Could this idea work?
They have this information, but it's restricted to the higher roles on SG. I think it's support and higher, but don't quote mo on that.
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I meant that this information shall only be visible when creating a ticket for this specific user, reporting her/him and asking for a re-roll. In no way shall this info be made public, on a user profile or such, as it would lead to really ugly witch hunts
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On one side the option is great and takes extra work from support. On the other side it is possible to witch hunt if you invest the time in it... It is not visible on profile, but if you take the time, you can weed out people with it. Counter argument would be that it is also (partly) possible with sgtools anyways...
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Good point. Via my proposed method above you could check all usernames while creating a ticket for everyone, check if they ever served a suspension, write down the names of those in a document and publish it somewhere. Well, I see, the idea is still flawed. Thank you for pointing that out.
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But could it be possible to show this pop-up only when the user you're creating a support ticket for is considered a winner by the system? So that nobody could randomly create a ticket about anyone and then witch-hunt.
I mean. Restrict the message "Thise user has already served their suspension" only to reroll tickets.
That would lift some work off the support shoulders, I think.
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Yup, if they don't have private profile on Steam, you can already hunt to your heart's content.
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While I like this idea there needs to be an additional step, when reporting an issue we would be required to input a giveaway or comment ID/link that is to be reported, frankly I kinda surprised this isn't required anyway. Without this information we wouldn't know if the "Suspension already served" was for a previous or new infraction for repeat offenders.
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We need this feature more than ever, nowadays it's almost impossible to create public giveaways without getting rule breakers as winners.
Sorry for the bump but I felt it was useless to create one more thread about this issue.
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Necro bump. We still need this, support tickets to request a new winner are always raising, you can't avoid rule breakers even restricting your giveaways by level or groups.
My last 2 giveaways are waiting for support to reroll (or not). Please, take this suggestion into consideration.
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It would help.
Special the support to reduce their work load.
But my hope that cg will do something is nearly ZERO.
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Yes, specially when there have been recent complaints about support staff missing more than usual.
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I assume that not each staff member is happy when his time gets treated from cg as it isn't something of worth.
And one of the possible results could be inactivity of that staff member(s).
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Luckily I avoided newer infractions, and I really don't care about 2014-205 multiple wins for a DLC or something.
But yeah, it wouldn't be bad. Maybe to show on the GA page, when your winner was last suspended for multiwin/no-activation, then you can be quite* sure about they served their time for infractions before that date.
*Though it's still possible to get suspended for inactivated win in 2018, then a win from 2016 getting revoked/removed from library.
Though with the attention and time the site is getting, quicker handling of rerolls and such would be nice, it's not exactly normal that it takes days or weeks to reroll something when creator and winner are both okay with it. But I don't think if CG has time for analysis about the ratio of open-and-shut cases by ticket type, and how they could be identified more easily.
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I really don't care about 2014-205 multiple wins for a DLC or something.
I don't check for multiple wins anymore neither, only not activated wins.
I don't think if CG has time for analysis about the ratio of open-and-shut cases by ticket type, and how they could be identified more easily.
The site support stats are clearly differentiated by ticket type ("Per Category"), so they are already identified.
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the ratio of open-and-shut cases by ticket type
Emphasis is on the open-and-shut cases, not on the type of ticket.
Not having to dredge through all the tickets in a type to find one with a simple solution could fasten the process.
Rerolls could be faster, if there would be a category "delete, winner also agreed" - staff would just need to check the comments, in ideal situation it's just a few seconds.
BUT that wouldn't prevent someone opening a ticket in that category, when the winner did not consent, hoping that it's automatic or staff will fail to notice it.
So it's not exactly simple to do this. Not even sure it's worth really caring about, but it was already proven that not only moderator presence, but their tiered access and permissions are at fault too. Like a Junior Moderator can't delete a giveaway, despite they wanting to do so and being active, winner and creator consenting; nor can they modify CV values of a game.
The wildcard "other" ticket type is a mess on its own, and we don't have categories like "user has multiple wins / not activated win", likely to avoid flooding the same user. (Apparently there's no way of checking all tickets regarding a user, at least this seems to be the reason behind the unclosed tickets, where the user was already suspended because of another ticket of the same issue)
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Understood, but we are only talking about rerolls when there are previous not activated wins. We only need to know if our winner has already been suspended so we can send the gift directly instead of having to wait for support to confirm the suspension.
The rest of support tickets can't be automatised this way, or at least not so easily.
