Any surprises for you in the results?
I only entered one of these (Lords of the Earth Flame, since I'm actually interested in it) so I was wondering how exactly these 20-minutes-after-the-end GAs were introduced. Did you post a message when you created the first GAs saying "there will be a link to another GA for this game in this description 20 minutes after this one ends" or did you just add the link stealthily when the GA ended without telling anyone beforehand? (I suppose it's the first option since the second wouldn't make much sense from this experiment's perspective but I'm asking anyway)
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Neither, the links were present in all of them from the start:
Here is the deal. This giveaway for this rather low-rated platformer will run for exactly 60 hours (two and a half days). And 20 minutes after it ends, a [new giveaway](link included) will start for the very same game, for this exact level, running for a few minutes shy of 24 hours. Are you interested enough in winning it to actually remember to come back later, or you just spent some points to quickly enter something with little actual interest in it?
Anyone who opened the public one during its run could see the description and even open the associated private one to bookmark for later if they wanted to.
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I always forget you can set up your giveaways as you set up time bombs. Makes sense.
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Yep. It was a good tool to avoid about half of the script-users on low-level public ones; just time it to start more than 48 hours after the creation time, and it won't show up among the "New giveaways" section of the main page. This was patched by cg since then.
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I entered yesterday some GAs (Dollarbundle). I found there free keys in the descriptions: After 4 days! Out of six I could take three keys. (Did not try the others). The GAs had 20-80 entries.
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You should probably add something like '..oh, wait, I see you already have one' to the end of that, to make the joke clear. The current interpretation comes across as just being one of confused vocabulary. :X
Def, Hobby: an activity outside of the scope of one's regular occupation, engaged with during one's leisure time for the purpose of pleasure, satisfaction, relaxation, or self-improvement.
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I thought about writing "healthier hobby" but I didn't want to sound offensive in any way
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"more productive hobby" is the phrase you likely were looking for. :)
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Yes, good annotation, thanks. Even more fitting since all his data have zero statistical significance.
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Depends. Some people really think that writing something in the giveaways' descriptions amounts to something. It just shows now that on site average it doesn't really.
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But you are dividing users by level, and comparing those numbers, without taking into account the sampling error
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This is why I used 4+1 different games with different characteristics, using different methods each time to provide the private giveaways.
And of course I am dividing them to levels, that was the entire point of the series, to see how numbers change as we go upwards. Both the private and the public ones have overlap among levels, so the percentages are not skewed in this regard.
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But they aren't a valid representation of all active users in steamgifts
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No giveaway's entry base will ever give you a representation of all active users on SteamGifts. That is impossible. A similar series can be done with games outside the bundle list, games outside the actual bundles, and games from the community wishlist, but so far what I have seen in the past few thousand giveaways or so, the behaviour patterns remain the same, only the numbers get a multiplier.
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Let's talk a bit about your logic jumps:
Some may wonder: "Hey, does that mean that even level 10 guys use auto-entry bots and scripts?!"
The answer is: likely, but it is not that simple.
Likely? In what do you base such affirmation? Why are bots the only plausible conclusion? I can think of several other possibilities. But under my own experience, because I did it myself years ago, people just enter steamgifts to spend their points, and 3 minutes later they close the tab.
On the highest level, where entries on the public ones were low enough to check, I did some comparisons between those who were in the second round and those who weren't. I discovered that a hefty portion of the highest level(s) is made up of Chinese and Russians
Russians are the second biggest community in steamgifts, what did you expect?
who got there using a nice amount of region-restricted giveaways (on average; some had under 25%, some over 85%).
you know, that happens when you can't buy region-free gifts, and lately not even region-free keys.
Disregarding of what your opinion is on that subject, in relation to this experiment it also adds one important information: those countries are among the worst when it comes to the percentage of the population who even understands basic English.
You are assuming they don't understand basic English out of nowhere... What about the rest who are not Russians or Chinese and didn't join the private giveaways? North Americans don't understand basic English neither?
So the answer may be that they literally had zero idea what was even in the descriptions. (Although it won't exactly explain that if they saw the direct link even in those where the public ones ran in parallel, why didn't they enter there too.)
Here you are even contradicting yourself. You assume they don't understand English because they don't click a link, but then you realize they don't need to understand English to click a link...
