the problem with sgtools is that you cant select a parameter for users not making a giveaway in a decade like you said. you can only select parameters for ratio, unactivated games and multiple wins.
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i think i saw custom parameters about last GA made
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i have asked the user who created the tool before and said there is no such parameter, i also just checked an old sgtools giveaway of mine and i dont see anything like that. there are date related parameters only for wishlisted games, multiple wins and vac bans.
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No, there are no such parameters. Maybe you remember the discussions if sgtool can provide that, as these happen regularly. And the answer is always no.
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There is! I've used it before, I was very satisfied with the results and all my entries.
https://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/f0c924e5-b8e9-4545-8e56-874135c0f128
Minimum ratio using number of gifts Sent/Won on Steamgifts: 2
An example of what the above means is:
If you have won 50 giveaways you must have given away 100 games.
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I think they want also a custom rule "your account made giveaway in last [timeframe]"
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I think most accounts with no giveaways in years also have a low CV ratio.
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not necessary, i have seen a lot of lvl 8,9 and 10 users that have 8 years+ to make a giveaway. most of them have made giveaways for low cost regions before until they get to a high level and now enter every row giveaway possible.
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By the way:
I also suspect that in these cases it's usually someone making use of some script to auto-join gws
You are right, there are hundreds or probably thousands of members using auto-join scripts, even users with very high levels. They are usually easy to spot: check the number of "Giveaways Entered" on the profiles and compare with the date of registration.
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yeah. admins should ban those people who are online 24/7 every day.
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They are not always online, the script auto connects periodically. The problem is when there's a situation like the OP described: you see them online for a week but they do not redeem the key and you have to contact them on Steam or send an email.
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What would you say be a good benchmark comparison? like on average how many giveaways entered should a regular, non script using, individual have per year?
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well, i'm quite active on the site, just look at my number
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I can't say exactly but I suppose more than around 10 thousand entries per year seems like too many. I saw members with 200k entries in less than ten years, that is suspicious for example. Imagine to join (manually) around 60-70 giveaways every single day for 8 years, not skipping a single day.
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You are probably a bot then :P
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So am I. But seriously the number of entries is not going to tell you much. There are people who work on their computers and are online all day long (and most of the nights for the insomniac) for example.
Copy/Paste comments and auto thanks are a good sign though.
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I don't think so, probably I should have said 15-20 thousand instead of 10k per year. Fortunately those scripts now allow to disable auto thanks or come disabled by default.
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The autojoiners that are very visible because of the activated thanks script are only a tiny minority of the autojoiner users.
Let's call them the dumbest 5%.
And the number of entries are, in general, a good way to identify autojoiner behavior.
Take high statistics, like mine, and you spot very easily the ones that enter much more GAs (as example 50% more as i), which isn't possible as a human being.
It give, of course, other ways to detect them on top and change a "possible a autojoiner" to "most likely a autojoiner" or "100% sure a autojoiner".
But i can't write this other ways or they would try to not show this traces that reveal their autojoining behavior.
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Take high statistics, like mine, and you spot very easily the ones that enter much more GAs (as example 50% more as i), which isn't possible as a human being.
More than yours, yes definitely but it's hard to draw the line.
orono was saying over 10k per year. You and I made more than that and I know for a fact that there are others like us who probably entered a lot (or used to anyway) or are online often or people who are banking their unused points by entering and leaving GAs and that inflates their numbers.
So it's not a definite for sure way of spotting bots.
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The most accounts are most active in the first 2 years. High entry numbers aren't rare there. So i see around 20k/year not as uncommon for the first 2 years. After this time a lot of the accounts go into a much lesser activity and the still active ones can be split in 2 groups.
The ones that are visible active in the discussions, groups and so on + entering a high number of GAs and the other group of accounts that enter a lot of GAs and be totally unknown because never visible somewhere.
Special in the second group are the most autojoiners.
I have 137k entries in around 6.5 years, as very active user, with a chronical illness, no job for a big part of that timeframe and a lot of free time + bound in a high amount to my flat because of the situation. And i am very known for hunting autojoiners and other cheaters.
So take my numbers as "near the possible maximum" that is realistic possible without to use some autojoiners/scripts/tools.
