I feel like that for many giveaway creators, winners who have little to zero interest in the game they've won...winners who just entered for the steam trading cards...winners who break the rules and don't even redeem the game really put a damper on the giveaway process. The other day I asked myself "What if creators could set the points requirements for their own giveaways?"

After brainstorming for awhile trying to think of any negatives and talking to a few people (including two wonderful mods Crazee and wbarton) I couldn't really find any negatives or drawbacks so as long as the already existing values are used as a MINIMUM (and presumably default) value. But what does it gain?

In short after discussing it and thinking it through it would be a great tool for giveaway creators to filter out (more) "useless" entries. By increasing the value to enter a giveaway it becomes more of an active decision for users to choose whether to enter or not and thus should decrease the overall number of entries as the entry fee goes up. More importantly, those who would have otherwise entered and now haven't, would be the ones who are less interested in the game, whereas the ones who still enter are more interested in the game and thus deemed the giveaway worthy of an entry at the increased entry fee rate.

I do want to clarify a few things. The already existing value would still be used for computing CV, point generation, and as I mention would serve as a default/minimum entry cost for all giveaways. So whether you make a Bad Rats Show giveaway for 300 points or for 5 points, it would still generate the same number of points for all users and give you the same amount of CV.

Potential upsides:

  • Could reduce the time spent entering giveaways, as you would run out of points sooner but would in theory keep your chances of winning about the same†
  • Creators have more control on who enters their giveaways
  • (Potentially) makes the giveaway process more pleasant for everyone, you are more likely to win games you want and your winners are more likely to want what you are giving away
  • Completely optional for giveaway creators, they can continue to use the default value if they wish

Potential "problems":

  • May be favorable for those who farming as many wins as they can (those buffing their 1k+ win number)
  • May lead to more giveaways ending with less than 5 entrants (no CV)

† Theoretically, IF the number of entries was proportional to the entry cost, it would be better to enter one 300 point giveaway than ten 30 point giveaways by a small margin. For example, if the 300 point giveaway had 10 entrants, you'd have a 1 in 10 chance, whereas if the 30 point giveaways had 100 entrants, you'd have a (1 - (99/100)^10) ~ 9.5% chance of winning at least one. Whether the number of entries would exactly be proportional to the entry cost is obviously unknown.

If cg is reading this, I am sort of curious if there was any specific reason that users weren't able to set giveaway cost in the first place (i.e. there is something inherently wrong with it) or the current system was chosen just for simplicity / some other reason.

7 years ago*

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I accidentally posted a link to a mock-up post in S.Gifts chat and one comment I got was about this being a lot of work and requiring a lot of space in the database, my response to that is basically:

Well, based off my own experiences in web projects, I don't think it would be all that bad. It would require updating the database with a new int32 field in the giveaways table, but apart from that I wouldn't think it would be all that much work. As for space, at 4bytes per entry fee with 2million giveaways in the database, that would be a whopping (/sarcasm) 8MB of space added.

At any rate, I thought there was a bugs / suggestion thread just for this purpose, yes, it's more work for cg, but my impression was that these kinds of suggestions were at the least, welcome to be made despite how much work they may or may not require. cg seems to welcome a suggestion on how to fix the CV system (not that anyone has figured out a way to do it) and I imagine just about any solution someone could come up with for that would require at least just as much work if not more.

7 years ago
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YES, YES AND YES!
But unfortunately I lost hope that Steamgifts is really interested in favoring giveaway creators instead of those who enter because they make up most traffic. Steamgifts is fucked.

7 years ago
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7 years ago
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Time for SGv3~

7 years ago
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I've had the advantage of being able to ponder this idea for a little while, and overall I think it would have a positive impact on the community.

7 years ago
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Hmm, giving even more incensive to enter those 4 weeks giveaways to bank points for that day when 5 guys create 5 300 points giveaways ending in 1 hour?

