So I made this topic for people who wonder when they will level up. I based this list on cg's post days ago and after seeing the Real CV calculator tool that our fellow SG user knsys created here I realized it's pretty much in line with it. The mistake most people make is, that they base their CV on the "Gifts Sent" value, but that one now counts all bundle games with their full value. You don't get 30$ CV anymore from your first few bundle games, they are now always calculated into your CV level with only 15% of their full value. Also you need to have at least 5 entries on your giveaway. For a full explanation of CV Levels and Reduced CV/No CV giveaways click here and here

You can check your Real CV here and compare it to this list (kinda redundant now that knsys added your specific range to the calculator :D)
I try to update the table from time to time, if you need the current live numbers check here at the bottom of the page.

Contributor Level Contributor Value Range Number of users (October 3, 2022) Percentage of Users Percentage of Users (Level 0 excluded)
Level 0 $ 0 980,047 85.088% -
Level 1 $ 0.01 - 25 114,023 9.900% 66.386%
Level 2 $ 25 - 50 18,627 1.617% 10.845%
Level 3 $ 50 - 100 14,062 1.221% 8.187%
Level 4 $ 100 - 250 12,360 1.073% 7.196%
Level 5 $ 250 - 500 5,770 0.501% 3.359%
Level 6 $ 500 - 1000 3,415 0.296% 1.988%
Level 7 $ 1000 - 2000 1,955 0.170% 1.138%
Level 8 $ 2000 - 3000 625 0.054% 0.364%
Level 9 $ 3000 - 5000 518 0.045% 0.302%
Level 10 $ 5000+ 403 0.035% 0.235%

In case you are wondering why these are static & not dynamic like in the beta ?

"We did have dynamic before, but it meant people would lower in levels over time if they're inactive. In a couple of years, we might have to raise them" -cg

So these are correct for now.

9 years ago*

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Something doesn't add up: I should be Level 4 (my SGv1 Cv was about 130$) but I'm level 3.

9 years ago
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Check the calcuator: Real CV for account Nev3rmore: 90.4$, you are in the 50-100 range for Level 3 (3.81 to be exact). See ? :)

9 years ago
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Oh nice, I have 50$ less than on the old Steamgifts xD

9 years ago
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Depreciation, Bro. As Steam lowers its prices, the value of what we have given goes down.

9 years ago
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So will the CV level of some people eventually decrease if they do not keep gifting?

9 years ago
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The value of what has been given is always decreasing for everyone (down to a certain minimum). However, most of us keep bumping our CV up by continuing to give.

9 years ago
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They can easly solve the problem by calculating games' value from the time it has been added to SG by gifter.
It is really depressing to find out you lost your way to next level in a day.

8 years ago
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So, instead of doing an API check which takes minimal resources, you would implement an API check with a database cross-check, requiring noticeably more resources? And how often would you activate that cross-check? It seems to me that would create bigger problems than it would solve.

I agree, however, that it sucks to lose the level you just gained. I've had that happen to me on multiple occasions, but I got over it.

8 years ago*
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Actually, it would probably take less resources. Just querying a local database for a static value should be quicker than asking Steam for it, no? If someone gives a $60 game like Fallout 4, wouldn't it be fair to keep this value as-is indefinitely? Why ask Steam for the current price at any later point in time? The giveaway creator had to pay full price, not whatever it would cost in a year or two.

8 years ago
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Precisely because the price isn't static. The price of a game varies in accordance with situation. As for what the creator had to pay, that also varies widely.

8 years ago
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I don't know. It just seems very unfair that people who pay so much money for a new AAA game when no sale is in sight will end up getting measly 20P for it in a couple of years. I'm sure there can be a better way to encourage people to give such games than the current system.

8 years ago
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Fortunately, the people who can afford to do that aren't too worried about CV because they give regularly. Like points, it just keeps adding up.

8 years ago
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Sorry to butt in late, but though I have given away brand new AAA games, I can't afford to give them away regularly.
Many of those expensive games that I gave away have now considerably dropped down in CV. So I do worry about my CV going down, because I can only afford to give away games occasionally.

I give away games because I like to, but it is disappointing to see my CV just drop and disregard what I actually paid.