I see each one that have 20% more entries as i, or the same amount entered each year constantly not for 6 years but as example for 10 years, without a break/without some "sg don't make fun anymore and i reduce my presence", as "possible a autojoiner" and when i checked, till 1 year ago, deeper it was clear that 90%+ of the "possible" ones used a autojoiner.
But this info bring, in the end, nothing because they don't get punished from the sg staff side in, too, many cases or if they get punished they get a few days suspensions which is a bad joke.
Don't get me wrong, in the most cases this isn't in the direct responsibility of the mods that handle the tickets and instead is bases on the fact that the mods don't have other tools as normal users to "hunt" autojoiners (cg don't give them tools) and that the sg rules are how/what they are.
The invested time to catch them is hundreds times higher as the suspension time.
I seen, and reported, accounts with 300k+ entries in around 7 years. Such numbers aren't reachable as human that sleeps, have friends, is ill, have a work or something like this. Nothing happened because "not enough evidences delivered". It's like "looking away" because 300k entries in such a timeframe speak a very clear language.
The fight against the autojoiners was lost, at least, 5 years ago.
And i don't see that cg will change something in the future. At least not as long as he earns money with the site without to invest work.
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I seen, and reported, accounts with 300k+ entries in around 7 years.
That's crazy, thanks for the info.
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i think maybe admins should add some captcha or something
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Not a terrible idea.
But a captcha to enter every single giveaway would be quite a nuisance.
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Yeah, that punishes everyone. But if it's like one every 100 even (maybe add a bit of randomization), that's not as big a deal for the average user, but a major nuisance for automation (so bots).
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Def. THOUSANDS.
The one time they got punished from the owner of this site (cg), 5 years ago, 3k got punishments AFTER they got warned 2 times before to deactivate their autojoiners -with a message that they needed to click, so they def. seen each of the messages-.
So it is really easy to know that the number of autojoiners are 5k+
I personally assume that 40% of the active users use autojoiners (which would mean 7k+) because the risk is low and the punishments if suspended are a bad joke (why they need 3 chances and not get directly a perma suspension? -which means nothing in the end, because they come back after 1 year .... this is the "perma" timeframe on sg-).
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But since there's no rule against having a shitty ratio I end up having to send the key anyway
No one forces you to send the key, you can also choose to receive a "not received"
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Yeah but, would "the user has a shitty ratio, hasn't made a gw in 5 years" or something along those lines be enough to request a new winner?
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It's not about requesting a new winner, it's about just not sending the key and them marking the GA as "not received" in the process.
Even if most people dislike a "not received" in their profiles, i just wanted to point out that option, because most people don't think about doing that.
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But then I'll be hurting my account no?
I'd rather have the capacity to filter those people out
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If you don't want the hit, sgtools is the way to go.
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But then I'll be hurting my account no?
I don't think so, maybe if you do it too often, i'm not sure how mods would handle this, maybe they don't know either, lol.
I'd rather have the capacity to filter those people out
sure, everyone would want this option, but I never took the effort to find out how to set SG Tools properly, looks to complicated
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sure, everyone would want this option, but I never took the effort to find out how to set SG Tools properly, looks to complicated
Hence my suggestion to add it as a regular option when creating giveaways :)
I do believe allowing us to set a minimum ratio would take care of most cases.
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Hence my suggestion to add it as a regular option when creating giveaways :)
good luck with that, the only dev is quite absent and is doing only the bare minimum like 2 times per year
ever wondered why bots and autojoiner grow like cancer on this site? There is your answer
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most people who tried changing things for the better here resigned and gave up or got silenced by mods
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It's not like it's a life or death situation anyway :P
All I can do is input the suggestion, if it's implemented someday great, if not, shrugs.
If nothing else, making this post brought sgtools to my attention, so net positive already heh.
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all good, just wanted to point out the bitter truth to you, of course you are free to suggest whatever you want
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But then I'll be hurting my account no?
When somene don't recieve his win, you lose one of your GA slots (you start on sg with 3 slots and each 3 GAs that are marked as recieved you 1 more slot) and in your profil is then listed that X GAs weren't delivered.
I seen accounts with up to 35 not delivered wins from around 120 GAs, nothing happend to this ones.