7 years ago
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I'm not sure if your winners really would be people that "appreciate" their wins more. I'd rather expect that hordes would still flock around the most popular games, there'd just be far less entries for the remaining games.
Your claim that people would spend less time is also questionable. If you have dynamic costs for identical games it could as well result in people spending even more time in finding their optimum. Is it better to join a GA for game A that costs 100 points, min level 5 and currently 300 entries and runs for 5 hours or is another GA for the same game which costs 80 points, level 4 with 400 entries better that finishes in 3 hours? Just an example. There is no doubt that it would become more complex though.

The often suggested feature to allow entries only if a game is listed within the top x of one's wishlist, would imho succeed far more with your expressed ambition.

7 years ago*
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7 years ago
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The pro and contra have been discussed far too often. My take would be: Set a range that matters for all such wishlist giveaways.
Let's say that you'd have to have a game in your top 30 to qualify. Everyone should be able to maintain their top 30 and the rest of anyone's wishlist simply wouldn't matter.

Cheating (changing wishlist so that you can enter) could be prevented by storing a backup of everyone's wishlist. If a game wasn't in your top 30 when a giveaway was created, you wouldn't be able to join.

7 years ago*
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7 years ago
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I think it would be acceptable to store the wishlist during the usual sync, every 5 days. It wouldn't be required to keep the data for more than a month, that'd be 6 data sets (instead of the current 1). I can't judge how demanding it would be to process those checks though.

7 years ago
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Many probably don't order their wishlist because there is no point to do it. I certainly don't care what order they are in and don't want to spend time arranging them.

7 years ago
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+1, and it's also hard for people like me who have huge wishlists (it just helps me decide faster whether to buy a bundle or not, since there are some which I wouldn't buy unless they're severely reduced).

7 years ago
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How large your wishlist is, doesn't really make such a difference. Make up your mind, type the numbers 1-30, hit save, done.
It's just 30 games, the equal number of games from the equally large library of options from Steam, for everyone.

But that's just theoretical anyway. We know that it won't happen. ;)

7 years ago
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But even so, there would be a lot of people who would pick mostly AAA games, so there would be tons of entries for those, less for indie games, and I guarantee there would be people who would try to enter some giveaways, then change them while the giveaways they already entered haven't ended yet, and not only that's unfair, but there would be even more reroll requests than there already are. The whole idea would be exploited in many ways, maybe even some I haven't thought about, and it would take time to think of and implement counter-measures.
As for the making up your mind, I see your point, but having so many wishlisted games I can't remember all of them and I would definitely end up forgetting important ones because going through 1k+ is a lot.

And yeah, like you said, it won't happen anyway. The most useful, fair and simple suggestion I've seen so far was the "invite to giveaway" button, it would partially help with what this thread wants to ultimately obtain. Simple suggestions like that wouldn't completely change how the site works, so it seems more reasonable, but this one does and I'm 99% sure it won't happen.

7 years ago
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I covered that cheating already above. Storing the wishlist would prevent any such attempts.

And everyone is free to make their choices. If most would decide to go all-AAA with their top 30, all the better for those who appreciate smaller titles. That is no different to the idea of dynamic costs. You make your decisions what games matter most to you and you reap the results.

The invite button idea was neat, but it would require lots of efforts fror every single giveaway. And it only works for people that know each other (and their interests). That isn't really a solution for everyone.

7 years ago
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I was thinking about the invite button as another option, just like making a giveaway public, private or whitelist only. That way, people could make threads just like they do with puzzles, and then invite people according to their own criterias. For just commenting, for having the game on your wishlist since a chosen date, whatever crosses their mind.

I still don't think people would enjoy being able to join giveaways just for their top x games from their wishlist even if every possible exploit could be avoided.
edit: Just noticed below that you also mentioned this as an option, but in that case, would there really be enough people making this type of giveaways in order for it to be worth implementing a more complex option?

7 years ago*
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Well that would certainly change if it would matter.
And if people don't want to bother with putting their most wanted 30 games to the top of their list, we can well justified assume that they aren't among those who would qualify as "really appreciates his improved chances / win" and thus this wouldn't be about them.

7 years ago
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There are very few giveaways for my wishlisted games as it is and all this would do is to reduce the possibility to enter for those even further. Horrible idea in my opinion. I have 109 games wishlisted at the moment.

