Do you still do public gibs? Why or why not?
I make public giveaways cause i enter public giveaways π
About Maria the Witch - game was free on dev's Facebook page
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valid point, would you do level restrictions for your public gibs?
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sure, level 6 for row, level 4-5 for region locked. Almost every single giveaway i put extra copy (invite-only) in giveaway description - small reward for everyone who reads giveaway description. Like here (284 public entries, 36 invite only) or here (268/20). Worst result was here (181/3 but it was a puzzle and maybe it was too hard) π
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That's crazy! That shows just how many bots there are (though I suppose some of them are also people who skipped over the description)
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Now that I understand a little more how things work around SG, I try to keep a fairly even split between group GAs, public GAs and private/forum GAs. I like the idea of balance, even if it's just balance in my corner of the world.
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hah, I feel bad for you, I used to blacklist people for not saying thanks too, but now I don't care cause there're too many such people.
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Exactly...especially after a long train, it takes too long and is too depressing to go and BL all of those folks. Now I just smh.
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me too, but there are too many of them, so now I only bl people that broke the rules by using sgtools
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thanks for the detailed info =3
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Thank you for posting the Post Script, that user has been added to my blacklist now.
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I've had people that were level 10 not thank me after winning, so yea, levels don't have any bearing on how gracious a person is.
I personally make sure to always thank any person I win a game from, and would feel bad about it if I didn't.
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You really only have a few choices either no more public GA's or public GA's with the risk of rule breakers.The third choice is to do both but then you still have to pick who gets what and you still may feel guilty about that.
It is not a easy call because no matter what side you pick or how you do it someone will think you a wrong and I am sure a few will blacklist you for such silly reasons.The honor system only gets you so far until you hit that dishonest person then it brings everything to halt.
In the end all I can say is do what makes you feel best as what you think might be the best might not be the best.Example trying to be fair to everyone has lead you to make this thread,because in the end there is no right or wrong way to do this as no matter what choice you make you are giving back.
P.S. thanks for the GA and good luck all
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I do mostly public as it is less work, but I try to also do more "private" GAs (all posted in the forum with what I deem to be a reasonable SGTools gate), and WL.
I generally avoid groups as it seems a bit against the philosophy of SG IMO (aren't we already one big group? ^^), except for public groups (but then it's a bit like public GAs).
I actually haven't had any issue so far with my public GAs. Had maybe just 2-3 rerolls for rule breaking, and one strike of rerolls on one tricky DLC that many people had. It seems that my usual threshold of level 3 is a rather sweet spot: easy for people to reach, yet filters out the trouble makers good enough.
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make them public
unless you want attention
then make them private and post them in the forums!
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Just to augment this free piece of wisdom, besides attention you may get WL and even some free keys if you create the right topic! "which game you just can't win" always works! Just don't share this precious info xD
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these also work
- share you whitelist
- recommend me a game to play from my wishlist
- which game should i buy next from my wishlist
- i'm poor *insert dramatic experience you had so everyone can read it*
- WL4WL (might get you suspended)
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How did I never think about wl for wl. That's absolutely genious! xD
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I think high profile public GAs get you on more whitelists than forum events with the same games unless the event also has a catchy gimmick.
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Coincidentally, a quarter of my blacklist count came from when I dropped 600 keys at once on the public.
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Something similar happened to me once, when I gave away 60 keys at once. Most of the BL were from people with 0-2 giveaways created and accounts older than mine, which reinforce my hypothesis that some people have no idea what wl/bl are for.
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Or just didn't like you flooding their giveaway pages with all your bundletrash! If it's not GTAV then bad doge! but seriously seen it happen with my GAs as well lol
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Maybe I'm not the only one suspicious of HOGs :P
Just kidding ;) I wonder what the real reason could have been...
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Well, maybe that all 600 ended 1 minute apart from each other, so they pretty much made up most of the front page for 10 hoursβ¦
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Yep. But hey, I was reported once for creating too many HOG giveaways, so I guess this was still mild in comparison.
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lol "he created to many GAs, how outrageous" πππ
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Yes, he did. There were 80+ giveaways and I had a few interesting messages in some of them. Likewise my 600-key drop served me an interesting example of cultural differences on who were those people who accused me or demanded their wins within 3 hours of the giveaway's end. (There were around 40 of these people and 2 or 3 were from Western Europe, the rest from two other countries.)
