Can't this "announcement" be emailed to everyone and actually written in stone (in the rules)?
I don't think even 20% of legit users will even read this topic.
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As someone who's already been around when "by creating a giveaway you promise to provide a working key/gift copy" was still in the guidelines, thank you. (Tbh no idea why it even was removed)
Even though I don't enter many giveaways anymore, reading that ridiculous "by entering you agree blah blah" sentence still annoys me every time.
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Few years ago I had a winner let me know the key shows as duplicate. It was a shock for me as I've been careful, but there was no reason not to believe them so I shopped around for another key and sent it to them, they activated that one and all was well.
Back then I don't think you could have asked for deletion at all, it was either find a new key or have it "undelivered"... A lot of these "changes for the good" that v2+ brought showed not as good through the years for the support workload and the community behavior in general.
One example that hurts me to see is the comments/replies now annoying people and some even threatening with blacklisting or calling people out as bots for commenting in giveaways - I remember the time when we were supporting commenting and community development, groups had "meet the group" giveaways where people were speaking about themselves and getting to know each other... and apparently, all of that because now we have notifications, but no option to disable notifications about giveaway comments (and only see those from the forum). Who knew such a positive upgrade will turn out to have such a negative affect on the community as a whole.
obese Bugs Bunny
Isn't that called Big Chungus?
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I once win key that don t work and I agreed to delete (group rule) not big deal
AND once win key from that group and works fine (game even is not available to buy in my region) Key don t go waste (I played and I write review
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Hmm, I started thinking should the winner be able to request creator to delete successful giveaway so that her ratio doesn't get worse? I mean it would be the nice thing to do.
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What should I do if a user sent me the key for Poly Memory: Furries, not Poly Puzzle: Furries. The user is not responding. Support hasn't responded in over a month. I don't need this game, can I delete this giveaway to clear my profile of "Not Received"?
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The creator has to create a ticket to have it removed. You have to write in the comments of GA that you agree. If the creator doesnt care I dont see why you do either. Just leave it as not received.
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Well, I see exactly 0 tickets opened on your profile so it's no wonder support didn't respond to you (unless you made a user report. I can't see those). I see that you already correctly marked it as not received, though
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The creator of the giveaway has to open a ticket requesting deletion. Also I cannot see your "ticket" since it is a user report as I suspected (junior mods cannot see user reports, only seniors and higher up)
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The user is not responding, support is not responding, but the rules have been violated. What to do in such a situation?
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As a reward for taking your time to read all of this, here is a picture of a small cactus that looks like an obese Bugs Bunny:
Such a reward leaves me feeling cheated! It lacks eyes, a nose and a mouth. Definitely not a bunny. It looks closer to a flower, Β« Let the tigers come with their claws! Β»
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I'm one of the uptickers that xarabas mentioned - I've asked for eight deletions in the last two months. Sorry about that! ALL are because developers and publishers revoked unused keys from legit bundle sites. I wish there were a way to determine the validity of keys; without being able to do that, all we can do is assume that keys properly purchased from legit bundle sites will work. I mean, why wouldn't they?
There are a couple of weird myths people believe. One is that keys "go bad." Keys aren't vegetables or cuts of meat, and they don't rot over time in stores if they aren't used. As long as Steam is open, a Steam key works regardless of how old it is, so long as the game is still for sale on Steam and no one has taken steps to revoke it. Another myth is that digital storefronts are somehow at fault for this. Stores have no ability and no reason to revoke keys. The keys don't belong to them, and they don't have access to the tools to generate or modify them.
Game keys are revoked by publishers and/or developers in a highly-questionable practice permitted by Steam. It's done without notification and usually for no proper reason. It's dishonest. Sometimes they flat-out lie about it, and more often they just never answer at all.
These days I'm working through my old Groupees keys before the site probably goes down. Nearly all of the keys in my list are perfectly fine, and why wouldn't they be? None are "already used" - the "duplicate product" error message is an outright lie. I reveal the keys on the day I post the giveaways, and I have a long list with all my purchases from various sites and whether they keys have been used or not. Errors? Sure, there are probably errors. A couple. Not a lot. Then after the giveaway, some keys turn out to be revoked by the publishers.