Just thought I'd show a different perspective.

8 years ago
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+1 By setting it up so that CV drops over time as the cost of AAA games goes down, you're actually encouraging users to give games that are already cheap/not going down further (and discouraging people from giving AAA games). I think this is clearly born out by the giveaways we see. I can't really afford to give AAA games frequently, but I would now and then, except that I know they'll seriously depreciate in a relatively short period of time...so why bother? It'd be a waste (from my perspective) of my hard earned money, relative to giving a much larger number of bundle games that are already inexpensive, and not likely to go down in price (they just tend to go on sale/get bundled again, not drop their list price).

8 years ago
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+1 to this. I explicitly will NOT give away a AAA fresh new game because of this "depreciates over time" system. If I want to put money into this system, it should at least hold its value.

CV should be calculated at the time the gift is marked "Received."

8 years ago
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I second this!

8 years ago
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I third this !

7 years ago
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yes I am of agreement with that..
I offered a MAD MAX 60P ... it will be worth 9P in a few months..
for the price I would have to buy several blunde for the same immediate but result

7 years ago
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+1

6 years ago
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They just need to save the price of the game at the moment the giveaway is created, just 1 extra column, I don't think that requires "noticeably more resources"

8 years ago
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+1 absolutely agree

8 years ago
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+1. No reason for this to require substantially more resources.

8 years ago
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+1

8 years ago
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i like this and agree, but it wouldnt or couldnt happen at this point... its just too late.. they would have to go thru all 5years worth of giveaways one by one and adjust it to what the prices were at the time those people made their giveaways in order for it to be fair and "retroactively done". thats the form of resources it would take at this point that route too.

7 years ago
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happy cake day!

7 years ago
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Oh damn, I missed it ^^ Not much time lately for anything, but thanks :D

7 years ago
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im at 88$ ish and im still lv 2 o.o

9 years ago
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Real CV for account pokerkim: 41$

9 years ago
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why so low ._. is it because arkham origins still giving me 0P.

9 years ago
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check your actual CV in Kiru's link, it's super helpful

9 years ago
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Thank you so much for this post!

It's way easier to understand than cg official post, with all due respect to him/her.

9 years ago
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Remember, games from bundles only cont 15% of the original price.

9 years ago
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You have 3 giveaways with only 1 entry. Private, Whitelist or Group giveaways now require at least 5 entries to add value to the Contributor Value.

9 years ago
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(I know this thread is old but I wanted to contribute).
I totally agree that the CV should be calculated with the price a certain game has during the giveaway, not with the current price. However I see a problem that exists now too but would be worse with a new system. Games have regional pricing but most keys are not regional restricted. Sure, Turkey, Russia etc have regional locked keys. But there are also massive price difference between global game keys from different countries.
Ori and the will of The Wisps (03.2020 release) is a great example. The MSRP (all prices from release) of the game on steam is in the USA 30 USD. Some countries pay slightly less, about 25 USD. Some countries pay significantly more for no reason. Norway had an price of about 37 USD at release, which is significantly more expensive than most of the lower priced countries. Then, there was switzerland, which tops norway with 48 USD. The thing is that compared to averge loand and prices in other countries, the swiss do not have more money to spend than everybody else. Regardless the price, they literally payed about 60% more for the game than people in the USA, even though they do not have more money than them.

What price would the CV system take? The US price which would cheat everybody who payed more? In general, we do not know what a certain user paid since steam isn't the only platform to buy steam games. The problem still exists now but since the value decreases over time, the gap between regional pricing is getting extremely low.

3 years ago
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The user was not online on SG for more than a year.

3 years ago
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Deleted

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9 years ago
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thanks for the info :3
weird, the coment only showed up on second try >.>

9 years ago
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Excellent post ty!

9 years ago
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Oh cool, thanks for posting this!

9 years ago
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Am I the only one who thinks bundle games should give you basically nothing?
I mean, people either buy a bundle for almost nothing for a game(s) they actually want, and get the others "free", or they buy a bundle just to get games to give away...
While the CV system is kind of good, to theoretically encourage the giving away of higher-priced stuff, it doesn't really work for bundle games. If people got a game for < $1, the CV they get from that should reflect THAT, not the "normal price" of that game...

