Suuuup! New here. First-impressions/suggestions/questions (eyy look! free private giveaway here)

Welcome to the site :)

Ok you've raised quite few points but I'm only going to comment on one of them otherwise we'll be here all day.

A lot of public giveaways are games that people don't want and therefore get given away. But some games are given away because the giveaway creator wants to let someone else appreciate a good game. They want them to want to play the game. Therefore letting winners do whatever they want with the "won game" kind of destroys this purpose in gifting. If they want to trade the game or sell it on they're not appreciating what the gifter has done and certainly not respecting the other entrants who actually want to play the game. You may as well have cash giveaways.

started reading, think im a good way through. realize im only 1/3. FUCK THIS IM OUT

Meh, i looked at the title. Fuck it

tl;dr.

I feel like I've just returned to Myspace.

e: Not that these are bad points, but the way you've written them makes them look incredibly unattractive to passerby's. You might want to... condense it. The simpler, the better.

I'm still pushing the idea of a 'thank you' button next to the 'join giveaway' button.

Gave up after reading half way closes tab :p

Good lord man! I refuse to read your tome, sometimes less is more.

actually plowed through that wall of text just now, so yeah welcome to SG, and yeah it's pretty chill here.
congrats on writing all of that without breaking your fingers, oh and just don't beg for stuff or ask dumb questions that have already been asked and nobody should hate you.

aafddgdvdv, i like letters

Ok i may be one of the very few who read through your entire post (or maybe not)
First and foremost, welcome to Steamgfits.com Yeah i'm relatively new to this site as well and yes i do not spend much time playing games (as i used to before but they were pirated games) so no you are not discouraged here.

I more or less agree with all your points except one.
The point where you want SG to allow people to do whatever they want with their gift, the problem with this being, people will start entering every Damn Giveaway they can try (i am still a believer that atleast half the community tries to enter GA's of games that they actually want) and thus decrease the odds of winning even more (you know there are more then 10,000 active profiles on steam), so i cant agree with you on that one.

Besides i strongly agree with the point of re-sync before giving away the gift or key, so that reduces (or eliminates) the abusers.

PS :- your's is an entry with a BIG BANG in the forums xD

Didn't read lol

Only came to say welcome. Don't care for the giveaway, don't care for the wall of text either. Have a good day.

thx 4 skyrim

Hey Jayowend, thanks for signing up! Lots of interesting points, so I'll try to summarize a few answers.

• There are a lot of casual gamers here, and we don't all have hundreds of games. I think I have just over 20 on my Steam account, but somehow they let me stick around.
• We're planning a rewrite on the FAQ to bring it up-to-date, with a quick summary users will need to agree to when registering. We'll work it into the top navigation during that time too.
• Yes, SteamGifts Plus is one of the more popular add-ons, with others listed here.
• When we say users cannot increase their odds of winning, we mean all entries are treated equally, and if two users enter a giveaway, they both have an equal chance of winning. You're right when you say private and group giveaways have much fewer entries, and users with a high number of wins usually take part in these giveaways.
• Regifting or trading would also mean we have zero evidence of a game or key ever existing. At the moment, we're able to say a user did not have a game a few days ago, they won a giveaway, and now it's on their account. It's not perfect, but it definitely helps to prevent abuse of the existing system.
• Syncing more frequently is possible, although we'd have to make a few major changes, some of which might inconvenience users with private profiles. There is a lot of room for improvement like you mentioned, extra syncing on public profiles, preventing duplicate wins between syncing, etc. We'll try to smooth out a few of these issues the upcoming year. The entire concept is still fairly new and we've run into all sorts of unexpected issues, but we're getting better at things.
• Private messages, or messages between the giveaway creator and the winner is a suggestion that's come up a few times. We'll keep it in mind.