I'd rather have the capacity to filter those people out
You can't filter them because
- sgtools don't get additions, only bugfixing/patching of existing things if needed, because the sgtools owner don't want to invest more work into it.
And the reason are obvious because, cg, the sg owner don't care for the security stuff, the costs that the sgtools owner have from offering his site/tool or include the sgtools owner in any way.
In the end the sgtools owner do stuff that, cg, the sg owner should do and pay from his earnings. - Your Blacklist have a maximum of 1000 spots and i can tell you that this is, by far, not enough to add all the bad accounts that you want to add there. My BL is (always) full and i added only level 5 or higher accounts. I would needed, at least, 2k more spaces to add lower ones too.
- Ratios can be cheated very easily. As example with overpriced, trash, games that count as $40. Or free games that get, MAYBE, listed as free on sg 1, 2 or 3 years later and in the meantime raise the ratio by a lot or games that gets bought for 6 - 14 cents and bring them $20 - $40 for the ratio. Special for the accounts that do multiaccounting on multiple freebie sites (and i can say you it give a lot of accounts on sg that use this ways to raise their ratios with such ways...)
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Yeah but, would "the user has a shitty ratio, hasn't made a gw in 5 years" or something along those lines be enough to request a new winner?
No
The only option that you have is to check all your winners with https://www.sgtools.info/activation and if somethings is listed there in red then create a reroll ticket (in the page where you could send the key) and hope that he get rerolled and punished. Which happens only if he doesn't got punished before for the unactivated win(s).
This way, at least, a part get what they deserve and the keys go, hopefully, to accounts that activate their wins (which doesn't mean the new winner couldn't be a autojoiner...).
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No one forces you to send the key, you can also choose to receive a "not received"
Sadly wrong.
If you don't send the key AND this happens only because "you don't want", then you break the rules about "fake giveaways" and that can bring you a perma suspension (yes it gets much harder punished as autojoining).
The risk for this raise when your GA is higher priced, so a 50p unbundled game would mean you have the highest risk, and, of course, when you don't deliver wins more often.
It can hit you as soon as a support member assume/decide you don't had a faulty key or other "technical" problems.
So i would not advice in public to not send a win.
(What each one do, if a easy to spot autojoiner wins his GA, is of course his decission but he should not speak about it^^)
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I would want a balance because many high levels are also just site farmers. its the same couple of hundred of people. But yeah, every 'good' game at my level willl consistently have 4000 plus entries without fail, meaning its either the average, or their scripts dont slip, or the users are just equally diligent every single time. But I personally dont enter those giveaways in protest of the slim odds, thats on myself as I prefer.
But yeah, the behaviour makes it easy to assume scripting. There are people that run the site that could probably tell you conclusively if scripting is involved. The games industry also gives away so many games and people of high level are so affluent that they actually dont want games anymore. I actually believe the winner allocation does have that balance in mind without me having concrete proof of that, but I have for example seen regional bias to avoid potential region lock issues in some cases. I think the admins think the discussion might be a bit too political to publicly address, Ive never seen talks about it, maybe in the past.
But yeah... there are definitely a contingency that wants to win from everyone and give to their few friends that I'm not a fan of. (Gave a few dozen bundled games on my old acc, for context)
Yeah, I had one of those not received for a bundled game that gave 40p, winner just flatout ignored mark received after I asked three times to do so and seeing online activities many times in that week, I quit SG the week after. It was like the system was punishing me for climbing levels without a lot of fiat input, despite the lengths I went to to get games to give, anyways, I just see some talk of that in the comments above mine......
"Buy some bundles, share your lefovers...." Its not really a lot more complicated than that, except there is personal bias, of giving to people who have, people who dont play, people who farm. Sometimes its in the Lord's hands.
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Yeah, I had one of those not received for a bundled game that gave 40p, winner just flatout ignored mark received after I asked three times to do so and seeing online activities many times in that week, I quit SG the week after. It was like the system was punishing me for climbing levels with a lot of fiat input, despite the lengths I went to to get games to give, anyways, I just see some talk of that in the comments above mine......
I talked about "not received" from the winner, if the gifter doesn't send the key in the first place.
