Not exactly.
If you buy Amnesia at full retail price (that's $19.99, right?), you'd get up to 20% of the value of your not-ever-in-a-bundle giveaways, or up to $19.99, whichever is lesser.
If you haven't given away any non-bundled games, you'd get 20% of zero, which is zero.
If you've given away just $5 in non-bundled games, you'd get up to an additional $1 from Amnesia and any other bundled-game giveaways you've made.
If you've given away $100 in non-bundled games, you'd get up to an additional $20 from Amnesia and any other bundled-game giveaways you've made.
If you've given away $100 in non-bundled games and your only bundled-game giveaway is Amnesia, however, you still only get an additional $19.99 from Amnesia.
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The policy as proposed right now, yes. And it would be worth only up to 20% of your non-bundle contributions. Which might be zero.
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Honestly, I don't like that. It's hurting those who give "legit" games that were/will be in a bundle at one point. Which is not the biggest problem, but I don't think it is fair to bundle's rules "for personal use only" (this being metioned every time someone asks "y no bundle keys hurr???").
So no, I would rather have exploiters suspended for some time.
HOWEVER, if there's no other way and this gets implemented permanently, I think it would be better if it stays in this format Old value (New value), and to add that option when creating contributor giveaways too (contributed total/contributed with decreased value of bundled games)
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My opinions.
New contribution value seems fine. Sounds like a good idea for forcing people not to abuse bundles and free games. As for those complaining that their contribution value might change in the future with the addition of new bundles, tough luck. What about games going down in price? Either the value calculations change due to that as well, making it all fair; or the value will be set and left at the time of gifting, in which case future bundles won't change it either.
Giving away bundles while they're live seems fine as well. There really isn't a concrete reason (that I can see) that would make that necessary.
Individual bundle keys should NOT be allowed. Abusing them for contribution value was the reason to do it, not the reason it should be forbidden. Bundles are ment to be handled as bundles. Worst case scenario, that would encourage keeping DRM-free downloads for oneself and giving away Steam keys, which is definitely not OK. One person, one bundle.
I know you'd like to make your lives easier, so it's fine if you decide to ignore that rule a bit. Just keep it in the rules and put it on the "Create Giveaway" page.
"Just as a reminder, giving away individual keys acquired by buying an indie bundle is not allowed. Please give away the bundle as a whole and send the winner the gift url. Read all the rules by clicking here."
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That's the current policy, actually. Bundle keys aren't allowed.
The only problem with the current policy is that it's very hard and it takes a lot of work to deal with all the questionable giveaway of games that have ever been in a bundle.
For example, if I make a giveaway for Hacker Evolution right now...can you tell whether it's a bundle key?
If a user reported this giveaway, and you were a mod, would you count it as a bundle key or not? What would you do?
Now multiply this many, many, many, many times over.
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My point was that bundle key policy should remain intact. The fact that this policy exists shows that the staff has a workflow on dealing with reported giveaways. I don't ask for this to change, I don't even ask for this to be enforced (as I said in my original reply).
The fact that you could easily get away with an infraction doesn't mean we should abolish the corresponding rules. Keep it in. Remind users that it's wrong. If someone is a twat enough to break said rule, well, he's a twat. Suspend him if the infraction is easily proven, ignore him otherwise. But keep it in.
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do those rules only go fur bundle games and such or could other things be marked accordingly as well?
specially thinking towards that train crap which is just ridiculous tbh and just as much of exploiting the system as bundlers
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The trains were legally bought games from the steam store. What's next, killing Borderlands GOTY point value because it's on sale all the time? Payday? Portal 1 and 2? Nope, sorry. Legally bought games, even at 90 percent off, are perfectly valid. Steam doesn't 90 percent off very often as it is. You don't have to like it, but those were not exploited.
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It's going to be a cluster F, now instead of a few people parting out indie bundles, everyone will be. So figure if there's 100 people who plan on giving away an indiegala, and each indiegala has 9 games. You're talking 900 giveaways cluttering the page. I'm just glad I have the Steam Gifts Enhancement App, otherwise I'd probably be unmanageable.
