Yo GA-makers, what's your take on GAs public-for-all? POLL

Originally, I worked mainly on public gifts.
However, the results of the “survey” included too many BOTs and “previous offenders”.

Am I not making public gifts anymore?
No, we have gifts on Puzzle and these topics.
Also use SGTools.

And sometimes we also make public GAs that also serve as surveys.
Survey information is usually kept private.😉

I giveaway games when I have excess keys and I just want to get rid of them. I don't bother with whitelist or private giveaways but I usually have a level requirement of 2 or more. They are your keys, do what you want with them.

bots and spam accounts wish there was like a 2-step verification. to deter spam/bot accounts. I remember when this site was decent. With only popular games getting over 1k+ entries now every game has 800-1k and popular games get up to 5k entries.

I like to do a variety of giveaways:

Public, level 0
Public, higher levels
Private, forum-based
Groups
Whitelist

I haven't had many bad experiences with winners, even at low levels.

If I ever do public GAs I do them for level 5+ as I found out there are many bots and many people who trade or sell their wins in level 1-3.

I used to do public until I joined Touhou and Playing Appreciated. If I saw enough people wanted it I threw it into pa and the rest would go into touhou to make sure I didn't go afk. I have a lot of winners in my public ones that have not activated wins so it's much easier to blacklist the rare group member then it is deal with annoying public members. I will still do some public ones but its very rare since again most of my keys go somewhere else

I used to make my giveaways public, but no matter how high I raised the level no one ever played the games I gave away. Though to be fair I only raised it to level three, but I've heard from pretty much anyone that talks about it, that it doesn't matter if you go up to ten, it doesn't change that. Only one out of twenty games I gave away were played and that made me want to not give anymore of my games away.

Then I joined Playing Appreciated and now at least nine out of ten of my games are played and those couple of people that didn't play the games got kicked out of the group. It's the only group I know of that does that so I will only give games away on that group now.

I wish I could do it public, but I just can't.

From my point of view vast majority of folks staying at lvl 0-1 are leechers. A good $1 bundle can get a new user close to lvl 2. So, I'm sorry for those few, that really can't afford it, but I see no way to accommodate them in the crowd of freeloaders. As it stands, practically all my GAs are at least lvl 2-3+.

In the last 9 months I've created over 150 GAs, pretty evenly split between group and forum invite only (SGTools protected). I like creating forum events and happenings (because through them we get to know each other better and find friends), and I'm a member of quite a few groups, that I want to support. Looking through the GAs made by me, it seems like I have been making public GAs (12.1% of my CV so far) only for some pretty crappy stuff, like unwanted soundtracks from different bundles. However, I don't really feel bad about this, because I support quite a few groups, that anyone can join, and I quite often offer advice to new members on which groups are worth joining IMO.

One more factor, that we are missing here, is the region restriction issue. Folks blindly restricting most/all of their GAs just to their region are on my no-no list.

I have had multiple reasons for doing giveaways but at the moment getting the game played makes a pretty big impact on my list. Hence doing most of my giveaways to Playing Appreciated group. Public giveaways are quite random. Generally the process goes alright but are likely to end up as +1. Nothing wrong collecting library but I wish the games I give to get chance of playing and feel that they are wasted that way. Someone else could have enjoyed it.

I find hiding games behind a puzzle (either an obscure mathematical formula that five people know on Earth, questions related to the creator's very private life or just jigi "trying to solve a children's puzzle that has like a thousand pieces with the same colour and hue is definitely fun" di) obscure groups and extremely specific whitelists are pointless and just foster the whole elitist attitude the forums (and the community) already has sadly. Note, that I am not hating these giveaways, nor do I wish harm on the people who make them: I am just against them on a personal and moral level.

My giveaway philosophy is simple: level 0+, public, no restrictions (including region ones, but sadly they are sometimes required due to Steam), no strings or puzzles, mostly unbundled games (it might not seem like it now, but it will be visible later), sometimes an bundled one. I believe everyone should have an equal chance to enter: That means no whitelists, nor blacklists.

I consider vast majority of giveways I post on forums to be public. There is unlikely to be anything too complicated to access them most of time. Then there is some groups that are either public, or require contributions.

I always try to balance my GAs. I do a part for the groups, a little (very little) for the forums, for my whitelist, and about a third (a little more or a little less, depending on the season) are public.

In my public GAs I always switch the level. From time to time I set level 0, to encourage new users, but the normal thing is to set it to level 1+ to encourage old users to try to level up (giving games to the community).

After dealing with quite a few winners who wouldn't mark giveaways as received I tried to increase the level to see if the problem goes away. Turns out that it did. So it's not rewarding people with a higher level or creating exclusivity, but rather saving me from having to run after people to ask them to mark giveaways as received.