Perhaps a compromise?
While I realize this is a lot of coding, maybe for the purposes of submitting the giveaway, there is a requirement to make it public.
Some sub-criteria like giveaways that have a value over 45P, or for users who have never sumbmitted a giveaway before, or for people who have only been registered for less than a week?
I realize this doesn't get all of them, but you definitely see a 'trend' and the criteria that would catch most of them might be to make it temporarily public for the purposes of submitting the giveaway.
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That would be a lot of work to initially get going, especially with everything else cg currently has planned, and might not make much of a difference. A lot of giveaways that are "fake" are also from people that have had accounts for 3-4 months. The criteria and planning going into making this work would be far greater than simply removing the giveaways when reported or seen. While it's annoying to many, it would probably be far more annoying for members to constantly make their inventory and profile public for each giveaway, depending on where we would even draw the line. Remember, we'll be over 100,000 members soon and that kind of change wouldn't be easy.
Also, as I've noted below, majority of fake giveaways aren't "for the lulz", but people of all account ages "testing" the giveaway process. They don't understand that they can't remove the giveaway after it's created, which is why you often see DON'T ENTER I DON'T HAVE THIS GAME OMG HELP? in the description. We've been over dozens and dozens of suggestions, but none have really been viable.
If we do start scanning for inventories, what happens to CD-keys and giveaways of games that someone didn't buy just yet? Those disappear until they meet our criteria to start gifting, which I don't believe is in the spirit of SteamGifts.
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Always public is one thing, but requiring a profile to be public for a few moments just to verify you have the game you wish to give away would be no different than the current rule of making your profile public to sync once a week.
ghondooby's suggestion is a good one:
Not sure if this is possible or been suggested- you could have a "verified" flag for giveaways. If a user has their inventory public when they create the giveaway (or when they resync) the site could check their inventory and flip the flag for the giveaway to true. There definitely shouldn't be a penalty if the user chooses not to have their profile or inventory private.
Or require the game to be in the inventory for any unverified users (and require a check), but once a person reaches an amount ($25?) gifted successfully their account becomes verified.
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I like the first idea. Unverified giveaways would still be allowed for the sake of keys, but would be more suspect. This would add a sense of security to big giveaways.
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Not always public, just the moment they are creating the giveaway. And only for the first giveaway. Just like we have to set our profiles public every week to sync the account, we can set our inventories to public only during the giveaway creation process. By Setting the inventory checking to only happen in your first giveaway you avoid "test fakes". People can give their CD-Keys in a future giveaway (after the first one is confirmed real by the winner).
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<3 Cult.
There are a lot of acquisition methods which result in keys and not giftable games - Like IGN Prime, plenty of free codes for games that you cannot gift, but still result in an on-steam game. Just have to accept it as-is I think, and stop hating people for giving away games they don't want. It might not strictly follow the rules, but if it results in people giving other people games, I'm not sure the witches are worth burning. There are good witches.
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How about you think for a bit before you enter everything you see, huh?
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I do. That doesn't make fake giveaways less of a nuisance.
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I'm sure it's more likely that it's just the evil spawns of Satan known as cats who "unknowlingly" walk across keyboards, launch a browser, open steamgifts.com, bat the mouse with their tail clicking Giveaways -> Create a giveaway, select a hot/popular/desired game (almost always $40+), walk back across the keyboard filling out all the needed information before batting the mouse with their tail again clicking the various checkboxes and clicking submit.
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A very high portion of fake giveaways is new users "testing" a giveaway. They don't understand they can't remove the giveaway after creating it. Many of them create a test giveaway as a private giveaway, but some do it public and don't understand. Forcing people to keep their inventory or profiles public would not put a stop to this behavior.
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Then there must be some issue with how the mechanics of giveaways are being communicated for so many people to miss them.
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Not sure if this is possible or been suggested- you could have a "verified" flag for giveaways. If a user has their inventory public when they create the giveaway (or when they resync) the site could check their inventory and flip the flag for the giveaway to true. There definitely shouldn't be a penalty if the user chooses not to have their profile or inventory private.
