I dunno what this is, waiting for a sale, just too expensive right now. :( If you know what it is, feel free to clue me up. :)
So, since you're probably a human, I can ask a question in here, and expect you to read it. Pity I can't think of a good question. :) Let's see...
Ok, what do you think will happen to this place next month, if somehow all the auto-giveaway-entering bots get caught? Yeah, I know, you won't be able to catch them all, just pretend. :)
I predict a lot of people blaming their little brothers or opening 50 tabs simultaneously or some innocent download they didn't quite understand, followed by a bunch of rapid updates to the bot programs, and back to business as usual. Unless the next wave of suspensions is permanent, I guess. :)
Hopefully it's done like Valve's VAC thing, silently collecting and analysing data for weeks or months, so the bot creators won't get instant feedback on how they were caught this time. Let them burn up a bunch of different accounts testing things. :)
Personally, I wonder how many of the active Steamgifts accounts are connected to bots. And how many of the total giveaway entries per day are done automatically, by people who don't even know what they are trying to win.
It feels like a lot, when you make a bunch of public giveaways and the same people instantly enter each one... But maybe they are all poor students with a lot of free time, and fingers poised on the enter button... :)
Also, I hope any bot-related suspensions/punishments/whatever aren't visible in people's profiles, because I don't really want to know who's been lying about it all these years... :)
Good luck, human! :)
a lot of forum whining from said bot users that we cant find such nice giveaways such as this one.
Thanks muchly
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I remember there were a lot of comments in the Steamgifts Steam group when the previous bot-suspensions hit, and my main impression was that many bot users didn't understand English. So I guess they aren't going to read the rules this time, either. Yay. :)
Good luck! :)
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Yeah, I predict a mixture of whining and confusion on the talking side... not sure about the actual GAs yet...
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I hope everyone just takes their punishment and deletes their bot thing... :) But somehow I doubt it's going to be that simple... :)
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Well, I've personally had to deal with several users who were clearly using giveaway bots. Several days of entering giveaways, being Online, and not activating their wins.
Also, thank you for one hell of a giveaway.
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Yeah, any time I've had a bunch of public giveaways running it's been obvious who's using a script/bot/whatever. Sometimes they admit it, but usually when you mention it they just umm, yeah I typed all those identical thanks by hand. In the same second. Umm, thanks for whatever this is...
I dunno, maybe if I wait a month or so this will be the next Indie Gala free game giveaway thing. Hopefully. Since it's more fun getting stuff for free than paying for it. :)
Good luck! :)
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Hopefully banhammer will strike fiercely and liberate us those vermins. :D
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I'm slightly concerned that a few non-bots will get smashed by accident, but it will probably be like Steam's VAC forum, i.e. 0.00001% false positives and 99.99999% unhappy bot users lying about it. :)
Good luck! :)
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Wanna thank you again for Danganronpa, finished it 5 days ago and it was interesting experience, never played something like that before.
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Aha, hope it was fun! :) A lot of bad games are interesting... :)
I've recently downloaded the first two Danganronpa games on Steam, but haven't tried playing them yet. Been downloading a lot of stuff lately, had to buy a new drive to fit them all... And it's almost full too... :( Oh well. :)
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It was good. I think it ovestayed its welcome a bit, 20% less dialogue / duration would be great, but nevertheless it was positive experience. Really liked weird story / characters, only japanese developers can do such a thing. I saw that it is a spin-off, and that previous ones are much better mystery solving games without 3rd person action sequences like this one. I will have them in mind if some bigger discount shows up.
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I'm tempted to look at one of them, but I've got so many half-finished games in my library already... :( Most likely these would end up being two more... :(
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I wonder if there will be any way for a false positive to be proven wrong, if it'll ever happen.
and I'm still wondering what data they'll collect. for example I'm mostly always online (I leave an open tab in my browser at work) and regularly check for new GA, like every 30 minutes. Will I be classified as a bot?
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Even if there are false positives in the first wave of punishments, I suspect every bot user will claim to be a false positive too, and hope they get lucky... :) Same way everyone claims they weren't cheating when they get a VAC ban... :)
I'm sure "keeps a tab open, and enters a lot of giveaways" looks a lot different to the server from "interacts with the Steamgifts website according to this specific algorithm, in the exact same way Bot X does, with no variation, all day long, and has done so for the past six months." Or something like that... :)
Once suspensions appear, all the bot creators will release updates, and try to make everything look just like a human's doing it. And given enough time, and enough alternate accounts to burn, they will probably succeed. :) But if bot users receive a permanent suspension for the second offence, how many would be willing to risk it? Probably most will stop, and wait for reports of "hey it's fixed, I used it all week and didn't get caught." :)
So I hope the next wave of punishments are delayed a few months, long enough for all the unrepentant bot users think it's safe... :)
Good luck! :)
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Damn nice game :)
My first answer was 'yes'. Didn't work. Had to wait for 30 secs. :)
Thanks for this GA!
