Games you think should be removed from the reduced/no CV list

I would like to see Underrail, among others, removed from the bundled list.

But as keys do no usually expire, there might still be some "traders" that got a couple (of tens, hundreds) keys left and might use them to level up. There would be abuse for sure.

Even if you would go along and say un-bundle games that have not been in a bundle for X time, you would have to check all places that sell really cheap keys. Too much work for the limited SG-team in my opinion.

Like Oppenh4imer mentions as well, because keys don't expire, no matter how long you wait until you take it off the list, am sure there are enough people that save keys for years before they make giveaways and so if, let's say, you take them off after a few years, enough people will just wait a few years before making giveaways to get the most CV out of it, which kind of ruins the whole purpose of the list to begin with and actually encourage people to sit on their keys longer just in case.

Are there games I'd like to see removed? Yes.
Are there games I believe should be removed? No.

I don't think it will happen but from my point of view:
game was only bundled once, it's more than 5 yrs ago and the game is still in the top100 wishlist on steamgift: make it full CV (I'm sure that there are not that many games where this would even be a thing).

But as I personally don't care about CV I can't even name one game.

The ammount of possible games that not really got a lot of free keys, it must be more as 1k+ to land on the free list, or better 1x and then years not again, is very tiny.

99,9% of the games should be doomed forever in the no cv hell :-D and there should land much more of the free games -the staff haven't the time to check all free ressources-

I think games should be removed from the bundled or no CV list a year after they were last in a bundle or given away for free.

Is it possible that someone might abuse this to gain CV? Yes. Is it a realistic concern? Not really.

Why would anyone get multiple copies of a game to hold onto for a year, in the hopes that it won't be bundled or given away for free again, just to get some CV? That's the least effective way to get CV. If someone wants to get CV then they can abuse $1 bundles, buy keys for dirt cheap from grey-market resellers, get free keys from devs for being an "influencer", etc. There are already many much more effective ways to gain CV that are allowed and don't require waiting a year in the hopes that something will be taken off the list in the future.

i think they should add all games to the list and make bundled cv worth 1% instead of 15%.
then remove all levels, and last, remove sg. 👍

Yes, please take SUPERHOT off the NoCV list. Then the flood of GAs from hoarders will begin and I'll be happy.

That's a coincidence- I was just planning on getting a copy of CrossCode to giveaway. Knowing full well that it is in the Bundle List. Because I like the game and wanna share it with people.
If you wanna give a game away, then it shouldn't matter if it's in the Bundle List or not. ;)

On the more technical side of things- removing stuff from the lists is pretty open for abuse. Heck, right now there are already people who hoard lots of keys they got dirt cheap or for free under the incentive that they might resell them in the future for profit. This would just add another reason for them to do so.
Also wouldn't this over-complicate the system in general? Right now it's pretty straightforward- if a giveaway is made after the game got bundled/free'd it's affected by the lists. Now imagine if games got "removed" from the lists after 1 year and we have a game which goes into a bundle every year and a half or so. Then keeping track of when it's "bundled" and when it isn't would be a nightmare. And we'd probably get more posts on the forum about why their "value" went down (well, even more than we get now that is). It's also mildly annoying from a programming standpoint- you have to keep a database of periods when a given game is considered "bundled" instead of just a database of games and their bundle/free date and I'd imagine it would be pretty annoying for the person handling the lists too.

All in all, not only do I not see that happening, it really shouldn't happen. Well, in my opinion, of course. I don't need a "CV" incentive to giveaway a game, nor would decreasing the "value" lead me to wanna make less giveaways (people not playing their wins and my paranoia are doing that job very effectively though). :3

there is precedent for removing highly in-demand games from the list years after being added ("Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition"

I can't speak to the current, seemingly disorganized and decentralized staff approach to the lists, but back when Shobo was in charge, the reason you saw reversals was because his approach [by his own statements on the matter] was "hit fast to avoid issues asap, and then remove from the list if the exploitation wasn't as bad as expected".