Your case is more like a scam case from the winner, you should have asked Steam support about the activation date of your key, if they had answered with a recent date, you should have created a support ticket asking SG staff to mark it received
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Yeah I could've. I was just tired and burnt out then.... Its why I accept the penalty of losing all that progress I made, because I made that choice. But yeah, I could see the game in their library, so it was received it on the winner's account. A week is reasonable, but it takes a bit more to babysit winners and go back and forth when there's problems.
I briefly did view your post earlier, I saw the resistance about being a hard-ass without ticket support, so that was notable.
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Yeah but I think the ratio approach would balance out nicely, doesn't matter how high your level is, one can still have a shitty ratio, in fact the example I gave of an individual whose last giveaway was almost a decade ago was a level 6, and had a ratio of like 0.05 or something.
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I also suspect that in these cases it's usually someone making use of some script to auto-join gws, because they'll take a long time to mark it as received, even though they were clearly online, and will only do it after I contact them on steam
A note of caution: some people browse SG on their phones but only activate keys on their desktops. I, myself, wasn't aware that you could activate a steam key on mobile steam until very recently. (You do it by attempting to "add wallet funds" from a gift card and, when it asks you for the gift card code, inputting the steam game key.)
But even still, some people--who browse steamgifts in their mobile browser--won't activate on their phones because they want to sort the key out in their library right away. Or they don't have the steam app installed. It is (despite the description of how to do it above) fairly awkward to activate a steam key on a mobile device.
Also, note from the Guidelines
Winners will need to correctly mark their gift as received or not received within one week of the gift being marked as sent by the giveaway creator. It is also necessary to keep this feedback up-to-date if the status of the gift changes.
Sometimes a user won't activate a gift right away in a ratio-based group because they have to have their giveaway end first before they have enough positive Group-CV to activate the new game. I won't activate a game while on vacation with untrusted (public) wifi, even if I brought my laptop. Sometimes they just forgot. No matter how much they are online, a user has no obligation to activate the key immediately or even within the first 6 days (though not activating it as soon as it is reasonably feasible to do so is somewhat rude.) Some of us leave steamgifts in a pinned tab with the result that, regardless of whether or not we check that tab, we appear "online" when our browser is open.
~In all of these cases I'm talking about real users.
My point being: taking a long time to activate a win is not, in itself, any indication of being a bot or using an auto-joiner.
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Taking a long time to activate a win is not, in itself, any indication of being a bot or using an auto-joiner.
Sorry but in the most cases it is a sign that the winner is a autojoiner.
Of course it is possible that the winner need time to activate it (using a mobile phone, is in vacation, is ill etc.) and each winner have 7 days to activate the win BUT the extreme majority that activate a game first after 4 - 7 days do this with each win, are in intervalls on sg online, enter GAs, write partly comments, play games in steam. And often the steam profile comments, if activated, or the comments in their GA(s) [mostly the number of their GAs is very low] are a lot of "you have won on sg, please activate your win" comments.
So with other words, the most bot owners look only 1x/week if they won something and in the meantime the autojoining happens, very visible, each day.
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People with "non-shitty ratios" in all likelihood don't care about your giveaways because they are here to give away games, not to win them. They are your games to give away and you have every right to decide who gets the games you give away, but if you are looking for 50/50 ratios, then you are looking for StreamTrades, not SteamGifts.
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What if they are just unlucky? If I won all I entered, I would be a leecher.
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Not true at all, I'm not talking about crazy ratios like 5+, there are plenty of people consistently giving away games, like once every other month or stuff like that, who would very much like to win games as well, and they would have pretty good ratios
To me a 0.8, 0.5 ratio would still be pretty acceptable, but when you get too much lower than that it starts to become an issue.
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It's really shitty when you go check the winner of a nice giveaway you made only to see it's some individual who hasn't made a single giveaway in a decade, only created the account, made enough gws to get to level 4 or whatever, and then racked in the wins over that decade.
Sometimes I'll catch people with like 10 gifts sent and 150 won or something like that
I also suspect that in these cases it's usually someone making use of some script to auto-join gws, because they'll take a long time to mark it as received, even though they were clearly online, and will only do it after I contact them on steam
But since there's no rule against having a shitty ratio I end up having to send the key anyway
It wold be nice if one could choose to lock their giveaways to ratios >= than 1 for instance.
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