7 years ago
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Similar for me. I have 105 wishlisted and I only see GAs for bundled games, as Mafia 2 currently.
But keep in mind that you'd still see public giveaways for your wishlisted games and you'd get far far far better chances if someone decided to make a specific "top 30 wl" giveaway. If people could be sure that truly interested fans get their gifts, you might actually see more GAs for those games.

7 years ago
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Ok so this would not apply to all giveaways automatically, but would be a new option alongside existing ones. That wasn't clear from the earlier post (or I just didn't get it). Then it would not be that bad I guess.

7 years ago
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Of course not, otherwise there'd be no public giveaways at all. That would be madness. :-p
No, this would just be a further option, next to group and whitelist giveaways. No enforcement.

7 years ago
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I'm not sure if your winners really would be people that "appreciate" their wins more. I'd rather expect that hordes would still flock around the most popular games, there'd just be far less entries for the remaining games.

and I have no doubt most people will flock to those sort of giveaways but there is a reason they do flock to those giveaways in the first place...because they are more interested in those games which is the point. that being said, I don't expect if this system were to be in place for entries on all giveaways to be decimated but to still be reduced enough to make some difference.

Your claim that people would spend less time is also questionable. If you have dynamic costs for identical games it could as well result in people spending even more time in finding their optimum. Is it better to join a GA for game A that costs 100 points, min level 5 and currently 300 entries and runs for 5 hours or is another GA for the same game which costs 80 points, level 4 with 400 entries better that finishes in 3 hours? Just an example. There is no doubt that it would become more complex though.

fair enough, I'll edit it to say it "could" reduce time. I was going along the lines of game A that I want has been bundled and now instead of having to enter 40 giveaways for it across a 24 hour span, I can just enter a few higher point entry giveaways and have roughly the same odds type of deal.

7 years ago
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I hope you don't mind that I shared my thoughts. I appreciate your idea, I just think that my alternative would be better suited for that task. ;)

7 years ago
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Wouldn't the option to enter a giveaway multiple times have a similar effect? There may also be less overhead involved.

7 years ago
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It could lead to more people entering giveaways to store points. Right now I don't bother with that as most of the times I'm at 300 points, but if suddenly some giveaways could end up costing the 300 points and at some point you might want to enter two of those it would be better to have some points stored in some other giveaways. But who knows, there are probably many people that do that already.

7 years ago
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that's definitely true.

although, also consider how there are users who enter so many giveaways that they don't have enough points to enter all the giveaways that they want to, now add in giveaways with higher point costs than usual (without changing point generation) and the disparity between how many points someone needs versus how many they generate is even larger, the higher the average cost per giveaway to enter is the more and more people won't be able to enter all the giveaways they want (and thus as I suggest above, will make them think about what to enter) AND this will mean fewer people who have points left over to bank in the first place.

tl;dr the more people spend on giveaways the less points they have to bank

7 years ago
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update all the bots to enter GAs to bank points.

7 years ago
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I am P-300 and I came from the past to be spent on this giveaway
*terminator sounds* whatever it would mean

7 years ago
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Yeah, let's make everything 300 points directly, it will be faster...

7 years ago
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Well, as long as there is a maximum for points that can be settled, I would say yes.

7 years ago
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Aren't there enough ways to control who enters your giveaways already? Contributor levels, puzzles and SGTools are great ways to filter entrants. If you want to give away games for people who really want them, maybe the best option is to make forum events like this or make only wishlist / group giveaways.

7 years ago
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By the way, a poll would have been nice. xD

7 years ago
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View attached image.
7 years ago
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+1 xDDDDDDDDD

7 years ago
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It would be a nice touch. Maybe limit at at 200% of the normal point value, but it would make some people think a little before entering anything they see.

7 years ago
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Agreed. The Daedalic games are a perfect example. When the Daedalic bundles are on sale at Steam, the price per game shows up here as 100p. That certainly gives me pause... "Do I want to spend 100 points on that or not?" In such a case, I only enter if I REALLY want the game, and isn't that how it really should be? I'm happy to give away games, but I'm even happier when it goes to someone who really wants to play it!

