TBH sounds like reinventing the group giveaways. And why reinvent something that works?

This seems like a pretty nice idea, but as a suggestion, perhaps a blacklist option as well? This being the whitelist, but I'd like the idea of blacklisting too.

Example - I see a guy who I know to be a bundler, I blacklist that guy. I see a guy who's a fucking retard, and I don't want them in my giveaways, I blacklist him.

Wouldn't this require that all past giveaways, private and group, be visible on a user's profile? Since that will be an influence on people picking "friends".

No thank you. Better to have one large community with a seedy underbelly than 1000 tiny tyrranical communities to work to stay in the good graces of.

Definitely better than the last idea, well I mean removing contribution thing. And that friends part is not needed because there is a lot of private groups with "friends" only.

Ok, lots of people are saying this is similar to group and private giveaways, so I'll note some differences. For example, there are a few dozen people on the site you've come across, that you would like to share giveaways with. The following options are below.

1. You create a friend list, by visiting their profiles and clicking Add Friend. After that, you can create a giveaway for those users anytime and it appears in their giveaway list. If you remove a user from your friend list, their entry is automatically removed from open friend giveaways and points returned.

2. You create a private giveaway. You manually track down those few dozen people every time you create a giveaway and send them the link. There's a security risk of people sharing the link, and people you never intended entering.

3. You create a Steam group for yourself. You can't instantly add users, you need to send invites to each of them. There's a good chance they'll decline because they're apart of countless other groups they're trying to manage.

Groups work well for communities. Reddit, GOG, CheapAssGamer, etc. Users all part of a trusted community gifting within the group. It's far from ideal for a personal list of friends.

Private giveaways work well if you don't know the audience. You have a website, you want to limit a giveaway to your visitors, but you don't know who's entering exactly. At the same time, it works well puzzles, chat rooms, or a spontaneous giveaway between two or three friends.

Can't we have both? Friends System + Bundle Keys with Value as in Option 1 described.
You wouldn't need contribution for Friend Giveaways(at all, there wouldn't even be the option) but you still have contribution giveaways.

This is an interesting concept at least. But I think it would be too much of a pain overall to be honest. As well, there are times you might want to limit who in your friends list can access it, but don't want to actually take a bunch of people off then put them on.

Of course, this would defeat the problems caused by the previous idea (which would leave those of us who've given full bundles out in the cold too it seems), as well as get rid of all the people making fake private giveaways in order to boost their numbers for contributer giveaways. But it would be doing so by just getting rid of said giveaways, which I think are interesting and help encourage the whole system. I bet we'd live without them though. But the people who bought Railworks 3 to get $35 in contributer points would likely be pissed.

While similar to the group thingy, this is something I like a lot more than the previous one. And while I'd be one to say that by all means just get rid of the contributor system, this thing has more than that to it. For one, creating groups is something a more introverted or just lazy person won't do. Although when he/she wants to make a giveaway for contributors or anyone else, he/she can go through some forum posts, threads or giveaways to mark the person as "worthy", Wayne's World style. Basically, bearing too many similarities to the group giveaways is not something that should condemn this. The contributor system is one huge group to begin with, and you can't abuse this option while you can abuse that one (not by just bundle games, look at that train crap that happened).

One question arises though, if this one takes place, what will be the policy on the bundle games in general? Asking it because, as someone else posted it on the other thread, it would probably be wise if they were still not allowed. Not sure if any bundle organizer would take any actions against the site (probably not), but it's better to be on the safe side anyway.

I like this more :D cos Ive given tons of Indies and they all ended up in bundles and Im gonna lose most of my contributor value just cos I gave indie games :/

I'm not sure this is a good replacement, but doing away with the contributor vale seems like a good idea.

MY OPINION ABOUT US

Just put in option in giveaway creation page to ignore bundle games, in contribution value. Case solved. Every body happy. Those who don't want bundlers in their giveaways enable this option. Those who don't care who enters don`t. Just make so bundlers are ignored by default :D

+10 this sounds much better!