Now, there's probably some other problems with that I haven't thought of, it's just an idea.
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There needs to be some sort of a test before you're allowed to make giveaways, like the test of basic understanding of english language and of understanding the idea of the site.
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Look at all of the fakes that doesn't get rid of.
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Personally, I don't like the idea. I don't even like having to make my profile public every week to sync it, so having to take the extra step to make my inventory public too would be a disincentive to post a giveaway. Not to mention I bought some games I gave away at Green Man Gaming. What if those were my first giveaways?
Creating a system which makes people go through hoops and prevents them from giving certain things is like DRM: it penalises those who do things by the book because a certain percentage of the population doesn't.
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Yes, I have something to hide. In the case of the inventory in particular, I don't want people to know what I keep there. If I want to gift it here, give it to friends or keep it forever it's nobody's business.
I'm a good example of someone who's legit but hits some "standard indicators" of fake. I gift games I don't own myself, for example.
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i dont agree with the topic, but i dont agree with you either. in the case of DRM is is not to penalized people who crack games, it is to make it harder to crack games. it a precautionary measure to make sure that a product will be used for its intended use, a single retail copy of a product, not shareware. if you buy a product like a game DRM dose not hinder you in the lest. and in the case of product keys and GMG, i have seen a lot of people complain because of two things; 1. the product key is fake or has been yanked due to bill errors . 2 the product key has some special way of registering it in steam, or a typo. Now im not saying that these issues are a constant, because that would be a lie, but they are prevalent enough to make a counter argument here. As for making you steam account private on public, i really have no opinion on that, as it dose not bother me in the least if i have it private and open it for someone to see my inventory for a short time, or public. they only time that i can see a problem with that, is if you are doing massively constant giveaways every week. as for you what if scenario, their real isn't an answer for it, because we live in a world of what is and not what ifs, their good for planing, not so good for event that have already transpired.
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I haven't read about problems with GMG keys, though problems with Get Games ones seem to be prevalent. That's not relevant to the discussion, though, since such giveaways aren't created as fake, and IMO shouldn't be blocked just on the off chance that the store made a mistake. I had no problem with the two GMG keys I gave so far.
As for DRM, if you've never bought a game and been burnt by DRM consider yourself lucky. I had DRM do anything from prevent the game from running due to technical problems, prevent other games from running, or claim that I'm playing a pirated game. I've spent many hours with support to get some DRM software working correctly (for example, due to conflict with Skype), and sometimes just forsake the game. Lots of compatibility problems of older games with newer Windows versions are the fault of the DRM, not the game itself. I've also had trouble with DRM outside games, with music and e-books. Short of it, DRM is crap, and it mainly hurts legitimate customers. Most of the solutions you see to DRM problems on forums are to get the pirated versions or cracking software.
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Look at it this way. Every fake giveaway is going to get another person banned from the site, and then they won't be able to compete for free games anymore!
I would stop using the site if I had to make my inventory visible to make a giveaway - I like that people can't see what gifts I've bought, like birthday/Christmas presents for certain Steam friends.
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Wow, some of you people are real pricks. I raise a legitimate concern about an ongoing nuisance and you all assume I join every single fake or misaccuse people who clearly don't have the game of making a fake giveaway, rather than considering that maybe I just don't approve of fakes cropping up so often? Sorry I prefer the sites I frequent to be as good as possible. I never even demanded that my suggestion be implemented, only considered.
Oh, and for the "not this thread again" crowd, if it keeps coming up, MAYBE IT'S STILL RELEVANT.
I'm glad the mods have their shit together and are actually considering the best way to improve the site.
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This is sort of a suggestion-question, but why is it that people making giveaways don't first have to make their inventory games visible? I know some people give keys, but I'd think that rule would cut down on fakes.
Though to be effective, the site would have to intervene, rather than the admins addressing every person.
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