What should I do?
Oh ffs it took me 6 hours to complete this test on all difficulty :/ what an a-hole :/
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I'm sorry that happened. I really enjoyed (and spent a fair amount of time on) your video puzzle.
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Jeez, some people....
Just delete them and create new GA's and only invite people you like.
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Uhm that's a tough decision. I'd say leave it be. Can support help in any way? Like deleting all the entries after a certain point before the link leak?
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Oh wow that sucks. This is why we can't have nice things ><
If you feel like you wouldn't be happy about a potential fake puzzle solver winning then you should delete them. What ever you decide you shouldn't feel bad about it. You were trying to do something fun and good and some people just have to ruin stuff like that. I'm sorry this happened but at least you found out about it in time and can decide from there what you want to do about it.
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I feel sorry for the people that actually solved them legit :| Maybe delete the GAs and just give the links to those that solved them without having to do it again? Though it sucks that you'll lose the slots when deleting.
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Was going to PM you about it, I deleted his post on the SG Group wall.
You could request a re-roll with "leaked giveaway" if a winner was someone who entered after the giveaway ended, and didn't solve the puzzle. You could ask the winner to prove they solved the puzzle, or ask them some questions from it.
or
If you're not using a whitelist, you could whitelist everyone who had entered already and re-create the giveaways as whitelist giveaways.
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thanks, since no one has entered the giveaways between 3 days ago and today, I guess I can easily isolate people who cheated, and just add to whitelist people who joined first. It's not fair at all, but seems the best solution...
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What about people who didn't notice your puzzle until now and want to fairly resolve it right away ? :'(
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It wasn't my intention at all ;)
I'll try to solve it for fun at least.
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That's the spirit! I've completed lots of puzzles just to find a GA that I'm not interested or of a game that I already own, but in the end the fun was the puzzle itself!
PS: plus it's a game-related only video puzzle, so that made it even better for me
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I know, pretty unfair...I added a note to the original post so people won't bother doing it.
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Since you've isolated the suspicious new entries, you should remove the GAs links from the ITH answers and put a Disclaimer telling the problem you've faced and throw in there some funny gif or video to cheer people up! (DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT rickroll them you sadist)
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Sad to hear about this mess... Disgusting really... :(
And do just that. ;)
I myself haven't looked at your puzzle yet (must've missed it, although i've been checking puzzles mostly on a whim lately), gonna have a busy weekend, dunno if i'll have time, but if i do, i'll try it just for the sheer fun. I think people will amply understand that they can't solve the puzzle other than for fun now, so try to wash your concerns away from it as much as you can, won't do you any good to worry more from now on. ;)
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Well this sucks for you... either whitelist a bunch of people or blacklist a bunch of people, or just plain delete all the prizes! I'm sorry for all the troubles you've found...
This is the first time I read on the forum about leaking answers, that's way stupid, if you don't like or don't want to solve the puzzles then just don't enter! When I find a puzzle I can't solve I just wait for the answers to learn from them, this kind of disgusts me (I've just eaten a late lunch).
I just hope it never happens to you again and know that the puzzle community will support your decision whatever it may be, I say this since the poll is favorable to the most extreme of solutions so either way, we have your back!
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I agree that this is the best solution. The puzzle had been up for 2 full weeks before being leaked so everyone had ample chances to try to solve the puzzle before now.
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Delete all GAs. Ofc it will suck for ppl who fairly solved puzzles, but the other way around is even worse - as it is sending a message that if your GA get leakedyou will just get angry about it and do nothing more and someone will feel free to leak your next GAs as well. If message sent will be "you have no job of leaking my GAs. if anyone leaks GA or you enter leaked GA you won't win it anyway because I will delete it" chances for leaking it in the future are smaller.
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That really sucks, people are idiots. Since you can't figure out who is legit and who isn't, I'd say remake them. You could use the same questions to make it easier for those who put in the effort before (I assume the answers weren't leaked). Don't give up on puzzles though!
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but if it's the same puzzle the one who leaked it will be able to to it again, I guess I agree with Zelgh despite what I wrote, deleting them would be a strong message against future leaks.
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the problem is that whoever leaked the GA in the first place must have solved the puzzles himself - so if he'd just recreate the whole puzzle just with new GA at the end to make it easier for previous solvers - nothing is stopping the arsehole from leaking it again - or even more probably just leaking it to his friends this time instead of in public, so dunther may not catch up with it.
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Ahh, didn't think of that! Guess that's why you're the puzzle master and I'm not. With that in mind, your solution seems best.
In my limited experience this seems an uncommon occurrence. Is leaking puzzle giveaways a growing issue?
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let's just say that I've reported at least 15 ppl (even more blacklisted) caught cheating in my puzzles - either leaking direct GA links or posting solutions on the internet - and these are ONLY the ones I caught red-handed and had direct evidences against them - things like ppl being obviously alt accounts entering, 2 "friends" entering ultra-hard puzzle 5seconds from one another, ppl posting questions taken directly from my puzzle on some forums asking for answers under their own Steam nickname/avatar, having more entries in GA than sollutions on ITH page etc). I'm well aware that even more ppl must have slipped by in the process.
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Dang, that's kind of disheartening to be honest. I suppose I should keep in mind that the vast majority of participants are still good-natured fun/game seekers.
What could be done about this? Anyone can create multiple ITH accounts, and SG accounts apparently aren't hard to come by either. You could raise level requirements to weed some out, but that also weeds out SG community members who are either broke, relatively new, or just not frequent givers but are active in the community.
