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Anything is acceptable as long as Steffke is involved! :D

Also, yeah, I don't really care about ref links tbh. As for gleam.io stuff, I usually leave the groups as soon as I get my key and I rarely look at the websites it asks me to. xD

It's not allowed, but we can't always see everything. If no one reports the thread, chances are it won't be closed.

I agree with you entirely. Those "giveaways" which aren't really giveaways, you pay with your wasted time, really don't belong on a site like this.

Too be honest, I don't really care. I've know there were ref links since the beginning, but it didn't really bother me. I'm willing to join the stupid groups, follow twitter accounts on my alt, and click on links though for the free games. It's a simple trade off. (I do hate those "random" key giveaways though. I don't want to waste my time just to get another copy of Deadbreed...)

I've never really had a problem with ref links to begin with, as long as they are explicitly stated as such. Include two links to the site: one with and without the ref link. If I think you're a decent person and the referral helps me out too, I wouldn’t have a problem clicking it. Just don't try to trick me for your own profit. There could be an over saturation of people posting their ref links on the site though, so I see the reasoning behind banning them, even if the proper steps of disclosing them were made.

Good point, I agree.

I never thought of it that way; unfortunately 90% of SG probably won't even notice the referral links in the giveaway.
Anyway, I would be totally ok to ban those links from here, everyone can find them anywhere else (Reddit, WGN and such), they don't NEED to be on SG.
But then again I realize SG is all about sharing and I think a lot of users just want to give others the opportunity they had to get a free game, without overthinking about what's required to have those games.

On the other hand, banning non-referral links that contain referral links would be another mass-reported rule for the support team to take care. Sure, I can't just go to Pastebin.com, write there a referral link and then pretend it is not one.
The purpose of gleam.io is to make money sponsoring mass-giveaways or mass-entered raffles, they won't care about the links creators put in. What I mean is referral links are not their main purpose, they can't be blamed for that.

Probably the only reason why it's allowed here is the fact that Gleam is the spiritual successor of Woobox, who didn't have the click-here-and-show-website gimmick.

I'm on your side, but I figure a lot of users, those who browse only the deals section to find free games, will not be.

Clever of you to look into the user ID associated with the ref link! I forgot Tremor makes all that data public.

For anyone curious about numbers, I looked into the two ref links that popped up the most in my browser history.
Acc 1: 6550 refs in 47 days. 84k TC earned ($105 Steam wallet). $0.016 per referral - $2.234/day or $815.43/yr.
Acc 2: 2080 refs in 51 days. 32k TC earned ($40 Steam wallet). $0.019 per referral - $0.784/day or $286.27/yr.

Another fun statistic is that of all referrals, only 15.57% (1344/8630) earned them any proceeds to begin with and 10% of that subset (134) were responsible for 84.69% of all revenue.

Kind of fun to get a glimpse into their earnings. It's anyone's guess as to what they end up making with G2A/Kinguin referrals and all the CS:GO gambling sites.

good question, though not all gleam things are stinkers, but most. Even then I gauge the effort needed for the payoff (if it's too much, I don't do it)

though various legit websites use Gleam for their GAs

Damn, that GA though. Please feel free to rant more often then. ;)

i had to stop entering them a while ago... its always really annoying tasks and they keep requiring more and more actions. even thinking about it makes me feel dirty and used. and not even in a fun way.

Never opened a gleam link before, thanks for the heads up ^^

Should have had a poll, so i could give my big fat no.

TIL there are referrals hidden in the Gleam.io giveaways. I guess I'll be more careful from now on

Don't get it either.

I agree, though the support above says it's not allowed so....it makes sense that it isn't. :)

But how else will I convince peeps to join my Totes awesome group and use it as leverage for free games promos from devs.

So we have to report gleam.io thingy from now on?
Or did we kill all the blasphemer?

Referal shit bump!

It's a messed up situation whichever way you look at it.

Fuck the record. . .n fuck the ppl.