Hi! Let's be friends! ^_^

• The FAQ - yeah, it's kinda hard to see. Also, as I realized only after spending some time on the forums, there was a large number of additions made to the site rules that never made it into the official FAQ, but was released as PSA on the forums (bundle games, exploited key lists, etc). I believe the FAQ should be rewritten to include those additions.
• Non-public giveaways. Yeah, they offer a better chance at winning. But they also serve as a reward for those who either frequent the forums and are part of the community ("hidden" and "puzzle" giveaways) or contribute a lot of games to the site (contributor and group giveaways).
• Trading and re-gifting. As someone else said - sometimes I give away a game that I really like myself, and I want the person who wins the giveaway to enjoy it as much as I did. I would not want that person to just sell it.
• Forced re-syncs. I like that idea, although I'm not sure if it can be implemented.
• Messaging system. Yeah, it could be very useful, love the idea, too.

Hello there Jay, It's really nice to meet you and Welcome to SG, It's really a great community to chat with too, atleast i love this community <3 SG Forever! ^.^

And btw.. I'm sure you would love this site! ^^

While I really don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said, your post & the obvious amount of thought & effort that went into it are impressive enough that I wanted to say it'll be nice having you around and hopefully we get more people like you.

Now back to my regularly scheduled lurking.

Just skimmed through,but I get the feeling OP thinks it's unfair for people to be in private/group giveaways?

Hi there! I'm pretty new here myself, and I've had a pretty good time so far!

tl;dr: Hi, I'm Jay, and I like to write walls of text, and lie about making giveaways.

Hi, Jay. Welcome to Steam Gifts. I forgive you for not posting a giveaway here because you've made a few on the site already, and that's very nice of you. (That Amazon pack was amazing value, wasn't it?)

I got part way through your introductory book, but I'm waiting for the abridged version to be published.

Hey Jay,

First of all, welcome to Steamgifts! I'm fairly new here as well and I dove right in face first without any regrets (except maybe that I just found out about this site)

• The FAQ isn't terribly hard to find, though I agree that greater visibility should mean less unintentional rule breaking or the rehash of the same questions we get all the time. If we required new members to read through the FAQ and acknowledge that they understand the rules prior to joining the site, that would cut down on a lot of confusion. Also, the FAQ should include things such as how contribution value works, the list of bundled games, etc. I had to do a bit of digging to pull up this information myself.

• I've learned very quickly that the normal public giveaways are incredibly hard to win, as you'd expect with such a high amount of entries. I've done fairly well for myself in the short time I've been here by first and foremost being active. I only joined my first private giveaway group this week, and before then I didn't have any problems winning games because I was active on the forums, finding hidden giveaway links and solving puzzles. I also participated in chat and occasionally people would drop private giveaway links there. There are many ways for people to increase their chances at winning games, if they're willing to put in the effort.

• I don't agree that people should be allowed to regift, trade or sell their wins. As a person who gives away a lot of games, the reason I choose to spend my spare money here to give away games as opposed to the numerous other charities out there is because I LOVE GAMING. Games bring me a lot of joy and I want to share that with others who may be less fortunate than myself. If I wanted people to benefit financially, I would just donate cash to a charity.

• The sync account feature tends to be somewhat buggy, and it often requires 3+ attempts before it actually syncs your account. I can see forced syncs being a bit of a hassle, though if it was fixed to work the first time every time then it seems like a good idea. Another thing that can be done is a quick check to ensure the person hasn't already won the same item. That little bit of code should help with people winning 2 of the same game and shouldn't be terribly difficult to implement.

• A private messaging system would be awesome. I agree entirely

I think we all may have some minor gripes or suggestions on how the site can be changed for the better. Overall though I'm quite happy here and I hope you will be too!

Welcome to SteamGifts. I hate you already. Good job.

Welcome to SteamGifts!I'm sure you'll like our community.There are a lot of good guys like this one for exemple V

I started reading, scrolled down and thought "fuck this". Welcome to the site/Steam, anyway!

hey welcome, i don't know how i missed this thread. (I got redirected from here)
didn't read that wall of a text yet but i'll post up when i finish