For each of my giveaways, I check the game on Steam. I scan the Steam discussions pages for mentions of revocations and duplicate codes. I search for the game in sensualshakti's long and incredibly useful Revoked Keys thread:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/Dgscb/a-list-of-games-whose-unredeemed-keys-were-revoked
If there's no listing but I have doubts - sometimes they just feel amiss, or there are uncertain reports - I check the archive listing of Steamgifts giveaways to see if there are deletions listed in the past. This all actually takes a fair amount of time.
At that point, if everything is clear, I post the giveaway.
Sometimes things slip through. I know not to give away Back to Basics Gaming keys, but sometimes oops. It turns out that Fulqrum has apparently revoked all past Groupees keys, which was news to me until 15 games from a single bundle came back duplicates. That was during the Steam summer sale, so I was able to replace most of them for minimal cost. However, I'm not in a position to commit to buying new keys from the dishonest publishers who revoked my legit keys in the first place in future. In fact, I think that's a bad practice. It supports crime.
If this is staff preference - I am HUGELY appreciative of the positive role the Support Folks play on this site, and will absolutely do as you ask - I'll just take the Not Received marks in future. I have occasionally gotten into extended correspondences with indie devs to wrest the occasional replacement key from oblivion, and sometimes it's been enlightening and fun, but frankly there just aren't enough hours in the day. I've worked on some keys for several months before I got new ones. It's lovely, but I just don't have that kind of time. And the large publishers don't answer at all.
I know I've gone on long, but I wanted to let folks know what it feels like from my side. I feel bad when I can't complete a giveaway. But it is absolutely not any doing of mine - and I put out time and effort to try to avoid getting into these situations in the first place. Also, as a side note, if everyone reported their bad keys in the thread I mentioned up above, it would be easier to avoid making bad giveaways in the first place.
Addendum: Maybe I should mention that for years I've posted a notification on my old-key giveaways, saying that these are for old keys. I think it's only fair to let people know about that, so they can refrain from entering if they prefer. I don't ask anyone to agree to anything, I just let them know.
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The only time I had a "used key" was because the first winner said he already owned a similar version of the game and asked me for a re-roll, but he activated the key... Son of a gun.
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How many 'not receive's I can get before getting banned?
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Sorry, I couldn't resist π
42 is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
It's the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.
There is no definitive answer to that. It depends on a lot of factors.
For example when you're intentionally not delivering a giveaway even as little as 3 might get you a temporary suspension.
If you're trying to promote something like a Steam group or Curator and then not making good on your giveaways you're more likely to get in trouble for it.
I think it also depends on the value of the game. Even if your Not received make up only a small percentage of your giveaways a couple of not delived big ticket games might get you into trouble.
For example imagine you've given away 300 two cent games like Overcast - Walden and the Werewolf or Woodletree Adventures and then you make fake giveaways for Cyberpunk 2077, Red Dead 2 and AC Valhalla that's probably enough to warrant a suspension.
But you don't have a single Not received yet so you should definitely be fine even if a couple of your giveaways fall through.
π
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The underlying problem here is the stigma attached to getting a Not Received on your profile. It seems a particular group of people like to latch onto anything that "looks off" on the profiles of others (i.e. "too many" free games given away, too much "leeching", too many entries and accusations of botting, and the list goes on). My guess is they're simply hiding a few skeletons in their own closets. If someone is spending that much time looking into the profiles of others, rather than focusing on their own deeds/misdeeds, that's on them and not you (as a giveaway creator).
As long as you're creating giveaways you believe you will be able to deliver, I don't see the problem with someone having a couple Not Receiveds on their SG profile, especially given the nature of (some) publishers and developers these days. Personally speaking, I think nothing of seeing a Not Received, or even a few of them, on someone's SG profile page.
So yeah, there's no real need for disclaimers in giveaways - and creating your own giveaway rules is still in violation of SG rules, if I recall.
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I think part of it is also that it looks so severe, with that big red X in what is otherwise a field of positive green. Maybe if it was gray, or purple...
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I believe most probably hover their mouse over the "Giveaways Sent" statistic to get the number they're looking for. While I wouldn't mind a color change (cg likely chose traditional red and green for cross and checkmark), if people want to find something negative, they'll manage to find it regardless. Some people are like that.