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I don't like it, really.
The problem here is that you're basically booby-trapping games by saying "you can give those away, but they're not worth anything", at least beyond a certain point. For example:
I got a Dungeon Defenders key from subscribing to IGN Prime legitimately. That's now worthless because it was in an Indie Royale.
I got an extra copy of Nuclear Dawn by owning it and gave it away here. Worthless, Indie Royale.
I paid for an extra copy of Osmos. That was in a bundle of some sort, so now it's retroactively worthless.
So obviously I'm now not giving away my extra copy of Beat Hazard here (that's currently on IGN Prime, by the way) because, why would I? That was in a bundle at some point, so, meh. At least make an official list of all the "worthless" games.
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I repeat my post here:
What if the system is made so that the people that can prove they gave out a giftable (or keys bought on GMG, GG and so on) copy, a mode could 'approve' the giveaway as a non-bundle one? Would probably give a lot of work to mods at first, but would also make the most people content.
Would that be more fair?
You could prove by taking a screenie of trade history or the key on your account on IGN, GMG etc.
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YOU CAN STILL GET FULL VALUE FROM BUNDLE GAMES. As long as you haven't been giving away just games that have been in a bundle, you will have nothing to worry about. I have given over $300 in games and one of them was Nuclear Dawn, but because the rest have not been in a bundle I wont be affected by this change.
Lets say you have gifted $100 of AAA games. You can now gift up to $20(20% of $100) of bundle games and still get the full contributor value.
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I think this is a very elegant solution you came up with and I fully support it. The only drawback, as previously mentioned, is for people who submitted a game before it's appeared in a bundle. I suppose each game should have an internal date attached to it marking the date it appeared in a bundle. Still, this won't solve a problem for people who submit giveaways of giftable copies of games that were previously featured in a bundle.
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What if the system is made so that the people that can prove they gave out a giftable (or keys bought on GMG, GG and so on) copy, a mode could 'approve' the giveaway as a non-bundle one? Would probably give a lot of work to mods at first, but would also make the most people content.
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Just make a screenshot of your key page, and include it in the support ticket. Yes, it would mean a lot more work for the mods, but it would make it so that all the people that are affected by the new system even if they didn't give out bundle keys can do something about it. And after a month or two, most of the tickets would have been resolved, leaving a vast majority of the gifters unaffected by the change.
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Record the date time when peoples submit giveaway in your database(I'm sure you already done this), and made a list when new bundle came on sale. Then when peoples submit giveaway then the games appears on bundle later(submit date < games appears on bundle. The giveaway won't count as bundle games and the submitter will still get a full contributor points.
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what do you mean by too much work? Do you mean it is hard to code the algorithm?
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Torian gave away 200 FULL game keys. Therein lies the problem, despite them being marked as beta, Torian's are both beta AND retail keys. Kickstarter beta+retail keys, to the best of my knowledge, are not discernable from simple beta keys. I'm not sure there's any way to differentiate between them.
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This is a double edged sword. And its going to cut more people than it's going to help.
Yes, controlling bundles is a good thing. Something that's been needed for a while.
However, you don't see the trend that is beginning to occur. Bundles are becoming alot more popular in the gaming market.
Your solution is a temporary one. Sure, a person that contributes over 75% of games that aren't in bundles will retain their full value. But guess what? More and more games will begin to be featured in bundles. So unless your always submitting AAA titles as gifts (heck, those might not even be safe) that 75% will mean squat since as more come out, your contributions you made will slowly start to dwindle with each set.
You could have bought 2,000 Fortix, and just one bundle in the future could make it all worthless.
Guess what? According to SG... You are no longer a contributor.
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It would solve many things for sure, or at least lessen the blow.
But there are people who do buy games at full value or are people who didn't get to see the bundles given away but played a game and said 'hey, others should play this too' rather unfair still...
Course, can't give without some take I suppose.
Currently I'm rather offput that anything I contribute currently could be hammered to 0.