9 years ago
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Bundle games do give a lot less then a game you bought, for example, I give away a lot of games from bundles and they only cont as 0,75cents or less.

9 years ago
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Whichever way you count it, your total contribution to the community is... 0$! What are you worried about?

9 years ago
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Yea, WTF? A leech bitching about the points on a bundled game?

9 years ago
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The system also doesn't work for those of us who buy previously bundled games off the steam store for definitely not bundled prices. It sucks, but you get used to it.

9 years ago
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So say 10 games in a $5 bundle = $.50 per game and a $5 game on 90% sale costs $0.5

What is the difference that means bundles should give $0????

The 15% is a far better solution

As others have said, as you have given $0 why do you care?

9 years ago
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With the 15% rule, the vast majority of bundle games are probably going to earn you less CV, dollar-per-dollar, than a game you bought at a 90% sale (which is worth full price.)

For comparison, most bundle games average about 7$ (very few are worth more than 10$, and they get watered down by all the $5 and even $2 bundled games.)

So let's say you spend 1$ to get four games like that. 1$ = 24$ * 0.15 = 3.6$ of CV.

Whereas if you'd spent that on a game on sale for 90% off, you'd have gotten 10$ of CV.

Of course, people have a lot of bundle games lying around which they bought anyway, but... I think it's still worth giving people some recognition for going through the bother of gifting them. In terms of exploiting, though, the 15% rule ensures that the vast majority of bundles will be a bad deal, and the diminishing-returns rule ensures that even the rare bundle that offers you more than 10x your dollars spent is still going to have limits on how much it gets spammed.

(Now, you could argue that 90% sales also shouldn't give full CV, but that's just not really practical to prevent.)

9 years ago
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If your numbers were more based in reality, this would be a good point. But it is incredibly unlikely that you will find a game for 90% off (or even 80%) that hasn't already been bundled. I've spent hours combing steam, with the "bundled games" SG search page open, and also making sure to cross-reference the "create a giveaway" page (in case a game was ever given away for free, since those don't get listed as bundled, but also can't be given away). The reality is that for every single bundle I've bought, I get more CV (after the 85% cut) than I spent in real dollars, and usually still end up keeping a game or two.

As I explained in another comment above, I'd love to give AAA games now and then, but with a substantial, practically guaranteed depreciation in AAA games CV, the current SG system discourages me from giving away AAA games, and instead encourages lots of bundled games. And there's no question that's the reality we see in the giveaways in general. I don't for a minute believe we see the sheer numbers of bundled games being given away because people can't afford more than $1 or $3. It's because they have either calculated or intuited the most efficient way to get CV and be active members. All you have to do is check some of these users' steam profiles to see they've got 3000+ games in their account, including plenty of AAA titles, but they're giving away almost nothing but bundled games, day after day.

If we want to change the balance of quality of games being given away (I'm not saying everyone wants that, but if) then SG's CV system should better incentivize the giving of AAA titles. I think the 15% rule for bundled games is a reasonable attempt at cutting the value, but there's also this strong disincentive to give AAA titles when their CV is sure to drop as soon as they're 3/6/12 months old and the publishers cut the price.

8 years ago
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The AAA issue is really a separate thing (it happens because nobody wants to go through the headache of keeping CV up-to-date with the history of price drops.)

One thing that might be interesting would be a flat bonus to the CV of any game given away within a month of its release. This would reward people for gifting newer games, and could be calculated (I think) purely from Steam data without any complicated tracking.

8 years ago*
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I agree that the AAA titles should have a different treatment, and titles that have more positive reviews too - that way will encourage people to give better games.

8 years ago
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+1

6 years ago
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Some of us also WANT bundled games, as not everyone has been around or taken advantages of bundles no longer available.

I think the current system is reasonable / fair by giving 15% value. Games bundled tend to go on significant sales semi regularly, and the CV you get for a bundled game equals the value of the game on 85% discount.

9 years ago
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Haha 0 gifts sent - talking about ratings. Go eat a bag of diks

8 years ago
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Even though this comment is from 6 months ago...I just wanna say that that was a good catch. Good eye, damn.