7 years ago
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It'd favour people with huge libraries and lots of wins, who enter into everything to feed their collector urges D :

Now they sit on 300p constantly, as they don't have much GAs to enter anyway. With this change they'd dump their points into not-so-many high-points GAs and have more chance to witn.

7 years ago
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I don't know, I don't think the point system or the costs need any revamps.

7 years ago
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I entered the thread with the intention of shitting on your parade because of the title and what I thought the proposal was, but after reading it I gotta admit you've won me.

The only flaw I see if it will really ork out as intended and people won't enter the higher point GAs more frequently because of the better odds so that they are "not worth it" however, that should regulate itself presuming non-idiotic users.

Also about the flaws you mention I don't really see the problem for getting no CV, but I thought about it and the possible workarounds I've thought of so far are reaaally exploitable, so not really a solution. However, as said. I don't think getting or not CV would be such a problem because if you made a high enough point GA so that you're bothered about it, it's definitely a risk you're indulging in yourself.

7 years ago
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About the CV: That would only be a problem for private/group GAs, and the solution is simple: create those GAs with a 1 point value so you'll get more entries.

In public GAs you only need 1 entry to get CV.

7 years ago
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Interesting idea. To avoid points banking (the biggest problem) there should be a restriction like "you can't leave a giveaway after an hour" (the "remove entry" button will be disabled after an hour). But, if you need to leave a giveaway because you won that game in a previous one it should be permitted as an exception.

Game hoarders will hate you if cg takes this suggestion into consideration :P

7 years ago
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I could already think of at least one way to abuse the system with two accounts to inflate CV on both without breaking any rules. (Not sure how reliable the method would be but still a possibility)

7 years ago
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Could you give us more details? Notes:

  • If you use 2 accounts here=suspension (permanent) for both of them.
  • The CV you'll get as creator will be the same no matter you set the GA entry as 1 or 300 points.
7 years ago
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Oh yeah, except that rule. If you set subpar games as 300p public giveaways, some people might join (since odds are high) but a lot of people won't. So I assume if you enter such giveaways with your other account, you could at a certain rate use games to inflate your cv. If someone else gets it, no big deal, still same as normal giveaway, but if your account gets it cv+game.
Talgaby's suggestion (or some other upper bound) would solve this problem though.

7 years ago*
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I still don't get it, sorry. As I said, you can't use more than 1 account, and the suspension will be permanent for both of them.

7 years ago
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I'm sure there are people with alt accounts. 12 staff members and over 900,000 users.

7 years ago
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Well, this site does IP checks, if it detects 2 or more accounts using the same IP is easy and simple to suspend hundreds of them in 2 clicks :)

Yes, there's probably people using VPN or proxies, but they will get caught sooner or later.

7 years ago
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I agree with talgaby that 200% should be the limit.

The Daedalic games are a perfect example of this concept. When the Daedalic bundles are on sale at Steam, the price per game shows up here as 100p. That certainly gives me pause... "Do I want to spend 100 points on that or not?" In such a case, I only enter if I REALLY want the game, and isn't that how it really should be? I'm happy to give away games, but I'm even happier when it goes to someone who really wants to play it!

7 years ago
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I thought of something similar before here - one day when there was yet another price glitch with one of the Deadalic games, that genkicoll just mentioned.
Personally, as someone who usually just sits on my 300 points and don't know where to spend them on, would definitely
appreciate your suggestion, in fact with many games only worth 5-10 points these days, it's become much too cheap to enter
a lot of giveaways anyway. However, there's still the problem with fake giveaways, spending 60 points on a GTA 5 giveaway,
when there's never any valid key handed out is bad enough, but spending, for example, 200 on it, makes it even worse.

Personally I'd still say the benefit of having people consider more which games they really want to win outweighs
this negative aspect, but a lot of people seemed to disagree when I suggested something like that before.

7 years ago
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Perhaps with what talgaby suggested a max increase/decrease of the point and have the % of how much it differs from the original value depend on the user's level.