Before you get the pitchforks: it was not just this two country, based on region-locked wins, there were users from North America or Germany who never discovered the hidden ones as well. And in the case of the former… yeah, sorry, it would take really hard convincing that you are not farming the site with a bot at worst, one-click entries at best.
So only Russians and Chinese were bots/one-click entries, but the others who didn't join the private giveaways are different because... because.
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But under my own experience, because I did it myself years ago, people just enter steamgifts to spend their points, and 3 minutes later they close the tab.
That does not explain the low hit rate on the first two, especially the one where the private giveaway was one click away. If they opened the giveaway to enter, they must have seen it.
Don't forget: this thing is not exploring whether someone uses automated methods, this is exploring if they read a simple description. So in this regard if you spend 3 minutes on the site and just click through some stuff rapidly, you also fall into the "doesn't read descriptions" territory.
You are assuming they don't understand basic English out of nowhere...
What do you mean,out of nowhere? The percentage of people in both countries who speak English is around 5% in Russia and undetectably low in China. It is their official statistic.
Here you are even contradicting yourself. You assume they don't understand English because they don't click a link, but then you realize they don't need to understand English to click a link...
Er, no. You are totally misunderstanding the entire thing.
That train of through started at theorising whether even level 10s they use bots or not. The first answer is that a simple linguistic barrier can be a reasonable explanation for a particular portion of that user base without any additional shenanigans, although it is not a perfect answer to cover all aspects (the whole link-is-in-front-of-your-face one). But there are others where that explanation/excuse is pretty impossible, since their native language has to be English. Which led back to the theory of using some sort of simplified mechanism to enter giveaways.
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That does not explain the low hit rate on the first two, especially the one where the private giveaway was one click away. If they opened the giveaway to enter, they must have seen it.
Don't forget: this thing is not exploring whether someone uses automated methods, this is exploring if they read a simple description. So in this regard if you spend 3 minutes on the site and just click through some stuff rapidly, you also fall into the "doesn't read descriptions" territory.
You were the one tallking about bots in the OP, so I talked about bots in my reply. And again I would like the ±% error to each of those percentages.
What do you mean,out of nowhere? The percentage of people in both countries who speak English is around 5% in Russia and undetectably low in China. It is their official statistic.
This is an English site. One would expect people that don't know basic English don't even know about its existence.
Er, no. You are totally misunderstanding the entire thing.
That train of through started at theorising whether even level 10s they use bots or not. The first answer is that a simple linguistic barrier can be a reasonable explanation for a particular portion of that user base without any additional shenanigans, although it is not a perfect answer to cover all aspects (the whole link-is-in-front-of-your-face one). But there are others where that explanation/excuse is pretty impossible, since their native language has to be English. Which led back to the theory of using some sort of simplified mechanism to enter giveaways.
Occam's razor says: "For each accepted explanation of a phenomenon, there may be an extremely large, perhaps even incomprehensible, number of possible and more complex alternatives, because one can always burden failing explanations with ad hoc hypotheses to prevent them from being falsified; therefore, simpler theories are preferable to more complex ones because they are more testable". You keep talking about simplified mechanisms to enter giveaways (bots/one-click joins), when the easiest explanation is that people don't read descriptions in public giveaways, as I mentioned in my first paragraph. Not everybody has so much free time as others.
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This is an English site. One would expect people that don't know basic English don't even know about its existence.
You wouldn't believe how wrong you are right there. I alone met three digits worth of winners who didn't understand a single word in English but use this site. There is a reason people asked or even volunteered for the rules, FAQ, and similar documentation to be translated, and a reason why some of it is already translated to Russian. Why you can see people on the sister site, SteamTrades (which used to be part of this one for a good while) communicate and leave feedback only in non-English languages. And I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of non-speakers would have increased quite some after GameMiner closed down.
You keep talking about simplified mechanisms to enter giveaways (bots/one-click joins), when the easiest explanation is that people don't read descriptions in public giveaways, as I mentioned in my first paragraph. Not everybody has so much free time as others.
Yes. I know. This is why I said several times even in your quotation that it is one of the theories. This is why that entire paragraph in the original post starts with a "some may wonder if" question. I am telling everyone that you don't have to think it must be bots, only that it is a possibility. You have successfully explained what I wrote there to begin with.