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strange. I read everything here. no one mentioned slots here. if the creator creates with the correct keys and acknowledge receipt the slots increase. if the distribution is removed, they decrease.
perhaps with not received, the slots are also reduced. and newbies who decide to joke like that (by creating a fake giveaway) may be left with 0 slots and will not be able to create a new one.
I, probably like many, enter only on the wish list of games. sometimes I look if this is an interesting genre of game for me, I can add it to the list and enter the draw.
I'm just as happy as many people to enter even those that were previously free (and they are on my wish list) on well-known sites, but I did not have time to get or buy for the minimum price.
sorry used google for translation
Unfortunately, I also have problems getting new games. Haven't bought bundles for a long time. there are some remnants of old stocks.
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On a similar note, if I give a working key to a winner now but the game publisher or dev rescinds the game key in the future (six months later or so) after the winner successfully redeemed the game on their Steam account, is the giveaway host still responsible for providing a working key?
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Yes, but the most will accept a deletion if it can't replaced (or the gifter don't want to spend a second time money).
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We need number of deleted giveaways to be printed with BIG RED NUMBERS in user's profile, and let them delete as much as they want. Information like this should be public!
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I'd second that, I think showing the number of deleted giveaways is a good idea, but not with big red numbers. Recently I deleted a GA before it starts because I was willing to make it multi-group, and ... oops, I forgot one group. I re-created it with the missing group right after. This certainly doesn't deserves a big red number π
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I have advocated for this and yes, separating after end and before end makes lot of sense.
And really why not just show them in the profile so user can go to deleted giveaway page and see the reason.
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Yep, I deleted giveaways like that too. Thing is, I totally don't mind if my profile would have some BIG RED NUMBER. Who cares if there is no punishment for this? You know, like there is no punishment for getting "not received" in a giveaway.
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I totally do mind if my profile gets decorated with any BIG RED something if I did nothing wrong...
In my mind, displaying the amount of deleted GA is not about "punishing", but about knowing the winning chances. But anyway, that's like "not activated wins" : there's no punishment without a user report first !
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But your profile already decorated with BIG RED flower. Or did you do something wrong to get that?
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No way, the petals are clearly orange flavored, but not red!
Here is something to help : that's closer to #4 (orange) than #5 (red). (yes, trust me, you shall avoid making a mistake about naming those colors :-P or maybe you shall, depending on the context)
Something else, showing the differences may be subtle (like between the two first colors : "white" and "ivory"). The difficulty here is that orange roses petals are way brighter than the petals on my avatar, which is misleading.
Moreover, I tweaked the colors a little to make it more orange than reality, because the photo I took was too pink. That flower is a cosmos (that's quite bigger than the Arquilian Galaxy), whose petals are pink, with a little tint of orange, but not red. Here you go !
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I know that's cosmos, and I know that this image is not it's natural colors. But I have to disagree with you about the color. I downloaded the image, loaded it in gimp and used color picker tool in the middle of the leaf. That was my first try (I can't prove this, but it's true). It's almost clear red, a little amount of green in it does not make it orange, it has to be around the half of red to be close to orange.
And even apart of it, there is red role, red number of won giveaways and red number of sent giveaways.
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You're kidding me, right? You know enough about computer programming and displays to understand you cannot name a color from a single pixel. One may draw a dithered pattern of 50% pixels white, 50% pixels black (a checkboard), and it will be a "dithered 50% grey", not a black, not a white. But you'll be able to pick any pixel, and say it's Black or White π
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No, it will be a black and white checkboard. My screen is 1280x800, I can clearly see every pixel. And There is no dithering on this photo even if you try to claim that you view it in 4k. This flower is red, if you want to be precise - it's red by the most part. Still enough red to be considered "BIG RED something"
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Then your eyes can only see flat colors, like in old comics without gradients.
My avatar is a flower with orange petals, and that's a color tone in the mood of the #4 lipstick (link in previous post), it's clearly not red. The matter is it's an intense tone of orange, and that's not very common in many minds who mistakenly thinks that most uses of orange color tones are light, not intense; oranges are supposed to be bright, only reds are supposed to be intense. This leaves no room for intense oranges, like on the petals of the flower of my avatar.
BUT... if you still cannot see it orange, my best advice would be to look into the heart of the fruits below, which are obviously ... oranges ! Even wikipedia says it's "crimson, almost blood-colored flesh", so it's not red.
