person that won it was extremely happy to get it and couldn't thank me enough, was a great feeling. So when Terraria was on sale for the Summer sale, I dropped the extra money for a 4pack since it was still less than the game was normally and gave the extra copies away.

Well my small contribution was mostly because a 4 pack of Section 8: Prejudice was the price one was normally so why not share the joy?

IMO it's nice to see people make each other happy..unfortunately this is not working the way it should due to those damn "russians"!
And no I'm not racist I'm russian by myself just not one of "those" -It's very emberassing to see "your people" doing that sh**. Luckily I'm living in another country -.-

... because to some people it feels good to make someone else happy... and to a bit lesser group of people it matters if other is happy, and if he is - he is happy too.
Thanks... Well, it's just something polite to do. I used to write 'thanks' in each giveaway in the beginning, because I was excited about this site. Later I started not to write anything at all because of a certain 'great' mood. And now I write random things, just what's on my mind. I know that most of giveawayers don't read the comments anyway, but if somebody would look at my profile and see that I entered 400 giveaways and left 200 comments, that wouldn't be very nice nor polite. Some people might even interpret that as ungratefulness.
I think that we should say thanks only if we win something. I always do say a big and fat thank you to someone who gifts me something. However, I won once in this site and didn't get a chance to say thanks, the guy just send me an email instead.

It's polite to say thanks. Not doing so shows that you don't give a shit about even doing the customary thing to do.

As to why people contribute, why do people give birthday or Christmas presents? Why do people donate to charity? Why does Linus Torvalds develop Linux?

Giving gifts to people makes you happy, doesn't it?

I don't mean just here, I mean in general. It's nice to share something you enjoyed with someone else. And often enough, people are overjoyed to win even a five dollar game -- it costs little, but it makes someone glad. What's wrong with that?

CG says once the gifts value reaches 100K he will dance for us. I gift cause the gamer in me is pretty much dead. So it makes me happy to see other people play games and enjoy them. I like to imagine one or two people have crappy days and win a game and think today isn't so bad! NEVER GIVE UP NEVER SURRENDER!

I do it for those who need a small break and need something more to look forward to.

Wow. great response. I posted this and got a great response right away that made me understand the core of what was going on. But to see that how much this means to you all. I thought I was pretty positive in my opening. My question about the "thanks" was it seemed like the least someone would do after entering. I thought people would discuss the game or why they were excited to win it. Maybe something they enjoyed from the genre.

if you wanna thank me - send me some $$$ :)

I want to give the gift of fear.

Im gifting because it nice to see ppl happy man.

I think the "generic thanks" is largely because any deeper conversation (like this game is good because XYZ) is kind of a pain with the websites interface right now. It just isn't very easy to keep track of your entries, so engaging in a conversation in those giveaways would be kind of a hassle to do really. I imagine that we'll see a "my entered giveaways" option soon that might encourage that type of stuff eventually.

Many people don't know what to say to the gifter. Afterall, it's not like the gifter is creating a giveaway toward a specific person. Hell, many people don't even add a description to their giveaway - and that makes it even harder to create a unique response. Most people will say "thanks" in just as many words because it's the only polite reply they can think of. Some people with critique the game as they've already played it, and some will dig the dredges of their brain to find something unique to say (bless their souls).

Try creating a (legitimate) giveaway, and provide a conversational topic in the description. You'll not only get responses to your topic, but you'll feel damn good about making someone's day when they win.