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nor can they modify CV values of a game
Only cg can do it. That's why it takes months, if not longer, to fix games with incorrect value. It requires manual edit in the database. And we can only decide if game can be given away (like when we were disabling games to prevent them to get on the bundle list due to expiring keys) or add it to bundle / no-CV list.
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or not activated wins
Or successfully activated and then removed (hide) game from account.
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A better way could be that the gifter profile is set to 'strict' or 'lenient'...
And when a GA ends, and the winner selected, the winner's record is checked then. For a strict gifter, the winner might be automatically rejected (and refunded their points), and a new winner selected. The gifter need not know that a rule-breaker was chosen, or who that was.
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We already know who the rule breakers are with either sgtools (you can check any member from this site anytime) or when support responds the ticket. This is not about pointing at rule breakers, is about support staff not having to deal with a mountain of tickets that could be handled in a smarter way.
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...?
My suggestion would eliminate the creation of such a the ticket. That is a smarter way.
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Support do not manage a list of all rule breakers from the site, they suspend each member when they are individually reported or when we ask for a reroll. My last approved reroll was because of a member with 19 not activated wins who was an alt account from a 2011 member with 3 more alt accounts here. The reroll was granted and all accounts were suspended, but support didn't know it until I sent the ticket with all the proofs.
So they can't automatize this the way you suggest.
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Support must have a suspension log that they can compare against new infractions... How else can they declare "the suspension was already served" as the OP first related?
I would think that check could be automated, and then triggered when they win (instead of aggressively running the check periodically).
Perhaps I'm wrong.
Still, finding some fair way to automate the re-roll in the first place would do the most reduce tickets. Maybe it should be impossible to win while you have a not-activated key. No one needs multiple wins per day. That's my 2 cents.
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Yes, they have a log but they don't update it until we report each rule breaker one by one. AFAIK, they do not automate the checks by themselves. Maybe they do periodical checks by hand (using sgtools), but who knows. That member with 3 alts and 19 wins not activated was a long time rule breaker, but undetected until reported.
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It's not possible to automate suspensions, as there are too many false positives. DLCs are not reported by SteamAPI. Developers cancel huge batches of keys just because. I would not want 1k users to get suspended because developer made GA here and then decided to revoke the keys.
It would be nice but because of all the SteamAPI limitations and problems with keys revocations impossible. Otherwise we could just check if game is on account after 8 days from marking as received and suspended everyone who don't comply. That would be nice :D
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Perhaps the GAs could have another status Sent/Received/Activated. The system checks that when the user marks it as Received, and gives the GA "Activated" status then. If the key is later revoked as you mentioned, that wouldn't change the "Activated" status of the GA record stored locally at SG.
DLCs would have to get a free pass, I guess.
Just to be clear -- I'm not trying to automate suspensions. I'm proposing that the system automatically re-pick the winner when the first winner has an infraction.
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Then users could activate games, wait for when system will tick GA as activated and remove unwanted GAs from account after they are done dropping cards. Just one example how they would exploit it. Activating game and then removing from one's account is also a rule break.
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Pop-up upon creating ticket is hard to implement. Imagine user who won a game, not activated it, was suspended, then won another game, not activated it, was NOT suspended for this yet. How the system would know if it should show you that suspension was served or not?
What is easier to implement is some kind of mark on such giveaways. Right now we have "received" and "not received" status on every giveaway, would be great to have third state, "suspension was served", that can be set only by moderators. This way, when some user gets suspended - moderators will also change the state of giveaway, and it will be easy to check for giveaway creators. Someone may say that this will lead to witch hunts and bullying of people with this marks, but I don't think it's valid objection, since not activated gifts can already be viewed with help of sgtools, so information about violations already public - and then, why not make information about penalties public too?
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Imagine user who won a game, not activated it, was suspended, then won another game, not activated it, was NOT suspended for this yet. How the system would know if it should show you that suspension was served or not?
This can be solved by showing the gifter the date of the last suspension. Following your example:
- Win number 1, not activated >> suspended. Date of the last suspension: 12/01/2021
- Win number 2, not activated >> not suspended. Date of the giveaway: 12/20/2021
When you open the ticket the system will show you that the last suspension was served on 12/01, but your giveaway was created later so you can ask for a reroll, the user will be suspended again and the date will be updated on the system.
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If you think the system can provide that information... why do you say the system couldn't also automatically trigger a winner re-roll in that case?
What's the gap?
