How We're Planning to Fix Bundle Keys and Contributor Values (Option #3)

This one might be nice, but option 1 is still my favorite. It would take a while to get enough votes for this to work, and if something unforeseen happens (a la shadowground and the summer seal) it would still take a good, long while for it to take effect, and would also devalue anyone who gave the game away before or after the fiasco.

Option 1 (even if it's unfair) is better.

I'll pass, is kind of unfair for some games :/

Nope not what I'm looking for :T

And what about private giveaway exploitation? I and a few of my bunny friends get together and make 2-5 person "giveaways" for Half-life 3 and various other games and low and behold we get an easy points padding. This would also punish those on a budget seeing as most people would want the brand new 50 dollar games as apposed to the small and unheard of indie title.

A combination of all options would be best. Adding the friends giveaways and wishlist/value added features to the site as additional options, as well as implementing option 1's 20% rule would serve to keep a most of the site happy.

Option 1 please.

IMO that's the worst idea. You know how it would look like? The most popular games got votes from 80-90% of users, when 10% is still a HUGE number, but it wouldn't give enough contribution points. Most of games would remain with less than ~1%.

I vote for idea number 1 + (as said some user) possibility of choosing, if we want to create giveaway in old style (with bundlers) or with new contribution system.

Hmm, this option is interesting. I think I like this one better than the other two, unless option 1 has a way to differentiate key and tradable giveaways (I'm OK with #1 if you can make that distinction). Keeping contribution values constant, not dropping when the game drops in value on Steam, is a plus. I'm not sure exactly what to think about using crowd-determined values based on (essentially) what we wishlist, because high-cost games that are not highly desired could end up with low values (disappointing if you spent a lot of money to get them), but it seems a bit better than potentially taking away all of people's current credit, which option 1 does, or eliminating the recognition of contributors, which option 2 does. And you said that it would work on "fresh information", so this option might work out OK. It's got me thinking more than the other two, in a good way.

A thought on converting current values into points under this proposal -- would it be possible to look at the number of entries per giveaway for each game in a particular time frame, and use that to determine points on past giveaways? Here's kind of what I'm thinking, though it might not be easily coded. Let's say a user gave away Game X say 6 months ago. You decide on a time range of 3 months before the giveaway as the indicator of current desire for games in finished giveaways. Look at the entries on all giveaways of Game X in the 3 months leading up to the user's giveaway of it, and compare that to (say) the average number of entries for all giveaways in that same time frame. If an average number of entries is say 5 contributor points, more than average gives 6+ points depending on how far above the average the game's entries are, or 4- points if it's below the average. I'm not sure how you'd divide up that range (how far above average is a 10, or below is a 1?), and I'm not sure if you need to factor in public/group/private giveaways differently, but something like this might be a reasonable measure of game desirability in the past.

1.Let people set their own entry price for games.

2.Then do a random formula that calculates a good contribution value by looking at entry price & entrants, example:
Contribution points = (entry_price*entries)^0.33

3.The example formula in use on real current gifts:

portal, (Private) : 10p buyin, 9 entries: 4.4 points

the ship, : 20p buyin, 172 entries: 14.7 points

mirrors edge, : 20 buyin, 443 entries: 20 points

asscreed2DE, : 20 buyin, 2,174 entries: 34 points

GTA:complete, : 50p buyin, 5,000 entries: 60.4 points

fortix, : 1p buyin, 213 entries: 5.7 points

Just a formula i made without trying (^0.45 seems better after looking at the real tests), tweaking it and adding some other modifiers would probably make for a great system & we would probably see more high quality games since people are more keen to spend their points on that.

Meh... I still like option #1 the best. I hate option #2. This one is alright.

This one seems complicated but if perfected, could be the best option of the 3.

don't know.. sounds complicated. maybe possible to, when someone makes a giveaway, they have to give the gift/key to one of the admins or a bot, and recieve contributor points accordingly? i guess this would be more complicated...

still option 1 is the the best

Not keen on this, as others have said I think it will discourage variety. I like option 1 the most.

i loved option 1 :D

I think some games would be set to permanently low contr. value, which may be a bit unfair. Option #1 or #2!

This has some merits and its potential but is completely tangential to my expectations and preferences. I'm interested in a wide variety of games with very little interest in largely popular multiplayer games. Among other things I also think that contributors should have freedom to chose what they want to give out, maybe they have their own hidden agenda like spreading the games they liked themselves, though of course the guiding factor mostly seems to be daily deals but it's still more fun than the vote of populace.

Interesting option, but i guess there will be like 20-30 games many people want and lots of "1 pointers" that might be as expensive as the "xx pointers" but just adding almost nothing.

I prefer option 2 (and as said there: no contributor status of any way would be even better).

I love the fact that you guys are discussing it with the community. I'm happy so long as I can give away whatever I want and could care less about points. Keep the ideas flowing! Oh, can we have a way to designate beta keys? Again, I dont care if it zeros points, but it would cause people to chill.

Isn't the number of people entering a giveaway a pretty good measure of how much it was "worth" to the community, and hence how much contribution you should be credited with? It has the added benefits of being easy to retrofit - all giveaways already have the information recorded, so calculating the contribution of historical giveaways is easy.

It will also dynamically adapt to price changes as well as supply/demand, and would also encourage people not to all put up a zillion copies of whatever was on sale or in a bundle recently, and thus encourage variety and automatically reward those giving popular games (e.g., Skyrim).

There is also a good tool already present to determine ahead of time what would make a good giveaway, for those wanting to optimize their contribution score - "Our wishlist".

The above just seems like a very simple way to address most of the concerns raised in the discussions about bundles, contributor "scores" etc. Perhaps there are ways to game a system like this that I haven't thought of, but this is essentially an economic system that should be pretty self-regulating, similar to systems I've helped develop for other applications.

10% of all games would still be 250 games.

Either this or Option 1 + some tweak (made a list of bundle release on database, then compare it to peoples that giveaway games that are in bundle, if giveaway date < bundle release date, then the submitter got full points, otherwise he got bundle points)

Not entirely sure how its going to work but i'm intrigued to see how it would turn out.

This could easily be harassed if a large group all votes for a cheap game to up the points for it. Then they give it away and get more points than they should for it, vote for another game and do it again. Also, what about cheap dlc that not many people may want but a few people are interested in? I gave away a bunch of dlc at the end of the summer sale and there probably weren't too many people that would have voted for some of them at all. What happens to games that have no votes? Does that mean no points? These would be the only problems I can really think of, besides the converting current contributor values.