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Do you know the difference between "crimson, almost blood-colored" and orange?
Let's see what wikipedia says:
Crimson is a rich, deep red color, inclining to purple
and
Vertebrate blood is bright red when its hemoglobin is oxygenated and dark red when it is deoxygenated.
Oh wow, you just proved that I was right all along, and you were wrong!
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Yeah, you're clearly off about the "gradient" idea. Just take half a second to look at the color of the blood orange I posted above, then the color of the blood orange on wikipedia page. Don't you see which one is crimson and which one is not ? There's also non-blood oranges with a clearly yellow peel. I don't see where you're not wrong, I think I showed you enough colored pictures of intense orange colors which are not reds.
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Well I would exclude giveaways that were deleted before end time.
One thing is to make giveaway and not care if key you have is working, till the very end when winner informs me key is faulty. Another is realizing you set up giveaway time wrongly, see key is compromised etc. and delete giveaway. Winner was not chosen and everyone who entered giveaway get their points back. So no one is losing here.
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Sometimes giveaway deletion is before end time is also abused. User creates some AAAA giveaway that everyone wants, put there comment "please like/follow/wishlist my shit" (iirc it's not forbidden in giveaways?), and then when it's close to end - they delete it. Free advertising!
Of course, part about BIG RED NUMBERS is exaggeration, but showing this number alongside with received/not received won't harm for sure. And maybe those people with OCD-like symptoms stop bothering mods with giveaway deletions for no reason.
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Sometimes giveaway deletion is before end time is also abused. User creates some AAAA giveaway that everyone wants, put there comment "please like/follow/wishlist my shit" (iirc it's not forbidden in giveaways?), and then when it's close to end - they delete it. Free advertising!
People are suspended for doing so, but someone needs to spot it. But we need to have screenshot of message in description and link to giveaway.
"BIG RED NUMBERS" do seem extreme but I would not mind to see it under the "not received", either without deleted before end time, or with distinction between deletion of closed / running giveaways.
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Please remove me any doubt, deleting giveaways just after creation is it or not an automatized process actually ?
It's so fast, often 1sec< that i thought it was automatic.
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If you create ticket to delete running giveaway it will be approved automatically. Hence it being "automatic".
If you create ticket to delete giveaway after giveaway ended (and site selected a winner) - you need winner permission and moderators need to accept the ticket. Hence it's "non-automatic".
Eg. I make giveaway on 1st Jan for 7 days.
If I create delete ticket till 8th Jan (minding the hour of giveaway creation) - it will be approved automatically
If I create delete ticket after 8th Jan (say 9th Jan) - site already picked a winner, so ticket need to be approved by a moderator
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Ah thanks a lot ! I'll try to do it less but really feel relieved that it's automatic before giveaway end.
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I would be of these OCD people with a big red mark for deleted giveaway just after creation / way before a winner has been picked.
Because i often hesitate a lot on the conditions/duration of the giveaways (and before there was a function to check, i often wanted to be extra-sure the key was correct, so i often deleted just to check the key before recreating).
If you're curious i deleted 40 giveaways just after creation on 10 years and still have 153 giveaways slots. Of course i would have tried to do differently if i thought it wasn't automatized. For example, i would have spent 10x more time before creating a giveaway. But still it's not easy even more now, with always even more region-locks, to determine what are the regions locked or not. With a big red mark on that, what would i do ? I would probably restrict my giveaways to West Europe just to be 100% sure.
About region-locks, i contacted gmg, gamesplanet and fanatical :
- GMG says they always tell if a game is worldwide or not so i'll have to trust them.
- Gamesplanet says they don't always specify what is the region-lock (they rarely do it in fact) but we can ask them game by game (??????)
- Fanatical has a system to check country by country on single games. Yes it's better than nothing but it's long and doesn't work for bundles.
- Gamebillet and indiegala just say if key can be activated in your own region, so you can't know the region locked.
Unfortunately no, we can't check on another website if a key is locked or not, because for the same game, sometimes the rules are different depending on the website you buy the key.
Recently i had to create region-restricted giveaways while i always tried before to actively avoid that, in the future i guess there will be even more region-locks because the world is now more and more polarized.
