Hello, SteamGifters!
I have a friendly support request for you all. Rule breakers get away when nobody checks or reports them. Please check your winners for rule violations before sending your gifts and support will take care of any issues that you flag. SGTools is a great way to do that but it is by no means required! This script helps a lot in streamlining the process.
Help keep SG more fair for everyone!
Also, as a reminder to everyone:
When should I mark a gift I won as "Received" or "Not Received"?
You should only mark a gift as "Received" when you have both (i) received the exact game described in the giveaway, and (ii) activated that game on the Steam account you used during registration. In all other instances you should mark the gift as "Not Received" one week after the giveaway has ended.
What should I do if I win a game more than once, or if I win a game that I already purchased?
When this occurs, you should contact the giveaway creator and inform them you will not be accepting or redeeming the gift. Explain the situation, and ask the giveaway creator to request a new giveaway winner. During this process you should not mark the gift as "Received", or reveal the key if the option is available. This will help inform us that you are not accepting the gift, and it will prevent you from being suspended for not activating a gift you won. Once the ticket from the giveaway creator is approved for a new winner, the win will be removed from your profile.
Rule checking should be done automatically by the site if the admin cares. It's not my problem if someone breaks rules.
Comment has been collapsed.
Unfortunately, there are a number of reasons automatic checking doesn't work. Steam's API is often garbage, games get removed/revoked, suspensions are served and thus need to be excluded from future checks, some violations are harder to spot for various other reasons, etc.
Now, none of my request is required, and you are not obligated to take any specific steps (other than following the site's rules). However, when you say
I'll argue that it is, if the rule breaker ends up gaining an advantage (for example, higher levels) in winning games you've entered to win yourself. The deficit may be negligible for a single instance, i.e. 1/5,000 vs 1/5,001 odds, but if nobody cared at all for enforcing of the rules, then the change would be more significant.
On top of that, SG has (from my own perspective) a fairly positive reputation overall. If we were mired with complaints about how people game the system, etc, then the site overall would not be as healthy, potentially driving some people who give often to stop altogether. The site has not survived without its criticisms (we are human after all), and there have been a few notable departures from the site since I've been paying attention, but were we to be in a bigger rut, I'd be more worried about the longer term effects that would have.
You've been here for a few years yourself and have both given and won a number of games here. It seems you at least somewhat appreciate what SteamGifts has to offer. That being the case, I'd say you should care at least a little about how cheaters are addressed.
I hope that helps explain my point of view a little better, I hope you have a good rest of your week, and best of luck to you!
Comment has been collapsed.
This is exactly why I don't bother to check or report. 99% of the time when I checked, the answer from support was "already served".
None of that is any excuse for not doing it automatically.
Comment has been collapsed.
So let's take key revokations (example). Games which given out by a number of different users here on SG, and later the keys were revoked by the dev. How would you, honestly, deal with this situation automatically?
Would you set up the system to automatically suspend every user that has a key revoked because it wasn't activated on their account? How would you prefer to deal with the aftermath of having to manually undo all those suspensions? The labor of "fixing" the suspensions aside, when someone is suspended, they become ineligible to win anything until the suspension is cleared, meaning anyone impacted would potentially lose something in the interim, and that would certainly not go well with the community, wouldn't you agree?
If not automatic suspensions, then how would you prevent such an action from triggering?
This is the first, off the top of my head example of why automatic suspensions are a bad idea. I'd say it's a significant one at that, but it's far from the only complication automatic suspensions would create.
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't have anything against the present system really I don't mind doing a simple check before sending gifts, and I don't think suspensions should be given automatically but I've been wondering why it wasn't possible to at least have the system check that winners have redeemed their gifts when marking received and report to support if not. I understand that the Steam's API doesn't always reports games properly but it does works for a good numbers of games.
Comment has been collapsed.
This comment was deleted 5 years ago.
Comment has been collapsed.