6 weeks till the new season :)
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Strange things did happen here, No stranger would it be
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If you toss a pencil in the air enough times, eventually it'll land on end.
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That was another thing I found surprising. I was expecting all level 0 users with 50,000 entries to win and never touch the game or more likely idle it for cards. And on top of that, all 3 played it on the first day they won it. And then even though these people only have 30-60 games on their account (they don't have huge backlogs), they all only played this for a few hours and then gave up.
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More than 80% of the users registered on SG are level 0, so not really surprising when level 0 users win most of the public level 0 GAs - as far as that is concerned. And even more so when many of the users with level above 0 avoid those GAs with thousands of entries
https://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/users
Ten thousands of entries on a non-mass GA sounds as it had some offsite promotion, which would seem to explain why perhaps quite many entered specifically that GA based on offsite reminder link.
So statistically speaking, not really that surprising imo.
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I went through about 10 pages of the entries and opened about 50 different random users and almost every one had like 10,000-60,000 entries and was an active user. I didn't see any users like this that have been a member for a long time, but only ever entered a few giveaways. I'm sure there are more, but I just find it really weird that all 3 winners have strikingly similar types of accounts and they are very odd accounts that you don't normally see.
It's not just about level 0 users winning, I would understand that, it's about all the other very odd coincidences and behaviors.
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From all 25 users of page 1 of entries, 3 are such accounts. One page 10 there is 1 such account. On page 20 there are 2 such accounts. On page 30 there are 2 such accounts (or 4 if you would consider around 300 entries as still quite few). One page 100 there are 6 such accounts (+2 with around 200 entries each).
Based on that sample of merely 5 pages, with a total of 125 accounts, I found there to be 14 accounts with a handful of entries and long time members. Or 18 accounts if a few hundred entries still count as "such account". And also some accounts with around 1000 entries. But even counting only those with a dozen, two dozen or less entries, from that sample of 5 pages, such accounts are more than 10% of entries.
So I still stand by that assumption that the GA was probably promoted offsite, with many of the entries not being regular users but having signed up already at some point in the past. Which doesn't mean that it isn't an interesting coincidence, perhaps especially IF winners who were suspected to be heavy-bot users did get re-rolled until some winner who clearly isn't a bot at all, but even without reroll, it doesn't sound weird itself to me.
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Good eye, but unfortunately no conspiracy. I did an email campaign a few weeks ago. This involved sending out close to one million emails to inactive users (our first major email campaign). The emails invited users back to the site, and recommended giveaways for them to join. I wanted to ensure there were a few well known games in the list of recommended giveaways, so I posted a number of giveaways to match up with the length of the email campaign.
Cuphead and Battlegrounds were also featured in the email subject lines when users did not own the games. This is why those two giveaways in particular ended with such a high number of entries, and why many of the entries and winners were from previously inactive users.
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That makes sense, I didn't think there was a conspiracy, it just seemed weird. That does explain why the users that won have old accounts with very low entries, but it is still quite surprising that all 3 winners had such low entry numbers and very similar account types and behaviors taken after winning.
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If I may abuse the opportunity, I think it would do good for quality (and amount) of public low level GAs if GA makers had a few more options when making a GA. Particularly,
- option to set up captcha requirement (which would arguably cut down on bot entries), and
- option to set up more points required for entry of GA. Meaning that if I could set a GA that normally is 20 points to e.g. 100 points required to enter, to me it would seem that only those who really care about that game would enter with at least a bit higher chance of winning when those who care about quantity or prefer other games would not.
Both or each such option would arguably contribute to both seeing more GA makers willing to go low-level public with GAs as well make it somewhat more interesting to enter when not every such GA is with thousands of entries due to many others either not willing to spend a large chunk of points on entering it or having spent already on other more interested in titles.
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option to set up more points required for entry of GA. Meaning that if I could set a GA that normally is 20 points to e.g. 100 points required to enter, to me it would seem that only those who really care about that game would enter with at least a bit higher chance of winning when those who care about quantity or prefer other games would not.
Keep in mind this would further complicate the process of entering giveaways. If you see a giveaway you want to join for 20P, you would want to search for other open giveaways, because there might be one for 5P or 10P for the same game. You might also need to decide whether to enter a Portal giveaway for 10P with 127 entries, or the 13P giveaway with 98 entries. That could be frustrating.
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It could be a bit streamlined with the option just being a multiplier (such as having optional option between default 1x, and 2x, 3x, 4x, 5x and 10x - up to a certain max. cap of points anyhow, perhaps 150 or 200p). And that multiplier could be clearly visible on GA list at title - such as saying (5x 20p = 100p), and the bold part perhaps also in larger font than the previous numbers.
As for that viewpoint of entering GAs, I usually enter GAs only for games I care to play. So even if I could enter only one GA per (interested in) title at a time, I would go for the one with less entries. Or when I can enter several GAs for the same title of a game, and for a game I am really interested in there is a bundle rush GA wave (where many GA makers apply points multiplier), that I can enter only 2 or 4 GAs per day also means that others can only too, ergo increased chance of winning per GA.
All in all, I sure understand the argument of that it isn't nice to over-complicate things. But having the option of points multiplier would seem to me as quite simple while arguably making it rather likely to retain many users - meaning that some public level 0 GA for AAA title would perhaps still have thousands or ten-thousands of entries, but when those users are willing to spend e.g. 3x50=150 points for entering such, that means that 100.000 or more of those extra points are not spent on other GAs still many other users may be interested more in (since they already have that AAA title or wouldn't be able to run it on their rig anyhow or...). And when many public level 0 GAs start to have despite increased numbers of regular (level 0) users perhaps only a few dozen or hundreds entries, even if the GA makers of such GAs rarely apply a points multiplier, then that would seem to me to make it in overall more interesting to those users come back than current reality of facing often less than 1 in 1000 odds of winning a copy of game sold some places for 2 cents.
Of course I also understand that less GAs entered per user may mean less ad views per user, but when it is compensated by more unique users (with unique IP address perhaps also being quite relevant) as the coming back would be more interesting due to increased probability of winning, then the overall page views would not necessarily drop. Which is a bit speculating of course, but just meaning to point out that in the big picture the points multiplier and with that increased odds of winning per GA would arguably make that whole regular use of site more interesting to more persons. (And that even more so if there were an option to set a captcha for entry, as that would seem to entice many of the GA makers to make more public and better quality low-level GAs, as many seem to have voiced that they simply do not enjoy making those public especially level 0 GAs when many of the winners seem bot-like and/or just hoarding.)
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Yep, I'm one of those people that came back to SG from that email. I must've entered some GA five years ago and then totally forgot about this site until I got that email. Now I'm glad to be back :)
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Edit: CG responded here, explaining that there was an email campaign sent out to close to 1 million inactive users that mentioned these giveaways. That does explain why the accounts are fairly old with very few entries, but I do still think all the other coincidences are pretty interesting.
There are no giveaways here and there isn't much point to this thread, I just noticed some weird coincidences and wanted to share.
I remembered that CG did a bunch of level 0 giveaways for some really nice games that all had tens of thousands of entries and I was curious to see who would win these giveaways with so many entries. When I pulled up the winners for the 3 copy giveaway of Cuphead, I was surprised by what I saw.
This post doesn't really have any point, I'm not saying their is some conspiracy or anything, I just thought it was really weird to have a game with over 36,000 entries end up with all 3 winners having really similar, but odd accounts and behaviors.
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