I think the contributor system was the best thing that happened in this site. It caused lots of users be more active and rewarded the active users by the higher chance of winning. Actually it just needs some management, moderation and changes that would make it not abusable easily..

Friend list sounds like an OK idea but it has a backside also which will make most giveaways even more closed and everyone will have to add friends one by one also will remove the possiblity of making new friends through giveaways. Ah also if random people will become more active on forums just to be added to my friendlist in hope of winning games, I don't need such fake friends.. As some others said I think we need a blacklist more than a friendlist first ^_^

One of the biggest problems is: Most abusers got caught and got suspended but they came back to the site just to continue with more abuse without any change to their value. I think at least those exploited/bunlde game value should have been removed from their accounts..

I really support the idea of continuing the contributor system just with changes like removing all bundle games I'm sure lots of people can provide proof of purchase if they are really worried about their legit games being removed from the value.. Even i'd gladly help in such an approval process if the problem is men power to do so..

TL:DR = Contributor system is great. It makes you feel rewarded for whatever you contribute to the site. Only problem is the abusers trying to make their way in those giveaways by breaking rules and abusing value. They should be dealt with properly.

I wouldn't say no to a blacklist or friend list addition. But friendlist just doesn't sound right since it'll make giveaways even more closed and don't wanna see discussions like "Why didn't you add me to your flist?" next..

• Cross-group giveaways also can be a great addition where u can share your giveaway with multiple groups at once.

*I also added my other suggestions as a support ticket I hope someone will read it eventually :D

I like the friendlist idea, though, as Shindo says in the post above, even that can have some drawbacks.

However, removing the contributor system after 2 months of encouraging users to gift (either more, or simply at all) by offering something in return could be viewed a bit like a stab in the back.

I mean, this is not a problem for people who give away $100's of games -- they will most likely end up on quite a few people's friendlists anyway. However, if someone gave away a small, $5 game, with the contributor system, he got some (albeit, maybe, small) reward in the form of some "thank you" giveaways he was able to enter.

However, I doubt people would be adding random, one-time gifters of small games to their friendlists -- especially not those that gave the games in the past (maybe even encouraged by the contributor system).

So my tip would be: if anything, provide both options (friendlists and contributor giveaways), and let the people decide. Maybe the community itself will gradually abandon one of the systems, maybe both will be used, each for its own advantages and disadvantages. But don't "take away" from the small contributors what you've offered them -- allow the community, and each individual gifter, to decide if $5 contributors deserve a reward or not, regardless of (not) having been noticed by anyone and of (not) being added to anyone's friendlist.

No, I don't have friends.

I don't really like this one. The other one is much better IMO.

Even with the example you gave, it just seems too much like a group giveaways, and honestly looks pretty pointless too me.

I prefer option 1.

Don't like this.
Only if you add this along everything else. So you could have, in addition to public, contributor and private, a friend private giveaway, friend contributor giveaway.

This is amazing. People who don't understand this, are also amazing, but in a completely different way.

What I don't see though, is why are you making those two features mutually exclusive? Do this. Definitely do this. But don't remove contribution values. Do option #1 as well.

If I were to add anything, let us sort friends into "circles". When making a giveaway, let us choose the circle we want to share it with. Possibly, let us add the same friend in several circles. Also, perhaps let us add a note next to a person's name; so we could remember, months later, why we added that person.

Don't like this.
Only if you add this along everything else. So you could have, in addition to public, contributor and private, a friend private giveaway, friend contriutor giveaway.

privious idea was better i think way more better. i really don't like this idea high giveaway make would be abused way more then now :S i hope this thing in such way never happens, but i kinda like friend idea without friend giveaways more social :) kidna activity on sg :) entries feed or something like that :)

The only thing I don't like about this is that it is really easy to accidentally glance over somebody that should have been in the giveaway or something of that nature. Lets say you wanted to reward people who have given away $1000 of non "exploited"/bundle games; since there are actually quite a few users with $1000 given away, it may be hard to find them all. Of course I'm not saying that the other option is perfect, they both have their draw backs. Like for the other option it would be easy for somebody to just giveaway some fortix or cheap dlcs then keep giving away bundle games.

Nah.