In other words, games weren't arbitrarily removed, nor were they removed due to considerations related to the individual games or their present state, they were removed because all keys expired [as with certain Humble promotions where they didn't only mask the keys after a duration, for example] or the initial exploitation simply wasn't deemed to have been as exploited as first presumed.

So no, you probably can't reasonably use any removed games as basis for the kind of argument you're making. In theory they're all either the result of overturning an initial determination and doing so with careful consideration, or they're the result of a more recent disorganized staff approach that has already seen poorly received arbitrary decisions by certain staff members [and thus, any individual action wouldn't necessarily be reflective of any sort of cohesive staff outlook].

From my understanding, the Dark Souls deal had 10,000 keys, and official statement was that they'd expire after a month. Presumably, that'd be the reason for that game's free list duration having an end-point. If it was removed entirely, then that's a bit peculiar, and would need some staff clarification. Again, presumably it wasn't because of the game itself, however, especially given the arguably more noteworthy, smaller stocked, and older-in-age promotion games that haven't been reversed.

As far as your broader topic, you're not presently making note of the considerations made in previous offerings of this recommendation.

None of what you're saying offers a clear arguement in favor of making any kind of change. Rather, most of your thread is just you clarifying why the lists exist and offering the highly subjective* perspective of "high demand means a game shouldn't be considered as heavily for matters of exploitation". *Which isn't a criticism, but a note that it only works as a valid argument if you can express some degree of majority support or a similar foundation.

The exception to that is in your last sentence, which offers an "adjustment by date" consideration. Of course, such a consideration has been previously brought up multiple times, and was already decided against in previous deliberations, as staff didn't want to reward people who simply had the commitment to have a stockpile saved for a certain duration. On the other hand, if you address that concern directly, that changes things:

Foremost, you could argue that there's a certain number of years, or years-relative-to-stock, that should give the games consideration for removal. I'm really not seeing a way to limit such matters to "AAA", given how unclear that is to begin with and how arbitrary such a class system assignment would be, but maybe some system of determining "high demand as it affects sales that would limit the appeal of exploiting SG CV" could be figured out. Most likely, however, the only feasible system would be a static cut-off that certain games (due to their high or continued exploitation) wouldn't qualify for.

Of course, that point of limiting-by-a-set-date was previously considered too problematic, since it gives clear guidelines for exploiters as to how long a key needs to be held on for. Possible counter points to that would perhaps be that the risk of bundling or loss of alternative profits makes up for such things, in situations where games are unbundled or otherwise weighted towards being readily resold, or that countering explotation offers less benefit to the community than encouraging such games to be posted on the site does.

Outside of that consideration, and given the low trade/resale value of many previously free games, allowing those to regain bundled status would be a bit more problematic. Hence, it'd be a lot of effort by staff to monitor any kind of limit-by-date arrangement- which, as always, is a key arguement against suggestions such as these.

Of course, when faced with such arguments against limit-by-date you could instead counter with a more elaborate suggestion, such as to let users vote to remove a single game from the free list each half-year, or the application of a similar gimmick.

There's ways to approach the matter that'd validate the utility of the thread, but any kind of emphasis on "I don't like this because these popular people aren't getting special treatment" in place of clear arguments just.. ends up presenting an awkward sentiment, even when it's applied to games rather than people.

From my point of view - if once bundled game is valuable again (no promotions with 90% discounts, high prices on grey market) it should be removed from bundled list. Some of you are saying, that someone can keep keys, and then "abuse system". Of course they can. But would it really make a difference if they instead trade it for non bundled game or just sell it on grey market and then buy another game? If they want to gain cv from those keys they will. It only prevents others from making giveaways with games that are pricey again.

The problem of such request, which I understand perfectly, is not related to the key expiration (as we have numerous example of revoked keys and now limited time keys), but more what should be rules under which a game would be taken off that list.