Even if somewhere down the road we got unique GA links tied to entrants user ID, puzzle answers would still be able to be passed around just like exam cheat sheets. And since we can't monitor each puzzle with a proctor, it seems like filtering users ahead of time is the only option. Or just deal with the violators on a case by case basis as you've been doing.
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This is one of the few moments that i'm sad about the calling out rule.
Don't get me wrong, not only do i agree with the rule, but also understand fully why it exists, but it's an unfortunate pitty that i can't add them to my own blacklist.
Really crappy stuff. :/
I have some games lined up for around easter time and wanted to make some puzzles myself and this is just sad to hear. :/
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You can always delete GA ask people who solved the test to sign in on itstoohard with their account name from sg and invite them to new GA but screw that just delete this GA I as one who actually finished all 3 puzzles would be pissed more if someone who did not solve them won, had a good fun solving them anyway
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that sucks,i was hoping to solve these puzzles now at weekend when i have more time.missing some answers :/
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Delete it and try again.
You can make another set of puzzles or re-use the old ones to make it easier for the guys that have solved it before to join again.
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re-using old ones has no point - whoever leaked it must have solved it in the first place so he may do so again as he already knows the answers.
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That is true but I was thinking more in the lines of "those who joined via giveaway links will have a hard time"
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but whoever leaked may just do so again so what's the point? Even more - as he will see what action Dunther took this time, he will probably don't post in public this time, but leak the GA privately / leak answers to his friends. There will still be a massive risk of GA being leaked, just with no way this time to distinguish fair solvers whatsoever.
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Ok. He can make another set of puzzles then. Didn't expect anyone to feel so strongly about this opinion.
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Making puzzles is pretty time consuming. Elaborate chained puzzles even more so. zelghadis is probably mildy annoyed at your suggestion to just 'make another set of puzzles' as if it were trivial, especially given the ridiculous puzzle awesomeness he has come up with.
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Actually he seems more annoyed with suggesting the re-use of puzzles
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The poll - really ?
You need to have some guts to not delete everything. But there always be some motherf... jerks.
Maybe make some limitations, level 1-2-3, and steam account old enough. Dont know if thats enough.
Dont give up on ppl.
Or... maybe make a poll on your thread and let the participants judge if they want to redo the puzzles.
goodluck :)
Its like when you say yoyu dont want thx in ga, there always be ppl who will say thx.
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probably i cant help much but i think that delete the giveaways would be the answer :/
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Delete the giveaway and start again. Folks do the puzzles for the joy of solving them; the giveaway is just a bonus.
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that statement is false ;p most of folks do puzzles for the sake of GA ;p
For example:
If you make a puzzle and announce that award is GTA V, you will see hundreds of ppl showing to ITH trying to solve it.
If you announce it's quite new non-bundle GA you will see 100-200 ppl at least trying.
If you announce it's some bundle GA you will just see few tens.
And if you say it's a puzzle for a bundle game almost everyone has you will see 1X-2X ppl just giving a damn about it ;p
All this with the same puzzle, just for a different prizes ;p
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Agreed, we all make puzzles to get a GA as a goal! But the journey itself is quite fun :]
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This is sickening, but please don't be discouraged from making puzzles in the future. People LOVE the puzzles here on Steam Gifts and there are many enthusiasts that spend many hours solving these puzzles. Deleting them would not be fair to the enthusiasts.
I'm sure you've also spent some time out of your day to create these puzzles as well. Deleting them wouldn't be fair to you either.
However, at the same time. Not deleting them would not be fair for people that entered by not solving your puzzle. So this is definitely a huge dilemma.
In the end, here's my honest opinion. Delete your current giveaways. Start fresh. Maybe use the same puzzle, even (people who solved it already deserve a spot in your giveway. They should not be denied this under any circumstance.) While this will not eliminate ALL the cheaters (people can still share quiz answers), it will at least weed out some.
I wish you good luck.
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if he creates a new puzzle with same answers, leaker will just solve it again (he did so before to leak in the first place) and leak again. if he diecides to create a new puzzle he will have to invest more time into it and probably some of previous solvers won't be able to solve new one and lose their chances. if he leaves the puzzle as it is, leaker wins. if he whitelists ppl who solved before leak, he denies opportunity to solve it to ppl who hasn't done so before leak. Sadly in every solution someone will lose something and every solution will be unfair to someone.
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Agree wholeheartedly. There is no easy way to solve this.
Edit: I reread over my post. The fact that the leaker can resolve and reshare was definitely in my mind when I wrote that, but it didn't end up in the final post for some reason. Brainfart? Anyways, it was just to remove some of the bad entries, because you can't get rid of all of them.
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if he whitelists ppl who solved before leak, he denies opportunity to solve it to ppl who hasn't done so before leak.
This seems like the least destructive solution. To me, it's akin to just ending the giveaway early.
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I just got informed that some idiot has leaked giveaways from my puzzle and spammed the links around. Since he uses a fake profile there's no way to track his real SG profile, I'm already blacklisting a few suspicious entry, but cannot do much more than that.
First thing that came to my mind was to delete everything, but maybe it would not be fair to people that actually solved the puzzles...so what do you think?
EDIT: I'm surprised so many people voted for deleting, I think I'll find an alternate way then: let's pretend the giveaways lasted a week less, everyone that joined before today is legitimate, everyone who didn't, well...I'll blacklist them, and ask for a re-roll. If there are too many illegitimate entries, I'll just delete the giveaways and make whitelist ones (whitelisting people that already entered).
I know that's not great for people that maybe saved the links and thought to join later, but still...fault is on the leaker.
EDIT#2: since the non-legit entries are way more than the legit ones, I'm deleting all giveaways and blacklisting everyone who entered after the leak.
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