I am with you. Once I reported a user with 48 - yes, 48 - unactivated wins. Sure, after this he was perma-banned, but he should never have been able to reach 48 unactivated wins in the first place.

suspension is enough, khalaq has mentioned it more than once that users usually don't fall into recidivism.
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/Rr1EDuM
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/VSac6iA

i'm ok with the system as it is, no need to punish offenders even more.
blocking them from entering giveaways does nothing, they either didn't want to get that game at all (you won't force them to activate them) or it was a mistake (it will be fixed as soon as that person realizes he was wrong).

I'd be happier with another half-automated system. Right now, if someone serves a suspension, they can be rerolled for the next month if they win. This should not be difficult to code that once a suspension ends, they cannot enter any giveaways that end within the next 30 days or just don't let them be selected as winners.
Same for pressing the marked as received. It could be renamed Activated on account, which triggers an account sync; if the game is not there, a warning window pops up saying that they didn't do it.

The way I see it, regifting is a mistake that can always be fixed. Just buy the game.

I can't even re-roll winners that have regifted in the past. It's very frustrating, but I don't want to have to go through SGTools every time I want to give something away.

The end result is that I end up not giving away as many games as I would like, because SG and I differ on what is acceptable.

I would argue that suspensions are ineffective deterrents against cheating. I am constantly seeing users return and do more re-gifting, hoping to gain rank and access to better giveaways. They are not dissuaded by a timeout.

Incorrect

Also, just a personal opinion and not representative of the staff as a whole, but people who purposely withhold gifts from winners are arguably worse than the people who did not activate due to not knowing the rules.

Well I wouldn't call a re-gifter a thief. How can it be stealing if you won it? It's more like someone gives you a gift for Christmas and then you decide to trade or sell it. It's inconsiderate and opportunistic and if the gifter found out I'm sure they would feel angry or hurt. But it's not theft. Requiring the re-gifter to activate the key before entering more GAs isn't a bad idea.

Agree. Pay off their debts before they want to join another game.
Suspension is the punishment. They still have the debt.

i think sgtools is a larger deterrent then suspensions.

+1 to this idea.. however... i don't think it should be retro-active though sadly, or we'd lose far to many people.

I completely disagree with suspensions being ineffective deterrents. A SteamGifts account is tied to your Steam account for life, so any mark on your record is going to hurt. People who maliciously abuse the regifting system in order to send the copies elsewhere will be permanently banned rather soon, as the standard penalty is a 7 day suspension times the number of offenses. As soon as one account is permanently banned, you will have trouble ever accessing the site again thanks to IP tracking, plus the fact that all new accounts have to link to a new Steam account, pass the entrance check, and starting over at level 0, where it's pretty hard to win anything (worthwhile, even less so) in the first place.
This means that the only people who are legitimately punished for regifts are likely to be people who made genuine mistakes. Right now they already get a minimum 7 day suspension (if enough regifts, an indefinite/permanent suspension until it is fixed, in which case your suggestion is already implemented), potential rerolls for 30 days after that, AND they are blacklisted and shunned by the community perhaps permanently and they cannot enter most SGT giveaways until they fix the regift. And you want to argue that it should be even harsher than that?
Not to mention, a funny 'side effect' of not fixing your regifts properly is that you can accidentally win and activate the game again in the future, which will net you another individual suspension for multiple win.

I must admit that I didn't activate 2 games when I joined SteamGifts just because I didn't read faq carefully. On other site with giveaways users where allowed to regift won games. After some time of not activating won keys I've received ban for week or two. Since then I've never broke SG's rules. But 48 games?! In my opinion such users must be perma-banned.

I couldn't vote because I disagree with all the options and even the option "I don't know / no opinion" is wrong, because I do actually have an opinion.

Yes, time-limited suspension (like today) does have a strong deterrent effect, but is not a good solution because it creates and endless burden on support and GA creators. Suspension should only end when rule breakers activate all their wins, and not a second earlier.

Some thoughts on this.

1. Alice won a Digital Homicide game back in the day, never activated it. Since the game is no longer on Steam, she won't be able to come back to SG.

2. Bob joined the site recently and got extremely lucky — he won a fake GTA 6 giveaway, marked it Received because he thought that's what needs to be done in order to receive the game. He never receives the game, though, he is later suspended and now has to purchase GTA 6 in order to come back to the site.

3. Bob's friend Charlie got lucky, too — he won Mass Effect 5. However, the version he received was for Origin. Still, feeling grateful for the gift, he marked the giveaway Received and subsequently got a suspension.

4. Dwight won a region-restricted copy of Hitler's Balls, a very controversial game banned in several countries, including Dwight's own country. He marks the giveaway Received and regifts the game. Again, once he is suspended, he can no longer come back to SG.

The problem with enforcing an regifter to buy a key and activate it on his own account, is enforcing it. Although it is rude to regift, I would not call it theft as long as they mark the key as received. On the other hand if you don't want a game for yourself, you shouldn't enter the giveaway at all.

If you break the rules in the real life, you go arrested (banned), and it goes to your historic. I really thinks that should have, in all users profiles, the historic of bans. If you cheat on csgo and vac gets you, will stay on your profile that you got banned, at least, for 10 years.