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What I would suggest is to have a "key may not be valid" checkbox when creating a giveaway. Then, when that checkbox is checked:
-
The giveaway is worth no CV.
-
The giveaway is visible only to people who have turned on some similar "I want to see giveaways for keys that may not be valid" option in their profile (off by default.)
-
The giveaway is marked somehow to warn people the key may not be valid (a question-mark somewhere on it, say)
-
When the giveaway ends, in addition to "key received" and "key not received", there is an option for "key invalid". If that option is chosen then after a few days the giveaway is deleted automatically and the slot refunded.
This seems to address all the problems people have. It provides a way for people to give away potentially-invalid keys, without any risk that the system will be exploited, and with the keys only "bothering" people who have indicated in advance that they don't mind sometimes hitting an invalid key (so Steamgifts' reputation is not harmed.)
Potentially-invalid keys are a fact of life, and they don't mean the person giving them away is a bad person (as mentioned, the fact that Groupees is going out of business is probably the immediate cause of this uptick - nobody benefits from just discarding all those keys or from forcing people to just key drop them.) The problems they cause are because of the way the system is set up, which can be tweaked. There are ways we can let people give away such keys on Steamgifts without causing problems for Support and without hurting the site's reputation or bothering people who don't want to see them.
(I'm not even sure the giveaway being worth no CV is necessary - I have this sense that there's some sort of exploit if that weren't part of the rules, but perhaps it's not worth worrying about. At the very least it would encourage people to only use that checkbox when necessary.)
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This seems to address all the problems people have. It provides a way for people to give away potentially-invalid keys, without any risk that the system will be exploited, and with the keys only "bothering" people who have indicated in advance that they don't mind sometimes hitting an invalid key (so Steamgifts' reputation is not harmed.)
There is already option for that - ask who wants a key and send it to them via some key drop thread. People that make giveaways with dubious keys will not "risk" losing CV by actually marking key as having dubious source.
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As a fail safe and when it is worded as a plea instead of a demand, I don't feel annoyed by it. But I do agree that is has gotten out of control.
As always, the problem is not with the honest users, but with the dishonest ones. Often times when I read these sentences, I have a gut feeling that the giveaway creator doesn't know, didn't check and doesn't bother if the key she or he is giving away is working at all. Do I have proof of that? No. Just a gut feeling after nearly nine years on this site. I think in their mind they are like: "Eh, I don't care if the key is working or not, I can always get it deleted afterwards."
And this is a problem for SG as a whole. The more winners don't actually win something because their win with a faulty key has to be deleted, the less they enjoy their stay here and the sooner they will move on. If the word spreads that "you don't actually win sth at SG" because "all giveaways are fake and done with duplicate keys", the reputation is damaged beyond repair and SG will die.
So, with that said: Yes, the number of giveaways with that sentence is a cause for alarm and something has to be done about it. I will stop using this sentence in my own giveaways now (even if it is worded as a friendly plea) and users should get kind of a stern warning that, if you create a giveaway, you have to make sure that the key you give away is actually working and that giveaway deletions for a non-working key are the absolute exception.
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It seems that it has become the first step to solve any issue. When in reality it should be the last one. It is often not too hard to try to find new key.
And I think I could personally live without giveaways of old keys. And those from uncertain sources like other sites or for marginal costs.
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...if you create a giveaway, you have to make sure that the key you give away is actually working...
Please tell me how to do this without consuming the key in the process.
Valve doesn't provide a validation tool deliberately as people would spin up their key generators trying to guess valid keys. Besides Valve isn't keen on giving assistance for keys bought off Steam. This wouldn't be a problem had they themselves a robust gifting policy in place allowing you to pay for a regional price difference <10% but this isn't the case.
The only information you can get is if the key is for the game you intend to give away provided you have the game in your account already but not if the key was activated already.
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Don't take every letter literally ;)
If you buy your key(s) from a legit store, in 99% of all cases you can be sure you get a working key. If the key doesn't work, the legit retailer will replace the key.
It gets wonky if you get your key(s) on grey market sites, by trading, via some gl**m giveaways, via any raffles and so on.
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And if you buy stuff for cents per key from grey market I expect you to provide me at least 2 or 3... In hope one of them work. Anyone involved with creating giveaways from those sources should be fully aware what they are dealing with and act accordingly. It often still isn't big loss.