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perhaps, but in my experience, the WLs that you get from public GAs are from people that do not create WL GAs. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the gesture more than the GA itself, but I find it rather amusing. These people do the same with BLs.
I don't have enough data to back my claim, so I might be wrong.
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Yeah, I know what you mean. That's probably a good portion of them but I've also been surprised quite a few times how many people with 100+ gibs (and often hardly any wins) don't seem to use the forum and all.
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And we're glad you stepped out of the darkness into the twilight. Caution is advised from here on out because the bright sun can burn ya if you spend too much time here :D
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I am glad as well... all the fun, drama and really weird (in a good way... sort of) people I have been missing out on! ;)
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really weird (in a good way... sort of)
No explanation needed :D My standard Welcome message for new users starts with
Welcome to our nice weird little corner of the internet :D
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Haha well said. I was about to suggest the great WL for WL tactic that Mully mentioned above but I see that there is no need to. Cheers mate! :)
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i assume it will get you more wl from random people (even lv0), but forum giveaways catch the attention of regulars that get involved with the community. β(γ)β
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I'm not really disgreeing with you but one should also keep in mind that forum regulars, if vocal or not, are a limited resource. There's also a number of other variables that factor into the whitelist equation like affiliation with various groups like Barbie followers, cat lovers or weebs and many other things.
On a more serious thought: Since I play most AAA games on console and mostly Indie stuff on PC the number of WL gibs that actually apply to me is so low that I appreciate both kinds of WLs; the ones backed by good WL GAs and the ones that are more of a sign of appreciation.
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Forum giveaways will catch a lot of attention - but it won't necessarily be good attention. Many people may blacklist you for making giveaways that are either elitist or for not being the right right kind of elitist and allowing the undeserving to enter. And may well then forget they blacklisted you first and call you out for blacklisting them for no reason the next time you make a forum giveaway. Or just complain and say they hope they will never be as elitist as you and then criticise and exclude people for exactly the same things. Or some such shit...
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Or just complain and say they hope they will never be as elitist as you and then criticise and exclude people for exactly the same things.
wow i remember something similar happened to me 2 years ago :O
august 15h - 2015, what a coincidence!
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That seems strange. I have no idea what I was doing at the time.
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I'd never blacklist anyone for creating GAs even if they are elitist, but when someone creates a topic just to tell their WL that they've created a GA, my eyes roll and I facepalm so hard...
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I'm sure at least a few people are well-intentioned. But until we get invite-only whitelist giveaways it does seem pointless at best...
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Everyone has done something similar once. The problem is when you do it a lot because, like it or not, it works.
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I do public, but MOST of the time keep the level higher to avoid some of the bots/rule breakers. I've had re-rolls on 4+ gibs though.
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I did a big block of public giveaways a while back and I was going to put various statistics in a spreadsheet and make a topic in discussions based on the results. Those results were actually so depressing I never went through with it because I felt I'd simply look really bitter and cynical. But my second favourite unpublished statistic was actually 'percentage of level 4+ users who were only level 4+ due to regifting Clickteam Fusion wins'.
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Well most of my GA were public for a few reasons.
I was not in any groups that do GA so I couldn't rly do group GA. Now that I am I did a few group GA.
For me it is more up to a game I'm gonna give that decides if it is a public or a group GA.
Private GA I don't do cause I never rly took the time to make some fun wall for entering it :)
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haha yeah, it's hard to write a good description for all the private gibs
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about 90% of all my gibs are public, I like people to win these giveaways without knowing that they have a big chance to do so like in groups or private gibs :D
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I avoid public giveaways as much as I can. It's full of bots, especially at low levels. Even real people use scripts and never read description. When I do public GAs, I always hide invite only GAs inside. Also, you usually ran into fewer problems with people that enter invite-only GAs. So I'd stick with invite-only.
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Hey Quan, I used to do a lot of public giveaways mostly level 0, 1, 2 and 3. I've made about 400+ of those but I had so much very wonderful winners and re-rolls that I transitioned most of my public giveaways to level 2 SGTools giveaways. And I'm not looking back. :3
I do still make some level IX and X public giveaways.
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I've struggled with the same dilemma in the past. But after my last batch of public giveaways pushed me over the edge I'm currently only making whitelist giveaways but I'm only entering giveaways from people on my whitelist. It's crazy but fair.