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The system does not check each winner after each giveaway ends, I don't even know if they have an internal tool to check (similar to sgtools). Probably most of the gifters doesn't even know sgtools if they don't visit the forum so, in sum, hundreds of gifts are sent each day to rule breakers without even knowing they should reroll instead.
To check each winner automatically would probably be too demanding for the server infraestructure, there are too many winners each day.
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Clearly the system doesn't check winners. We're here suggesting a change.
Consider that currently, the winner is determined in seconds. It wouldn't do any harm if that became 3 minutes if needed.
Just think about all those shady accounts being stopped at one win (possibly more in the 7-day tail after that first non-activated win)...
Less help tickets and less wins-to-bot-accounts. That's a plus for mods and a plus for real users, for the real participants in this community.
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Users with private profiles on Steam sync accounts once per week. To have accurate knowledge if user activated their win you'd need to sync account after each win. It would block SG for making too many requests.
Now automatic sync is each 2 days I think, so the best it would be is to cache results of the check for 48h. No rule breaking would be detected in this time frame. Plus all the false positive hits that would take away winners their winnings in case of Steam hickups, games stop being reported, revoked keys etc. I saw profiles with thousands of games and only 40 positions synced with SG due to Steam errors. Those people would be suspended bc of API problems.
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It would be nice feature to have, as some sort of info when you try to create ticket with reason "inactivated win this month". But would require way more than just a pop up window or simple flag on profile due to how suspensions are issued. Support section was really bare bone 10 years back, they even had to manually re-roll the giveaways. There was no automatic ticket category for that...
From what I understand there is no flag "someone was suspended for this giveaway". Trying to re-organize how support section works and parse through all the giveaways ever made in an attempt to automatically match already issued suspensions would be a nightmare.
Plus there are cases where developers were making multiple huge GAs for 25k or more copies, and never bothered to make any re-roll tickets. As it was not a thing that you get removed from GA when you win there are people with multiple wins not from their fault. We generally ignore those. Automatic system would not. Or it would need us to go back to track all those nasty GAs and add them to some whitelist which adds complexity to the whole thing. And automatic system would require update each time Steam decides to change how their API sync works, when there is big revocation, keys with wrong games etc.
Now when I see GA where users won "Dodge" and have "Dodge" on account I can decide not to issue suspension and instead write to those few unlucky winners that creator made mistake and made GA for game with identical title. Ask them for proof of activation and change feedback to not received. Automatic system would suspend them, deny entering GAs and we'd have swarm of puzzled users making tickets why they were suspended.
I'm not against it. But I don't see it getting a lot of developer time.
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We are not talking about an automatic system, only something like in the example here:
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/AaInHt6
We only need a way to know the date of the last suspension so we don't open an unnecessary ticket each time we find a rule breaker. That's what the OP is talking about. The automation is something proposed yesterday by Fitz10024, and I clearly understand the cons after reading your replies.
Thank you for answering this thread and taking this into consideration.
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It would still not cover all cases.
Say I'm suspended in Jan 2022 and then remove couple games from my Steam account. I'm winner of your giveaway in Mar 2022 and you see I was suspended in Jan 200. You think I was already suspended for those but I was not, as wins happened before Jan 2022.
I also don't like idea of giving date of last suspension as it's not even relevant. It's not month from last suspension but from when game you did not activated was won. If I win game on 1st Jan and are suspended for it on 5th Feb. Suspension runs out on 10th Feb and if you'd want to get re-roll on 11th it would not be granted. As it;s 1 month from 1st Jan.
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So, I understand that we would need not only the date but the particular game(s) that caused the suspension(s). Or only the games, as you said the date "is not even relevant". I don't know if that could be easy to implement, but I still think something should be done.
Thanks again.
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Hello there. I will try to keep it brief.
I check every winner of my giveaways for multiple and not activated wins. Whenever I find someone that broke the rules of this site, I contact support and ask for a re-roll. As a response I often get the answer that "the suspension was already served" and the win now is "legit".
Now, when I contact support about this specific user who has multiple or not activated wins, I can not see if he has ever served a suspension for this and thus his win is indeed "legit". So I send this ticket and support has another ticket they have to deal with.
Would it not be possible to make a line pop up while creating a ticket asking for a re-roll that the user has already served a suspension for this specific rule? I mean, something like "if giveaway creator chooses reason A via dropdown menu, check database if winner X has already served a suspension for breaking rule A and thus his win now is valid"?
Could reduce the number of tickets and thus serve support quite a lot of time, me thinks.
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