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Often times when I read these sentences, I have a gut feeling that the giveaway creator doesn't know, didn't check and doesn't bother if the key she or he is giving away is working at all. Do I have proof of that? No. Just a gut feeling after nearly nine years on this site. I think in their mind they are like: "Eh, I don't care if the key is working or not, I can always get it deleted afterwards."
For me it looks like change in SG culture. It went from feeling like you must deliver game to the winner, to "I will just delete if key doesn't work". I think it started to be a problem around time when we had boom for grey market sites, bundle pages that incorrectly reported key redemption and those extremely cheap russian shops.
There is no real difference between deletion and "not received" feedback. You lose slot in both cases, you don't get CV, entrants are not getting their points back, winner is left without their win. Only difference is that deletion leaves creator profile "clean".
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entrants are not getting their points back
they do on deletion
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This discussion reminds me of the inconvenience associated with about one in ten gifts.
In the first place, it would be better to mark it as "not received" since "Delete GA" will also delete the communication between the winner and the donor.π€
Unless, of course, there is a hidden specification that the winning rate increases when the transfer rate is set to 100%, but of course that is not the case.
...There really isn't, is there?
If that's the case, this is a story that seems like it would be better to update and add to the guidelines.
On several occasions in the past I have encountered people claiming that they have transferred prizes from the "store" directly to the winners but have not received them.
(Naturally, I don't know the activation key string.)
This is usually an issue that is handled by store support, so please contact them to receive the prize.
We ask them to do so, but if the store support does not provide the giveaway, you can write that they can mark it as "not received" if they keep a log of those interactions with SS.
It makes me wonder a lot when they don't make a log and ask me to delete the GA.
Well, in the past there have been people who didn't know how to use the redeem button for keys from the store and silently pressed unredeemed.
I remember being baffled, though it switched to received after I sent a message with the operation.
While it is important to switch to a method that is easier to operate, switching to a form that is logged will probably lead to the right response.
When the winner is chosen and then told that the Steam Key cannot be successfully redeemed by attaching it for the winner...
It adds a lot of question marks.
I would hope that you would keep track of "the number of times the winner has received duplicate keys on their side."
Is there a mistake in setting the regional limit?
Is it intentional or not?
I feel that this information could be accumulated as shared information by SG supporters.
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In the first place, it would be better to mark it as "not received" since "Delete GA" will also delete the communication between the winner and the donor.
Deleted giveaways is more like hidden from the sigh. We can un-delete it if needed.
Unless, of course, there is a hidden specification that the winning rate increases when the transfer rate is set to 100%, but of course that is not the case.
Only thing that influence win chance is amount of people in the giveaway. 100% if you're only entrant, 50% if there are 2 entrants, 10% if there are 10 entrants etc.
Creators often don't check region locks. Or just assume key they get from HB does not have region locks, as they pay the same price as everyone else. And HB is shit when it comes to informing people about piles of region locks they have on keys. I had only once case myself where winner said key doesn't work, it was from some cheap running bundle so I grabbed another copy. It's unlikely to have not working key from authorized shops. And if key is from trade or key re-seller - it's creator's risk to use this kind of keys in giveaways. Steam support can sometimes help and say when key was activated but they also aren't willing to do it for piles of keys.
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Deleted giveaways is more like hidden from the sigh. We can un-delete it if needed.
I still don't seem to have to worry about it.(o'Ξ'))yup
Only thing that influence win chance is amount of people in the giveaway. 100% if you're only entrant, 50% if there are 2 entrants, 10% if there are 10 entrants etc.
That's right. There is no fraud.
But I am sure that those who still win a lot of prizes are UMAs, aliens, angels, demons, or youkai , so they should not be compared to humans.π
Creators often don't check region locks. Or...(omission)
Should something like Groupiees, Fanatical or Humble Bundle be considered a reseller?
I'm not sure of the scope of that area, but I assume you mean dealing with anything other than the "Valve Steam Store" in general?
I recall a rare problem that occurred when an unopened, non-viewed key was transferred to another party.
From the store side, the winner is shown as redeemed.
However, the winner has not redeemed or received a different one.
As for such hassles, the only way to get a winner to disclose their communication with store support is to get a winner to disclose their communication with store support.