7 years ago
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I can't figure out this big fuss about winners actually enjoying the game. If the creator is adamant about that, (s)he might make it a group/whitelist only giveaway, or better yet, give a copy of a wishlisted game to a friend. I don't really care if winners enjoy the games I give away or farm cards, especially when we're dealing with cheap bundle titles. It seems almost hypocritical that I should expect someone to enjoy something that I most likely wouldn't. Ever.

7 years ago
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Well said. I completely agree although I think this would be a nice feature maybe even combined with a minimum length of 6 - 12 hours for giveaways.

7 years ago
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I think the real problem is there are too many points It would be easier for cg to change how the points are regenerated to decrease their numbers.

I like your idea, anyway.

7 years ago
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I've been a staunch supporter of decreased point regeneration and I'm perfectly happy if that were implemented instead/too.

One difference is reduced point generation is foisted onto all users (not that I think it's a bad thing, but I've seen a lot of resistance to the idea because of that fact) whereas this suggestion is something that giveaway creators can opt to use

7 years ago
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I don't see a reason why this can't be added, I approve!

7 years ago
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I'm not going to comment on the proposal in general right now. However, I would like to raise an eyebrow at your emphasis that the default point value should be used as a minimum. If you want giveaway creators to have more control, what do you care if they choose to "charge" entrants less points?

7 years ago
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the whole reason that there is a point system in the first point is to keep users from entering every single giveaway, allowing people to set their giveaways to just a single point entry fee would wreck that, at least if a majority of users did that. and there would definitely be situations where you could enter a giveaway and spend less points than you got for that giveaway being created (like if someone made Valve Developer Pack for 1 point, you would have gotten more points from point generation than you spent on the giveaway)

7 years ago
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So you trust the ambiguous body of giveaway creators to not heavily jack up the price of all their giveaways in order to preserve the status quo, but not vice versa?

7 years ago
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I don't think there is an inherent problem with the theoretical situation where every creator makes their giveaway require the max points, it boils down to entering fewer giveaways but having better chances to win on the giveaways you do enter (and you'd still have to put more thought into which games you want to enter giveaways for which is the whole point in the first place), in this situation I believe it would be similar to if the point generation was just reduced which is something I'm a strong supporter of as well.

I would love for creators to have the control to set it lower than the "default" value as I call it, but for the reasons I mentioned above it defeats the purpose of a point system in the first place, but from my point of view the pros outweigh the possible cons for letting them set a value equal to or larger than the existing value, so why not let them have some control rather than no control at all?

7 years ago
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Really? You don't think there's a problem with people potentially only being able to enter 1-3 giveaways per day? Site traffic would drop like a grand piano.

7 years ago
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Not at all, those will be 1-3 giveaways of games they want the most, essentially (and they'll have far better odds of winning per giveaway entered). this isn't a for profit site, ads help pay for cost and pay for giveaways that cg makes AFAIK, and some of that cost comes from traffic in the first place so...yeah, I don't see what's bad about it. but that's only in the hypothetical case where everyone made 300P giveaways :p

7 years ago
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Afaik, ads payout based of how many people see them. Site traffic goes down, ad revenue goes down.
Also, if people are only able to enter for a couple games per day, they'll only enter for 'higher-tier' stuff. This will make creating giveaways for 'lower-tier' bundle fillings nearly pointless. And yes, I realize this is an extreme hypothetical, but that's what you responded to my suggestion with as well.
I have more counterpoints, but I'm too tired to press the matter further, and I doubt I'll be able to persuade you to see the my point of view anyway. I'll leave you with a "nay" vote for this suggestion, especially if people are unable to lower the point requirements as well as raise them.

7 years ago*
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come on... you really think cg keeps this site running based on ads, which are probably blocked by 99% of the userbase anyway?

I'd love to see numbers.
i bet ads revenue are like $1,000 per month to cover up $10,000 server costs.

7 years ago
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I'd guess that ads are blocked by 30% tops.

7 years ago
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No. I don't think the cost is covered by ads alone. I never said that, and it's far from the crux of my dislike for this suggestion anyway.

7 years ago
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