8 years ago
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I'm $99.95 but I'm level 4

9 years ago
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It probably gets rounded then or like someone mentioned in the other thread, there might be a small mistake in the algorithm of the calculator. It's only 5 cents. :D

9 years ago*
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I'm bumping this thread, and also... WHAT WAS THAT ABOUT BEING LEVEL 4??? (you're level 6...)

6 years ago
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that comment was from three years ago

6 years ago
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So is yours....

2 years ago
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Thank you so much for doing this kiru. :)
we should make this into sticky post.

9 years ago
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Wow very useful. Now I understand how this works. Thanks!

9 years ago
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bump

9 years ago
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So if I were to, as an example, purchase a SINGLE game from Steam for say $4.99, how much of that would count towards CV if I were to set up a giveaway for it?

9 years ago
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If it's a game that has never been bundled, $4.99 CV. If it has ever been bundled or been on a discount greater than or equal to 95% it will appear on http://www.steamgifts.com/bundle-games and will give you $0.75 CV ($4.99 * 0.15, rounded to the nearest cent).

9 years ago
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Thanks! :-)

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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Except there isn't even an inkling of any kind of semblance of a pyramid scheme in there.

Maybe you should educate yourself a little bit. ;)

9 years ago
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Wow! You are everywhere on this site! Do they pay you? Or are you doing all these voluntarily?

2 years ago
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That comment was from 7 years ago. I was just a regular user back then.

And no, we don't get paid. The support staff is all volunteers.

2 years ago
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Oh! Well, can I be a volunteer also? How can I apply?

2 years ago
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If you're interested in volunteering, you can submit your candidature by sending a support ticket in the "Other" category, explaining that you would be interested in joining the support team.

2 years ago
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Thanks! I'll try to, hope they select/elect!
My contribution level is not that high as you, hope it doesn't affect my application!

Once again, thanks♡

2 years ago
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Well, I've lost about $100 in CV in the conversion from SG V1 to SG V2, but that does put it right about where your levels show. The minimum 5 entries requirement is what hurts me on a few giveaways.

9 years ago
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I lost a bit over $500 in the process, the low-entries GA didn't help. The reduction in value from bundle games really killed it though.

9 years ago
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Thanks! This helps so much, you don't even know. You probably do, though.

9 years ago
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I think that there was a lot of discussion about making the CV needed for the levels dynamic during the beta. Is it a static number now?
A bit unsure even after reading CG's post.

9 years ago
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Yes, it is

9 years ago
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Thanks for making this tool, knsys!
I think this info could use sticky-ing.

9 years ago*
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ok i can go for level 8 so

9 years ago
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I don't like how I gave away a game before it got bundled and now I only get the credit for the bundle'ed amount.

9 years ago
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All the games you gave, except for HL2, got bundled before you gave them away.

9 years ago
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Good information!

9 years ago
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Thank you ! It will be very useful :)

9 years ago
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Thanks for taking the time in finding the CV values for each level. It was the idea when I made the tool, but was too lazy afterwards to do it myself :)

9 years ago
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Heh, wasn't that much work, just tidied up the values in some nice table, cg provided the info. Your tool helped me to prove that these levels are right, couldn't really convince people before. No idea how you coded that tool, but it's great^^

9 years ago
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I should be lvl 2 but I am lvl 1 ... I had over 25 CV. Most giveaways done before games were bundled.

9 years ago
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Real CV for account DVDVD: 10.5$. Nope, Level 1 is correct. Bundled games don't give you free 30 CV anymore, keep that in mind. Dota 2 & Metro 2033 were definitely bundled, Defense Grid: The Awakening was bundled in 2012, Men of War: Assault Squad - DLC Pack was also bundled 10 days before you gave it away.

9 years ago
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"The mistake most people make is, that they base their CV on the "Gifts Sent" value, but that one now counts all bundle games with their full value. Also you don't get 30 CV anymore from your first few bundle games, they are now always calculated into your CV level with only 15% of their full value. " You should bold this.

9 years ago
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+++++++

9 years ago
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9 years ago
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9 years ago*
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9 years ago
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Thanks Kiru B )

9 years ago
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