However, if they don't want that kind of hassle, they could send it in the form of a Steam key and then not worry about being told that the prize is not redeem due to regional restriction issues.
(Acceptance of non-receipt due to regional restrictions)
I don't think there is anything wrong with support, management, or Steam, but that unforeseen circumstances are rare.π€
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But I am sure that those who still win a lot of prizes are UMAs, aliens, angels, demons, or youkai , so they should not be compared to humans.π
Inuyasha is not active on SG for more than a decade, so you can sleep well.
Should something like Groupiees, Fanatical or Humble Bundle be considered a reseller?
No, re-seller is someone who gets a key from shop (be it stationary or online) and post it somewhere to re-sell. Kind of like scalpers, only that scalper buys at fixed-MSRP and re-sells above MSRP for profit during shortages. While key re-sellers buy in cheap regions at cheap-region-MSRP and re-sell below expensive-region-MSRP but above cheap-region-MSRP making profit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/GameDeals/comments/2yhlw4/key_resellers_and_what_they_mean_for_you/
Fanatical or HB gets keys from publishers or developers. If HB runs out of keys in bundle they will request more from the developer, which can lead to people waiting for their keys. They will not ask uncle in Russia or Argentina to go to CheapGameShop to buy piles of boxed versions, scan keys and send them to you.
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It is likely that one reason for this increase is because Groupees is dying - people are giving away keys they have on there. Because of issues with it in the past, some of them will already be used; and because the site is dying and can no longer offer any sort of support, it's not possible to contact them for replacements anymore.
If that's the cause then it should end at the end of the month when Groupees' site goes down for good (that's when their domain registration ends, assuming nobody rescues it.)
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I had a few "unredeemed" GOG keys from Groupees that didn't seem to work and GOG said they couldn't help and Groupees never replied. Oh well..
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ISTM that the whole process could be automated which would have a huge payback in Moderator time. GA creator, checks box - Deletion requested. GA Winner, checks box - Deletion agreed.
Bad keys come from everywhere, even more reputable sources. We should be encouraging people to gift more keys and not discourage them with processes that make it more difficult.
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Honestly, I can't see why winner approval is even needed. If winner marked giveaway as "not received" - just allow giveaway creator to delete it automatically (the same way as before giveaway end), and that's it.
Of course I would just forbid deletion altogether, to make profile information relevant, but it seems moderators team don't share this point of view.
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I agree with you. This is a giveaway site, people are doing giveaways they are not signing business contracts. No one should be forced to pay for games when they just wanted to give away their extra keys which happened to be not working.
Well, there is a problem with automated deletion though. People can delete their ended giveaway if someone they don't like wins it and repeat this till someone they prefer wins the giveaway.
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Sure, they can. And soon they will run out of giveaway slots and won't be able to make any more giveaways. So it's a problem, but not a big one. If somebody don't want people they don't like to win - it's much easier to blacklist those people, no need to go through loops for that.
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I heavily agree on this post
Also, by marking keys received or not received, we know how reliable a person is, by deleting??? you're literally trying to hide your negative reputation which means you're deliberately faking your account reputation.
Okay, yeah, sure, you're somewhat generous, you are giving away key. Doesn't mean you should abuse the system as well ffs...
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Bumping this since there's another surge of such GA descriptions lately...
Personally, I don't get why people give so much weight to the "Not Received" status since there are no consequences for a high number of them as far as SG is concerned.
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I don't know why GA creators care about it. I do get why GA winner would like to get it deleted though.
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In the past few months, I noticed a slight increase in requests for deleting user giveaways. Most of the time, it is related to already used or invalidated keys and this is where our slight problem happens.
As a giveaway creator:
You should first notify the key store where you bought it so you can possibly get a replacement or try to find another code on official third-party sites. Only after all of that, the request for delete should be the next option
As a winner of a giveaway:
With all that said, honest mistakes are fine and they do happen from time to time. Keys get revoked every now and then and we can all work around this and fix such mistakes.
In any case, this PSA only serves as a gentle reminder of the responsibilities that both giveaway creator and giveaway winner(s) have and any user-created rules in the giveaway description that are not covered in FAQ and Guidelines are just silly.
As a reward for taking your time to read all of this, here is a picture of a small cactus that looks like an obese Bugs Bunny:
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