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Hopefully it's nice, but I'm waiting for a sale to find out... :)
Drat, I should have made that hint 30 minutes! Guess I haven't made enough puzzles lately to remember. Oh well. :)
Good luck! :)
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My guess is that we might also see a slight dip in accounts named Sarah Connor.
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Aha, I can't remember anything about that movie, umm, the first one anyway, and I think there were a bunch of sequels or something. Sorry. :)
Good luck! :)
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Only the first two were good. The third was OK. After that, ... Don't bother.
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I'm probably safe, since lately I don't see too many movies... :) But thank you for the warning! :)
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That would be interesting to know but also pretty sad...
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Yeah, I'm not sure I want to know... :) When you see public giveaways lucky to get 5% of the entrants writing a comment, it's easy to suspect the worst... Oh well...
Good luck! :)
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I'm afraid I don't normally write a comment. I never know what to say. :(
sniff
Maybe I am just a bot, deep down inside.
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It's tricky thinking of something to say in the descriptions too... :) Which is why mine are always so dumb... :)
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I look at the description, if a question is asked or the creator wishes for gifs, comments or something else, then I'll comment / post gif. But if nothing is noted I usually only comment on WL GAs, or maybe a group one ( depending on the group).
BUT I always comment and thank if I managed to win a GA.
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I guess everyone's different, some people don't want to read any thanks at all, and some people are upset if they don't receive any thanks... :) So you're sure to be wrong, no matter what you do... :)
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I would imagine average numbers of entries would go way down as people cant spend points full time (mostly), and maybe more nice giveaways like this will show up :)
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Well, I can't claim this one's nice, since I'm still waiting for a better price to find out. I do hope it's not junk, though. :)
Also hope the winner plays it some time. But you can't have everything... :)
Good luck! :)
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maybe now no one will enter giveaways anymore 😨😨😨 entries: 0, 404 bot not found
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Maybe it will be like the old days, when (some) people actually read the giveaway descriptions. But I guess that's just crazy talk... :)
Good luck! :)
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Hopefully a few of the bot users will be scared straight anyway... :) But I think it's going to start an arms race, with the bot creators having more resources than the single person working on anti-bot measures... :( Hope I'm wrong though... :)
Good luck! :)
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I don't really care, but we will see.
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Yeah, it should be interesting... I'll be curious to hear some numbers, although part of me doesn't really want to know... :)
I want to believe it's only 1% bot users entering giveaways without reading, and 99% people who just don't know English... :)
Good luck! :)
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If you ever stumbled upon any of those public GA with a link in the descrption leading to a private GA of the same game, you may have noticed that the latter usually have ~10% of the public entries :\
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Aha, yes, I've read those experiments, feels like I've done a few of those myself actually... It's discouraging to see how many people are just clicking the "give me free stuff!" button. Or running the "give me free stuff!" script... :(
Good luck! :)
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the new pointdistributing system cg is suggesting might help against the bots. Less points=less bot entries!
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Aha, I guess that would make bot users a lower percentage of the giveaway entries. So they would still be around, just with fewer points to spend? And maybe people would have to choose which giveaways to enter, instead of trying for every random thing... :)
Good luck! :)
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I think the best way to fight against bots is doing the GA with "high" level req, like 4+
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I start a discussion about this (ppl don't use lvl limitation) few weeks ago and got blacklist from some users :(
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Anything you do will get you a blacklist. Just saying the word blacklist will get you blacklisted. But life's too short to worry about what some random internet stranger thinks about you... :) So good luck! :)
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I've seen people I secretly suspect might be using bots right up to Level 10... So it will probably help a little, but there's a lot of people around trying for maximum CV with minimum cost, chasing profitz... Oh well...
Good luck! :)
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In my own experience, about 90-95% of (public) giveaway entrants don't read the description. How many of those people are bots and how many are people who DGAF and how many are people who don't speak english, I couldn't tell you. But I would guess it's a pretty big chunk of them. And it's not just low level users, usage of those scripts/bots goes all the way to the top! The top!
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Yeah, that's my experience too. :( And for public low-level giveaways it feels more like 1%... :)
I think you're right about the top, too. Hoping to find out I've been wrong about everyone, though... :)
Good luck! :)
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The same person who got their account vacced did it. Their "Friend" of course
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Aha, I thought it was their little brother. :) Guess it could be both, though.
Good luck! :)
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I hope that the changes will have a positive impact. I am not too optimistic that it will have a huge impact, but I'll gladly be proven wrong.