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You wouldn't believe how wrong you are right there. I alone met three digits worth of winners who didn't understand a single word in English but use this site. There is a reason people asked or even volunteered for the rules, FAQ, and similar documentation to be translated, and a reason why some of it is already translated to Russian. Why you can see people on the sister site, SteamTrades (which used to be part of this one for a good while) communicate and leave feedback only in non-English languages. And I wouldn't be surprised if the amount of non-speakers would have increased quite some after GameMiner closed down.
Ok, due to the number of giveaways you have created you have more data than me with respect to that. I give you that point, there are people (three digits? I would say a significant amount of people) who don't speak English using the site.
Yes. I know. This is why I said several times even in your quotation that it is one of the theories. This is why that entire paragraph in the original post starts with a "some may wonder if" question. I am telling everyone that you don't have to think it must be bots, only that it is a possibility. You have successfully explained what I wrote there to begin with.
We agree then, perfect :)
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Over a hundred I know that they don't speak it, and several hundred others who never responded in any manner to my requests, which could mean a good number of things, including they not understanding what I wrote them. (Seriously, it is like if things like Google Translate or Yandex Translate don't exist or not nearly as known than one would think.)
Dropping lots of keys to level 0 fully public can lead to some interesting encounters. =)
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Dropping lots of keys to level 0 fully public can lead to some interesting encounters. =)
I bet
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I can assure you that there are a number of people on this site who do not know basic english :) - having attempted to explain how to get their key for their game and getting knowwhere for hours :)
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What's the moral?
Higher levels won't automatically make you any better as a person than low levels.
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Missed the Adam and Eve (pretty much spend all my points trying to win Humble Bundle tier 2 till I gave up and just bought it). Tried Turn Around, lost. Own all the rest. Can read. Didn't help me sob
Nice expiriments though... nothing too surprising.
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There is no way to differentiate how many didn't read vs. how many read and decided it wasn't worth it.
And given that fact, how is this anything but unsurprising and purely rational behavior?
- Study shows: Easier to enter giveaways get more entries.
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There is no way to differentiate how many didn't read vs. how many read and decided it wasn't worth it.
There were two types: one where they didn't have to wait, and one where they had to. As expected, the ones where they didn't have to wait and could have just entered the private one the same time they entered the public one had much higher hit rates than the ones where they had to also remember some sort of information for the possible additional "rewards".
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Regardless of why your doing these experiments or what the results are.... Feel free to keep it up. :) I do read and have entered your bonus GAs. Not this time however. One I own and the rest of these are not on my wish list. Hence I never saw them. I tend to only look at the public GAs using the wish list filter.
I must admit the results do surprise me a bit. Bonus for us readers I guess.
Note. I have seen and bookmarked future starting GAs then came back to enter. Don't see those to often but it happens.
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It was the last one, at least for the foreseeable future. I may be able to think of some areas to look further into, but so far the three little experiments I made this year was enough for a bit. (And somewhat expensive and time-consuming.) I'll try to go back to my old routine for a while.
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My only problem is that I failed to win a copy of Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily (I think I applied 8 times though) :/
But thanks for the opportunity anyway :)
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I love these experiments of yours although the results can be saddening
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When i got time i read it and answer... If i'm on a hurry, using mobile data or working i don't write. Sometimes i also save the link on fav and reply later.
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I entered giveaways for three of the games. The Lords of the Earth Flame, Turn Around, and Sarab: The Dark Tower. I entered the regular giveaways and the "bonus round" giveaways for all three games. I wasn't lucky enough to win the first game, but I did win Turn Around and Sarab: The Dark Tower, both of which happened in the bonus round!:)
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:3 i tried on a way smaller scale but it did end up between 5-10% tis saddening how few even read
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I'm not really surprised by the results, except for the amount of users who were willing to wait to enter the invite-only GAs for Sarab: The Dark Tower (higher than expected). Still, this is an interesting experiment and I appreciate the effort you put into it. I hope to see more.