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I have to agree with Talon. I for one, can't even buy bundles if I wanted (paypal isn't available in my country, and the whole you must have a paypal account to purchase is off-putting)
Instead, I have a legit IGN prime account that I paid for. Right now I have given at least 4 games from my IGN either on forum giveaways here or in actual giveaways. So...does that mean my contributions are counted to nothing because they're all indie games that were given out in bundles before?
:/ I'm miffed
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Check your updated profile. It still says $14.98.
Plus, I said this before, but the system can also be changed in a way that if you can prove you're not giving out individual bundle keys, but rather an inventory item or a key bought on a site like Amazon, GMG etc it can be marked as a 'regular' (or rather - non bundle game), and you'd get full value on your profile.
On a side note, imho, it looks like you're kinda forgetting the purpose of this site - which is gifting games, and not getting bigger $ rating on your profile. If you made someone happy by giving them a game, isn't that what matters the most? :)
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I'm not personally concerned. I know I'm not affected, my post was for those who were or WILL be in the future. There's no way for me to ensure that the giveaways I've currently done won't be reduced in the future. (I believe both of the games I submitted are from indie developers).
The problem with the above is that just like it's being done currently, people will cheat that system. How can SG verify if its from any certain site? The only way this issue could be resolved is with a change in how Steam handles keys. Otherwise it will always be a way to abuse it regardless of how.
That would be true if there wasn't an elitist section of 'contributor giveaways'. See, I wouldn't give a second look if those didn't exist. But they do and for me, its an issue. Since contributor giveaways drastically increase your chances of winning a game. the higher the value of them, the less are likely to enter, more likely to win.
How fair is it that a game I wanted is out of my reach because I was cut down from an unfair system despite contributing legitly?
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$10 or less, again. Seems quite a big issue if your contribution is at 0 isn't it?
If my two games went in a bundle tomorrow, I wouldn't even be able to enter the $0.01 contributor giveaways. I'm sure there alot of other people on here who haven't given away a ton of games either.
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you can prove your purchase? You might ask to mods what to do about it.. And they should add the date when those games are included in bundles, so any giveaway before that date should be legit.. To be hones you almost contributed nothing and shouldn't worry that much there are people who lost like 1300$ value with this update "nuclear SFK"
I think they should add even more bundle games to the list, I still see a certain person with all bundle games only lost 100$ value from his 800$+... Also ravaged and other beta keys deserve 0$ value
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Like I mentioned above, I know I'm not currently at risk. I was mostly noting that it will affect people who are higher tier or people who plan to contribute in the future.
Sure, I don't got much now, but nothing to say it won't increase later.
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I bought Serious Sam: the Random Encounter during the Because We May sale, when it was discounted to $0.99. Its base price is $4.99.
Right now, I enjoy contributor giveaways up to $4.99. I'm okay with losing this down to $0.99, and in fact I probably deserve it. But I do not like the SG system reducing my contribution to zero only because I haven't given any non-indie* games.
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Generally, it's a good idea, but won't rapidly growing number of bundled games be a problem? According to Indie Game Bundle Wiki since HiB1 went live 2 years ago we had 330 games in 55 bundles.
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The bundle market has stabilized since it first exploded. Now we have only four bundle sites making sales on a regular basis: HIB, IR, IG and BeMine. And they don't always give all Steam keys, esp IR and IG, some games got repeated in the same type of bundle and some across multiple bundles.
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(1) Definitely avoid any retroactivity, and apply the limit only from the day the bundle went on sale (or the day its composition was known). This is only a technical solution requiring "a bit" of coding. It does not rely on any kind of honesty or user cooperation, and can prevent some (not all) people from undue harm, while allowing very little to no space for abuse. Also, it will not discourage the users from submitting indie games out of fear they might one day appear in a bundle.
(2) Definitely make that "greylist" available (and link it from the giveaway creation page), so that users know what they're getting into. Make it available at any time, not just when creating a new giveaway, so that users can consult the list and decide before buying a game. Also, include a "what-if" calculator showing the contributor value after a hypothetical giveaway of any game (to see if it will count, or, in the case of a non-bundle game, if it will "unlock" some of the previous "bundle-locked" contributions).