I would like to give an appropriate example of game that should definitely be taken off the reduced CV list: Flat Kingdom Paper's Cut Edition. This game has been bundled twice but the unused keys on BOTH bundles have been revoked. It's not like the fact the keys have been revoked is unknown, it's on the list of revoked keys and even have it's steam discussion. This game should be taken off the reduced CV list because those who hoarded the keys cannot use them.

Now I believe that Flat Kingdom is an exception, so is Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition as someone told you already that it was a limited amount of key and they had a limited duration. Again, the problem is to know what should be the rules differentiating a game that should be taken away from the list to another AND making it so the staff taking care of Steamgifts can make the task possible. Keep in mind that it's easy to add 10 games every day to the list but it's harder to take off 2000 or even 100 following a set of specific rules.
If you can at some point define a set of rules and it's possible to make a script to facilitate the staff work when it comes to take the games of the reduced/no CV list, then yes, of course there should be some games taken off that list, the thing is to define the rule and to make the script after, those who take care of the website aren't paid and it shouldn't become a burden to take care of it.

PS : I still believe that all the game which bundled/free keys have been revoked should be back on the normal CV list. Who can abuse the system with revoked keys after all ?

I don't necessarily agree with the double asterisk for games that had a limited free giveaway (e.g. Euro Truck Simulator 2).

I think marking ETS2 as CV-free probably suppresses the number of giveaways for it, as some people will deliberately avoid giving away CV-free games -- ETS2 has had 607 giveaways, compared to 778 for its cousin American Truck Simulator -- and that's a shame, because it's an awesome game, and would benefit from more giveaways.

But this is not a big deal, and the overall volume of CV-free games is not high enough for me to really support any changes to the list. It's logic-based and I can support that.

With the deluge of games that are being given away every single day and which nobody really gives a damn about, this post prompts me to momentarily entertain a fantasy in which all of CV farming is extinguished in one fell swoop, through the removal of CV, ofc. There would be a bunch of other highly amusing consequences, too.

I have an overly-complex solution that MIGHT help...

Instead of granting value as a percentage of the retail price, what if we had a "sliding scale" where value for a game went up or down depending upon how many copies have been offered on Steamgifts recently? (Past month, year, two years, ???)

The more frequently a game is offered, the more likely it's due to some sort of "deal", and it offers less and less CV each time.
The less frequently, the more value given.

A different idea might be to connect CV given to the number of entries. You get X% of the value in CV for every Y number of entries in the giveaway. The idea here is that any games that are cheaply bundled or not "worth" it would receive fewer entries anyway...

Two proposals:

1. Make CV dependent on current game value. Let the game devaluation itself be the judge instead cutting an arbitrary percentage, and make it non-dependent on a manually updated list.
2. Make CV dependent on the times the game has been given away (optionally: vs the number of whishlists).

Edit: @ddayton idea, just before me, it's quite similar to number 2 here. I was in the process of writing my post and did not see that before.

Unfortunately, I don't really think, that the system can be significantly changed.

Generally, I would prefer, if the GA value was based on price, demand and SteamDB rating (number of folks wishlisting the game), than on price and being bundled or not.

The system could be pretty well automated then, except marking the games given for free in large numbers, giving some basic CV based on Steam price, when GA is made, and then a few months later additional CV based on price multiplied "remaining demand" and rating (so, if it was bundled or sold cheaply at the time of GA, the demand would have enough time to get adjusted; also to avoid high multiplier for games with ratings artificially inflated at launch).

The problem is, that this would be a very different system. Besides the fact, that it's untested (currently still unpublished and probably junky OMON Simulator keeps 79th place on community ratings, because on quite a few sites giving away free games you need to wishlist it - I think, this would be kept in check by ratings part of multiplier), there would be a big issue of converting acquired CVs to the new system.

Unfortunately, any minor adjustments of the current system seem to me to be very likely to encourage people to sit on their keys, and to significantly reduce the number of interesting GAs, so I think, that it pretty much needs to stay as it is.