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Yeah, I'm expecting nothing much to change long-term, but it's nice to hope otherwise... :) Maybe they will all go to some other giveaway site and leave us alone... :)
Good luck! :)
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I reckon cg has been collecting and checking the user data for a couple months at least, otherwise there would be next to no chance of many bots going quickly.
Will be interesting to see what happens
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Yeah, it should be interesting. :) But I wonder if it's going to be a noticeable change, or less than 1%, and nobody can even tell the difference...
Good luck! :)
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Heh, cg might as well have been talking about me when talking about entering giveaways as a part-time job
All I know is that I'll be able to relax a little more once the changes come rolling in
At the very least, I think we can count on the average entry count of public giveaways to decrease. especially for all those sneaky flash gibs :>
Further down the line, I think we'll even see an increase in public giveaways, seeing as how we'll have more happy giveaway creators and winners
All in all, it's a step in the right direction, but it won't really change much with respect to longer lasting giveaways
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Yeah, I don't really like to make private forum-only giveaways, since so many people don't bother checking the forum... But if you make public giveaways nowadays, you'll think there's no human in sight... :) Oh well. :)
Hope it changes soon... :)
Good luck! :)
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Hello fellow MEATBAGS, and thank you <user> for 01100001 nice giveaway. ![](
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Aha, I thought that said "loli" but couldn't be sure... Squint... Guess I need new eyeballs... :)
Good luck! :)
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Yes, haha, it does say loli :p
It was the first gif I've made, so if you know of a way where I can maker them with better resolution, I'd greatly appreciate it :3
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Hmm, sorry, I don't know anything about making gifs... :( I made some for puzzles, but don't remember how. :) Oh, here's one: https://i.imgur.com/FDjAz6a.gif :)
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Beep boop this is a legitimate human replying 🤖
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Good luck fellow human! :) Bloop blorp! :)
Hmm, where'd you find the little robot head thing? Just curious... :)
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Probably using ESGST's Comment Formatting Helper, or there was a discussion post with a load of emojis for you to copy and paste.
Thanks for the awesome giveaways fiftykyu, us humans have got to stick together 👽
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Hmm, I've not tried that thing, all I know is the one with the grid view, whatever it's called... :)
Thank you! :) And good luck! :)
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Just copied the Unicode character from somewhere else 😆
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Aha, thank you! :)
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Definitely, long-term there's no way to eliminate bots. But if "strike two" is a permanent ban from Steamgifts, how many current bot users will be willing to gamble that the new 100% undetectable premium script is really 100% undetectable... :) They can always buy csgo on a new Steam account, but they are losing a lot more getting banned here... :)
Good luck! :)
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If it means i get better odds on giveaways i enter, I am all for it ^_^
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Aha, good point. :) Better chances for the humans... :)
Good luck! :)
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Well i did not se this coming. I was imagining just another bundle game train, bur her we Arne. Solid GA, fiftykyu!
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I'm too lazy for trains, and I'm only interested in making bundle trains when they are hiding "real" games at the end. Lately I just dump leftover bundle keys as part of a puzzle, but that takes too much effort. This only takes a bit of clicking in the Humble Store... So here we are! :)
Good luck... :)
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That's always what I hope for (but it never happens when I (rarely) check the trains).
Also, that's a funky few autocorrects. That'll teach me having a Danish keyboard layout when typing English.
And thanks for the luck wishing :)
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No problem, and I can't remember if I mentioned it already but there's a new puzzle in the topic with more stuff.. :)
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I forgot what the topic was called :P
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The bots will send a T-800 back in time to deal with cg.
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Aha, but then who makes Steamgifts? And with no Steamgifts, there's no bot... Guess this is the grandfather paradox... :)
Good luck! :)
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I expect a significant drop in the amount people who use scripts and bots. And I personally wouldn't suspend users who are suspected to auto-join giveaways. I think this would be a better approach.
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Also it would be nice to see captcha-entered entrants for academic research purposes :P
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This actually sounds like a nice use of captchas...instead of using them for everyhing like some others proposed...
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Yeah, if it's just suspicions of being a bot, I wouldn't want anything to happen. :)
Presumably there's a lot more information available on the server side of things, so you wouldn't just suspend anyone who enters a lot of giveaways quickly. But I guess the more details we hear, the easier it will be for the bot creators to work around things. I assume you'd try to make your bot's interactions with the website be identical to a hypothetical human's, whatever that requires. Hopefully the bad guys screw up something or overlook some details in the first few versions, though. :)
Hmm, I think that's an interesting idea, although the evil part of me is hoping for something more punishing for repeat offenders... :)
You know, I can just see some fool wasting time on captchas all day long, so they don't have to waste time entering giveaways manually... :)
Good luck! :)
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Hoping to be wrong about that prediction, but I'm not going to be surprised if that's how it ends up...
Good luck! :)
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