(3) I assume that reporting individual keys from bundles that explicitly state you can't do that (for a direct example, see the relevant Indie Royale TOS section) will be still expected. It's a breach of TOS, it removes some support from indie devs, and is not something to be encouraged by a reward in the form of contribution increase.
(4) What about games where gifting the key opens a direct way to piracy? If the gifter has access to a Desura or DRM-free version (such as in a Humble Bundle), and gives away the Steam key, two people are now able to access the game which was paid for just once. You can say you will rely on the gifter's honesty to not use his Desura/DRM-free copy, but that is not the exact point. If you crack a copy-protected game but don't access (play) it, it does not make you less of a pirate. You can say that in such a case, it's the gifter, and not the unknowing and innocent giftee, who's becoming the pirate, and that you can't affect what people do "in their own house", but allowing bundle key gifts and rewarding them with some -- albeit limited -- contribution increase, definitely encourages this kind of piracy.
(5) What about the fact that forbidding keys while the bundles were on sale encouraged people to go and buy the bundle themselves (say, for $5), instead of trying to win a $1 copy? Now this support would be removed.
(6) What will happen to the status of full bundles (which were rule-compliant)? What if for some of the people who gifted them, breaking the bundle up would have actually yielded "better" results, due to their other, non-bundle contributions? This will sort of punish them for their following the rules (which is different from rewarding someone else for breaking them).
(7) What about games that were in bundles, but not separately "giftable"?
(8) Allow (as automated as possible) "proving" that a giveaway was for a tradeable copy, for example by checking the gifter's inventory history (if the gifter cooperates to make this visible to the verification system; I'm not sure how public/private this is).
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(1) I'm pretty certain this is codeable. There's data in the site for giveaway history which gets used to calculate contrib value, and that data includes giveaway dates. At the very least, a feature should be coded querying whether a giveaway was made before or after the first bundle date.
(5) This is an interesting point.
(6) I don't see why the rules for whole-bundle gifts would change much. They have their own value data on the site, separate from individual games anyway.
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(6) I know, but at this point, whole bundles are the only legitimate way of gifting bundle games. So a rule-abiding user now creates a giveaway for a full bundle, and gets +$6 contributor value. Another user (either now as a rule-breaker risking temporary suspension, or after the rules change) posts all games of the very same bundle separately, and thanks to his other contributions, raises his contributor value by, say, +$50. For gifting the very same thing, just bit by bit. So, in effect, this can hurt the rule-abiding gifter of the full bundle, compared to a less honest user who splits it, if he happens to have enough non-bundle gifts to "unlock" the value. The rule-abiding gifter of the full bundle may have enough non-bundle contributions too, but at the time he was gifting the bundle, he simply chose not to split it, and now will be worse off than the other guy.
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Oh, hm, you're right. It doesn't prevent that exploit.
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The Amnesia was in HIB5 but you couldn't give it away as a separate key (meaning that you had to get it through Steam or give the whole bundle as, well, bundle), therefore it shouldn't be counted as Shadowgrounds.
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I don't like this idea very much. I think this could stop some people from making giveaways for indie games, because when a new bundle gets out, they would lose some contributor points. And people who buy games after the bundle would also don't get the full contributor bonus. And when individual bundle keys are allowed, people could spam the site with such giveaways like it was with Shadowgrounds.
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Send a ticket to support, prove that you didn't get the game from a bundle (screenshot of trade history after you give the game, or of the key page on the site you bought it from) and they could mark it as a 'non bundle' game. A little extra work, but problem solved.
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i think it's great idea but thing is people forgetting what is main idea of this site. it's giving people something they havn't and want it, i usually watch what people say in chat's and if somebody really want some game and if i can afford it i buy it and give it :) i gave away like that alan wake and civ 5 goty and many other games and i know user who do that too :) that is main idea of this site not value or something else, yes contribution value is increasing chances for win for greater contributors but some people trying to abuse it by cheap games and unfair contributor value so i think it's great feature it will purge bundler values but if they stop giving away games that mean it was for value not for main idea of this site.
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Here a quote of what i said about this topic at another place:
No contributor giveways at all. That´s what i would favor, personally.