The only improvement, that I could currently see, encouraging folks to make GAs of higher quality games, would be a bonus (extra 50% of CV?) for games, that have high (80%+?) SteamDB rating, also applied retroactively to all past GAs (which shouldn't be that hard with a script).

My problem is the retroactive dumping of CV from your account for old giveaways. You should never level down, that puts a damper on wanting to create giveaways. I think if there was a way to have recorded in the system for individual giveaway creators, ok the game was this specific value when you gave it away, and later on if the game gets bundled, well it was still this better value when you gave it away, and that's where it stays for you. Only with new people buying the game to give away should the reduced CV value take effect. Harder to accomplish I'm sure, but that'd be a more perfect system.

Alternatively, maybe if someone gives proof of purchase how they bought the game to SG support they could potentially get more value for it? A game could have been in a $5 bundle on Fanatical for example, but if it's a $20 game on Steam and someone buys it in a Steam sale after the bundle ended, and shows proof of buying it there...

Of course the reduced CV games should get removed over time.
So what if someone got the keys cheap? Y'all keep saying how CV doesn't matter, well if that's the case, then what does it matter to you if someone is gonna get full credit for an already bundled game?

And those people can blacklist me all they want, I'm sorry, this is how it is. Users here are kind of pressured into farming CV because otherwise they'll get exluded from groups and giveaways because "their CV is too low, those filthy leachers".
It just genuinely saddens me to see that a website originally created for the purpose of giving attracts this much elitism and sometimes downright hostility.

We all know that while the CV system on Steamgifts... does incentivise some users to make giveaways (gotta get them levels), it can also do the opposite.

Giving games on a site called Steam Gifts shouldn't need to be "incentivised".
Either you want to give games just for the sake of giving them, or you trade/sell them if you expect a return of investment.
CV should be a bonus, not the goal.

Games that are bundled, given away, or made ridiculously cheap at any point end up on a special list which makes them give reduced or no CV
...giveaway creators that are generally willing to pay the higher prices will avoid those (bundled) games despite the demand due to reduced CV.

Giveaway creators who are willing to buy games to give them away will keep doing so anyway with no regards to CV or price drops.
Everybody else will just keep giving away bundle leftovers and/or discounted games as usual.

The purpose of this is to discourage users from buying cheap games in bulk just to level up, however games that end up on this list are basically there forever.
While as a game may have been bundled or very cheap at one point, years later it may be expensive and highly sought after

You're severely underestimating the ability of certain users to hoard keys just for the sake of abusing the system as soon as possible.
Removing games from the free/bundled list would be the equivalent of opening the proverbial Pandora's Box.

What games, if any, do you think should no longer be on the reduced/no CV list? Personally, I think Crosscode should be removed.
It's in rather high demand, was only bundled once 4 years ago (Dec 2015) back when it was in early access, and since then hasn't had any major discounts.

That's because it wasn't supposed to be bundled in the first place.
That was, if I recall correctly, the result of miscommunication (or lack thereof) between dev and publisher, and got removed from the bundle pretty quickly.

Yes, this is a great example of a game that should be removed from the bundled list, because keys from that bundle should be gone by now.
And even if some do remain, that shouldn't be a problem, as nobody did know the whole story until it was too late, thus nobody could have purchased that bundle just to exploit this game, they probably deemed Crosscode as "bundle trash", and either sold/traded it for cheap, or activated it for a +1.

Keeping it on the bundle list devalues it as "bundle trash".
Even though it's one of the highest rated games on Steam.

Remove levels and CV, problem solved.

Just removed 'em after the bundle is X years or months old.
I dunno, 3 years, 5 years?

Any game that has had its keys revoked should be removed from the reduced / no CV list for obvious reasons, I guess? Assuming all unused bundled / free keys have been revoked, anyway.

There are a lot of "free" games that still are on the list costing points to enter, for example beast blaster. All games that were free in massive amounts should be removed forever.