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I do some public here and there, but I feel the same as you do. Give back to those who give to me and it cuts down dramatically on leeches such.
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Why I do public ones⦠good question. I have reached the point where I think the answer is "because of habit". Even then, I just now treat it as a junk key dump. My experience has improved slightly once I switched to gift links only, because there it is easy to tell if a winner just didn't give a single fuck or tried to be a smart guy by getting the key and not marking it.
When it comes to level 0, I try to empathise with all the new users or those who really rely on this site to maybe snag a few cheap games to play, but the sheer thousands of bot users simply drone out their voice. Level 1 is mostly the same. And by level 2, we are already shutting out over 90% of the possible users.
I don't think there is really any good answer there besides someone has to do these public ones, because this is the only thing that proves SG is still not a collection of elitists and dev key droppers, but the site is now too big for its own good. Maybe a captcha on entering or cutting point regeneration by at least 75% would help, but I am not sure.
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There are already enough sites with that captcha crap as it is. :x
Which usually get circumvented by bot users, and the only annoyance it will bring are to those that are actually genuine users.
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yes, cutting point regen would make users think twice about entering a giveaway and limit the use of automatic entries. For your captcha idea, I agree with Lugum that it might be more annoyed to real users.
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optional captcha for your giveaways would be awesome π and extra annoying, but i'm willing to make a sacrifice to stop bots
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I'd activate it, that is for sure. I don't care about blacklists, I am interested in getting (most of) the keys to places which show at least some interest in them. Even if the interest is to just farm cards in some cases.
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It's depending on the mood and on what I give away.
Right now I didn't come across a re-roll yet [I know I have to watch out with saying that to loud]
A week ago I started with my first train and today I made my second one. Even tho I find it really nice do that, it takes a lot of time to just set it up.
I try to keep my giveaways around lvl 2+, I know about the bots, but I also wanna give people the chance to win games. Making it higher has a bigger possibility that no one will join.
When I make a giveaway public, most of the time its a not that expensive game to be honest and when it is a expensive game, I kinda make it a higher level based. Dunno why.
White-list giveaways I didn't make yet, To speak the truth about it. I only have 2 or 3 people on my white-list, cause I forget to use it ;)
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i'll still do public giveaways for low-desirability games. my last ten giveaways were private and used sgtoolsβ wishlist rule so only people who already had it on their wishlist before i created the giveaway. i had one winner who got to the giveaway without passing the sgtools check, but for the most part people seemed more appreciative of my giveaways so that was good.
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hmm I wonder how people can enter your gib without the sgtool, even if their friends give them the link, they should already know that it'll just lead to reroll and suspension
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not totally sure they got suspended for it, but i definitely had it rerolled. they also had 5 or so other wins and none of them were activated. i also had the sgtools check for that. reported them to sgtools but not sure that will matter because they didn't get in that way anyway...
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I started with public GAs, then tried a couple of trains and lately most of the GAs are for groups. I will still make piblic GAs but level 2 and more (dont really want to share with the bots, had my share of bad experience with that). Throughout the last couple of months I have also been collecting nice people for my Whitelist since I plan to do a couple of WL GAs in a few weeks.
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you'll be surprised to know that even high level users also use bots, I think talgaby did a statistics about that, but I don't remember the name of the thread.
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you'll be surprised to know that even high level users also use bots
High level generally improves the quality of the pool of users you're interacting with, but it (and likewise giveaway ratio) means fairly little in terms of absolutes. As an example, you may have a user who has given away 5000RealCV, but who has won about 15000. Thus, you have a level 9-10 user who is, quite frankly, one of the most massive leeches on SG (outclassing even most low-level bot-leeches). Public giveaways are never entirely safe, be it against rule-breaking, botting, or even leeching.
Likewise, even 12000 sent and 15000 won is dubious- 3,000$ of realCV is enormous, and more than many users on SG have won at all. Yet, that user'd have a reasonably respectable .8 ratio, and pass most basic ratio checks. Thus, even SGT filters need to be carefully customized- at least for those users who are more particular about whom their giveaways go to.
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My thinking exactly. I just try to get rid of as much weed as possible. The easiest way to do it is to make the GA lvl 2 in my opinion. I know it is not perfect but the GA can still reach the biggest number of people out of all the other options.
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Let's just say that there is at least one level 10 user in the Steam group of AutoJoin.