Because: If you are one of the gifting away many games persons, you probably don´t need to enter giveaways to get your games because you are "rich". If on the other hand, you are a person entering everything that moves, you will probably never give away a game, just because you are greedy. You don´t care for contributor or not. You will just continue to enter everything. With the system like it is right now, you just favor people getting bundles to give the keys away.
Yes, i am doing this too! Why? Because i like to be a good person, if i can. I don´t mind how much epeen i get for it. Sure, i have about 45$ right now so i can enter "better" giveaways. But if there would only be 15$ or 10$ visible on my account, i wouldn´t mind neither. I just don´t care! I made 4 people happy and had some nice chats with them. That´s it.
Best way to handle it would just be a number showing the total giveaways, nothing more, nothing less. No games, no value, no nothing! Because in every case, bundle or not, you made someone happy. That´s the aim of SG. If people would only care about high budget titles, noone would enter Fortix, right? Still, people do!
But that´s just my POV.
Oh, little edit: Seeing my contributor status going from 44,96 to 0,00 is just ridiculous. You will see a lot of people vanishing and many giveaways will not be created anymore. As said, personally i don´t care but a lot of people will! The new system is a punch in the face for everyone giving away just to be nice. Why? Because now you are forced to give away high value stuff to be able to enter some high value stuff yourself, since most good giveaways are contributor only. You can go to steamtrades right away with a system like that or, well, even easier: buy the game yourself!
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Umm... "If you are one of the gifting away many games persons, you probably don´t need to enter giveaways to get your games because you are "rich"."
This is the most bullshit comment about contributor giveaways I've ever read.
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"The new system is a punch in the face for everyone giving away just to be nice."
This is very true.
You all can say what you want about "giving isn't (supposed to be) about getting contrib value", but that doesn't erase the fact that people who've given back to the site will basically be told "oh, haha, that didn't count".
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Hey everyone, it's no surprise we've been struggling with bundle keys lately, and we're bouncing a lot of ideas back and forth. One suggestion is below, and we're curious to hear what people have to think.
Proposed changes to contributor values
Bundle games, and those freely available at one time or another (Ex. Shadowgrounds), will only add a maximum of 20% to a user's non-bundle contributor value. For example, if a user has submitted $50.00 in non-bundle games, they would have a cap of $10.00 (20% of $50.00) for any bundle games submitted. Therefore, if they submit $10.00 or $10,000.00 in bundles, their contributor value would reach a maximum of $60.00. To further demonstrate, a few scenarios are below.
User #1
Previous value: $119.95. New value: $119.95. They receive full value for Amnesia due to the amount of non-bundle games they have contributed.
User #2
Previous value: $39.98. New value: $23.99. The value of Amnesia drops from $19.99 to the max of $4.00 (20% of the Counter-Strike value) since their non-bundle contributions are quite low.
User #3
Old value: $69.95. New value: $23.99. Same as the above, the max of 20% is reached, so it cannot increase any further through bundle games.
User #4
Old value: $29.98. New value: $0.00. With zero contributions not from bundles, their contributor value remains at zero.
How will this affect your contributor value
Add /update to the end of your profile URL, and you'll see a new contributor value in brackets, next to your existing one. This reflects the updated value, limiting bundle giveaways to 20%. This will have no affect on the vast majority of our users, and only begins to adjust values on those that have submitted a higher than usual amount of bundle games.
Proposed changes to what can be submitted
Lately, the rules are difficult to understand. Certain bundles can only be submitted at given times, and there are over 100 individual bundle games. Users submitting individual bundle keys, whether on accident or on purpose get a bad reputation, and it's the cause of countless arguments. It creates a lot of confusion and brings a negative feel to the entire community, which completely goes against what we're trying to accomplish. The above changes would mean anything can be submitted at any time, and the site will automatically keep contributor values in line. If someone enters a $120 contributor giveaway, you know a minimum of $100 is coming from non-bundle games.
Feedback
No changes have taken place yet. At the moment we're looking for feedback from the community to decide on a fair approach. Please post your thoughts below. Thanks!
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