Not knowing the rules isn't an excuse. I don't remember, but if you need to agree with the terms of service on SG, you agree that you know the rules. If you just check it before read... I'm sorry, that's your problem, not ours.

Even if it's hard to see, there's honest people that do wrong things. Make a mistake ONCE is acceptable, but make it again... The first time they break the rules like not activating gifts, people shouldn't be banned, they should receive a very big WARN (like when you won a gift) and they need to pay like a traffic ticket (making a giveaway). If someone do it again, then you can ban this guy and send him to hell, but only in the second time.

I don't agree with that mainly because from what I can tell, SG is lenient by design. The point of not calling out fake giveaways is to let that 1 in 1000 GA creators not feel harassed. The point of suspensions without 'repaying the debt' is to let those people not to feel harassed afterwards if they continue to follow the rules. Which is why some people have a huge problem with SGTools but that is a different drama for a different thread 🍿 Most of the time there is no debt to repay. In the other thread you had a person with a 3 year old account marking a region-locked gift as 'received'. The other person has gone on to have a double given to won games ratio, would you like them to be labelled cheaters and excluded from the community?

As a giveaway creator you have leniency shown to you as well. Technically not delivering a GA is rule-breaking. It doesn't matter what you think about it being fair, that is the rule. But rarely is anyone ever suspended for it especially on the first offense. Breaking a rule to prove a point is breaking the very foundation you stand on more elegant in hindi. What if people start arguing that not-activated rules is fine too? Mutiple wins? For that matter how do you even handle multiple wins? Most of those are from people entering Dev giveaways with automatic key delivery, even if they are 100% honest that they did not use the 2nd key they are still going to get suspended for it just because there is no system in place to handle that eventuality unless the Dev themselves contact Support.

At the end what is more important to you & the community as a whole? That $5 bundle game 'debt' being repaid, or inspiring someone to become a more contributing member (be it in terms of gifts or forum posts talking about 😈🗡️)? I guess it depends on how much you value the gifting side of the site to the community side of it. If you want to gift to a selected group in terms of whatever criteria you personally decide on, you have Group giveaways, Invite-only giveaways, Puzzles, Whitelists, etc.

Which is why I don't think changing the rules to be more punitive is a good idea, but what you did by explaining it to them, that they can fix their records or their old mistakes is definitely top notch 🆒 beans. If your suggestion was 'Explain to people who get suspended what they did wrong better and how to completely remove their suspension record' i.e. "Regifters should be encouraged to clear their record of unactivated wins" I would support it 100% 😺👍 but I cannot support the idea of a lenient community turning to the stick🏑 when there are perfectly good carrots🥕 available in abundance.

Would also like a more harsh punishment.
Just remembering a user who won one of my giveaways that I even asked to first activate his pre-won games.
His/her reply: "The moderators are aware, why i haven't activated the games. Please do your job (=send me the key) and not the moderator."
Reply by Support: "This user has already served a suspension so you may send the game, thanks for checking."

I didn't read the comments but I think that it might be good if a person automatically cannot join more giveaways until they have all won games in 7 days on their account, in any situation. Then again I might not be thinking straight.

Yes, that is an excellent idea!

ProceduralTexture for president!

Hey asshole, you idiot, i have an unactivated key, you know why? because of a stupid giveaway a friend did, a private one where only 5 people entered, all real life friends. I won, i said, give the game to your brother (just cause) as i already have and played Just cause 2, would be a waste. I was suspended for it, my intention was good but technically i deserve, no big deal, can't enter SGtool GA but who cares, i don't enter the site for games anymore.

According to you i am not a legit user, but even i haven't given much i HAVE given more than received. My point is, calm your tits with your delusions of heralds of justice, as that is the way dictators are born.

A gift after all, should not be under any restriction or condition or it stops being a gift. Rules and moderation are necessary but should never be abused.

Suggested it before, but (surprisingly for me) many people think that this is too harsh, and that suspension is enough.

will be great if there is info for unactivated win & suspensions info on user page, so GA creator can help check and report unactivated win from past. Sometimes i see few, but how i can report it if i don't know suspension already been made or not, and it is few months past / year.

*sorry about my english

I have a suggestion to make for the penalizing system in general. Only one type of punishment would really hurt any offender and that is, money. In our case it's CV, so, apart from the temporary ban, there should also be a community service for all offenders. A simple but effective plan would be something like this:

• Bob didn't activate a won game worth 10P. He's now banned for 3-5-7 (?) days and when he'll come back, he'll need to make some public giveaways worth 10 x 10P (=100P) to the community in order to unlock his account to enter giveaways. His giveaways should be public and could be leveled up to his current CV level. Needless to say that those 100P do not add to Bob's CV. 👿
• Charlie did the same as Bob, payed his debt and now he's doing it again (2nd time offence). This time he has to give back 2 x 10 x 10P (=200P) to the community, and so forth.

There are a couple more considerations:

1. The penalty multiplier could be adjusted according to the offender's account level , eg. multipler = 5 + 5 * level so it's 5x for L0, 10x for L1, 15x for L2 etc.
2. The game's value might be lower-bound fixed, eg. a minimum value of 10P for any game below 10P.
3. Anything else i missed while drafting this.

I think it's a fair system that gives the offender the ability to provide back to the same community he claims he wants to be a part of.