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I think bots are very smart nowadays... They can scan forum posts looking for giveaways. I would suggest you, even for private giveaways, don't post the link in plain text, just to click, but obfuscate it until the point you are pretty sure only humans can access to it.
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wow that's discouraging, do you think the use of sgtool will help?
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I don't know. Best way is make somethink only humans would have access, for example, giveaway letters in a picture.
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If you create your rules with enough care, it does.
Also, Yirg has a thread running that also serves as an experiment, and so far it shows that simple direct link drops are still safe for the most part.
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Yes. It's been shown that even just putting up an empty SGT filter with no rules set, will cut out bots and a noticeable portion of rulebreakers [perhaps in large part due to SGT having its own user suspension system, and quite a few giveaway leakers/multi-accounters being suspended from it]. Even if, for some reason, you're not comfortable using SGT to filter out multi-win/non-activation users, just a blank filter does still have noticeable benefits in improving your site experience.
That said, as talgaby noted, bots generally don't appear to be near as big an issue for private giveaways as they are for public giveaways, and certainly aren't as present a concern as giveaway leaks and general issues such as multi-accounting are. I'd definitely recommend a basic no-rule-breaking SGT filter for a more positive site experience but, as always, you should go with whatever you feel most comfortable with.
It's been a while since I've seen discussion of how private and public compare, but as I recall, the general impression was that private giveaways (basic ones without SGT) gave improved user interactions equal to about a public giveaway of +2-3 levels. (ie, a level 0 private giveaway already filtered out as much as a level 3 public giveaway would, and a level 2 private as much as a 4 public.) Regardless of how accurate those numbers are, it should give you the clearest impression of how private giveaways work: Like higher level giveaways, they filter out a lot of issues, but they're never entirely free of them.
SGT offers you a lot more control in avoiding issues than any core site element, and thus is your best option if you want to minimize issues, rather than just taking steps to partially reduce them. Of course in the end, inviting people to private groups/whitelist after manually vetting them is always going to be the safest approach for making sure your entrants meet your expectations [or, alternatively, finding an existing group with a philosophy that best matches your own, and has active officers making sure people abide by the group's expectations].
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Yes, it's pretty easy to write something that will scan the forums for giveaway URLs and keys
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I like to do private gibs to reward forum browsers :3
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I've done a few big forum events in the past and they were a lot of fun but it takes a lot of effort to set up events properly, provide a theme and a topic of conversation and some kind of entertainment and I don't really like to make shitposts with added gibs on top so I've switched to a mixture of public and a few groups.
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Public at the moment, because frankly I'm new and have no idea how to do any of those fancy schmancy giveaway shenanigans yet. One day.
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Not hidden giveaways on the forum = public in my interpretation, that's all :)
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I agree to some extent but I'm also sure there's a high percentage of users who don't check forums or don't know English well enough to.
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I mostly did trains and invite GAs for a while, and now I'm fairly exclusively doing them as public ones. I guess I feel like everyone should get a chance. I do them level 3+ or 4+ because it cuts down on the extreme jerks; I also check all winners, and file re-roll requests against anyone with shennanigans on their account. I think Support thinks I'm kind of funny.
Most of what I'm giving is bundlestuff, and I'm thinking of trying out some GAs on my whitelist soon for better pieces.
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I used to do mostly public giveaways. But recently, from all the automatic entries bots and rule-breakers, I've started switching to private train and group gibs. Besides, I feel like most of my wins are from private and group giveaways, so imo, it's just fair that I give back to the same community that I receive from.
So my question is what are the reasons that you do public giveaways? (I look forward to hearing ur opinions cause depending on the outcome of this discussion, I intend to do either a public or private train soon.)
And 1 more thing, has Maria the Witch been free before? I cannot create giveaway for the game.Thanks all for reading, https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/N0sbj/galactic-civilizations-ii-ultimate-edition
Edit: Some people mentioned about balancing between public and private giveaways. If you do that then what would be the ratio that you consider it to be balanced?
Edit 2: After reading all your comments, I have to say that I still prefer doing private train or public high levels gibs (3, 4+). However, I agree that public giveaways still play a main part and make Steamgifts the site it is today. So I like the idea of balancing between both public/private gibs (maybe less desirable games to public, at least to introduce new users to the site.) A hybrid public/private train is coming soooon. Thanks all for your thoughts on this matter!!
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