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level 0 and level 1 can mostly be considered a key cemetery
sound about right
"Hey, does that mean that even level 10 guys use auto-entry bots and scripts?!" The answer is: likely
I was shocked to see such results myself, at a group event that was held a couple of months ago a lot of high levels (6-10) were caught red handed cheating... that made me lose a bit of faith on the goodness of people on the Internet.
Don't think too much into someone with a high user level, because everyone seems to be, in general, similar on this site, low-level or high-level.
This, however, has been my own conclusion too. I've seen good honest users in ALL kind of levels, in the end I guess we all hope to find people who aren't here just to cheat the system but rather gift games to make others happy and test your luck, it's great to get surprised with space cats who visit us from time to time :3
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Well, it seems like many people have drawn this conclusion. I guess we can call this thread a collection for these stories now.
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Yeah, still it's always better to get better data like yours to know if we're not completely wrong <3
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Necro-bump. I never saw you did this experiment. Very well done.
I think a good way to solve this disparity would be to turn CV on Region Restricted giveaways to null or something very very low.
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Practically nobody outside Europe and North America would be able to gain levels then.
Although it would be amusing to see how many million dollars worth of CV would suddenly vanish.
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I like how much effort you put in this research. I can't quite get the objective of this but it was an interesting read non the less (I hope I said it right).
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I wonder if the results would be similar were the giveaways higher up the SG wishlist? I find many hidden giveaways, but I rarely enter them due to either a) already owning the game, or b) having no interest in the game.
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It was discussed to a degree, and the answer is yes, numbers-wise; I am quite sure that the percentage would be very close regardless, based on the data I never put in public as it is not convincing or large enough to back up this claim.
Unless of course you put up a game like GTA V, NieR: Automata, ort any similar where the plebs would flock there instantly. Then the percentages would be devastatingly low thanks to those who run their bots on wishlist-only mode or are specifically on the lookout for expensive games.
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Very interesting read. Quite an effort you expended for this observation. Thanks for sharing :)
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This thread has just confirmed a little while ago that the user base does not read descriptions regardless of level, but how do these actual regions fare? Because, let's face it: all of us have certain preconceptions of some, if not all users who reside in certain regions.
This is not a representative experiment as it only uses four games, but it will give us a relatively decent view of the low-level userbase of each region. I used four games this time:
- Cyber City 2157: The Visual Novel: On often-bundled medium-rated visual novel with cards.
- Hyposphere: A low-rated marble roller with cards.
- Enigmatis: The Ghosts of Maple Creek: A high-rated hidden object game with high bundling rate and cards.
- Enigmatis 2: The Mists of Ravenwood: Bundled to death, but it is often considered the best HOG by Artifex Mundi.
All of these were put up as level 0 region-restricted giveaways for all regions except two: Middle East and India. Both were left out because according to the site stats, the user base from those regions is too small to be worth any viable data.
All of these level 0 public giveaways had some unique greeting and a direct link to another copy of the same game, this time hidden behind an invite-only giveaway. The link was placed obviously and without any masking, so everyone could see what they were.
And this is how the regions fared:
RU/CIS
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 413 | 422 | 425 | 394 |
| Invite | 15 | 17 | 18 | 14 |
| Ratio | 3,6% | 4,0% | 4,2% | 3,6% |
Poland
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 151 | 147 | 161 | 135 |
| Invite | 6 | 9 | 7 | 6 |
| Ratio | 4,0% | 6,1% | 4,3% | 4,4% |
North America
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 126 | 116 | 107 | 95 |
| Invite | 9 | 10 | 8 | 6 |
| Ratio | 7,1% | 8,6% | 7,5% | 6,3% |
South America
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 334 | 357 | 350 | 314 |
| Invite | 3 | 2 | 5 | 2 |
| Ratio | 0,9% | 0,6% | 1,4% | 0,6% |
Southeast Asia
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 83 | 97 | 97 | 89 |
| Invite | 7 | 8 | 12 | 9 |
| Ratio | 8,4% | 8,2% | 12,4% | 10,1% |
China (People's Repuclif of)
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 46 | 93 | 78 | 71 |
| Invite | 2 | 8 | 5 | 5 |
| Ratio | 4,3% | 8,6% | 6,4% | 7,0% |
Taiwan + Hong Kong
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 126 | 165 | 152 | 146 |
| Invite | 11 | 12 | 9 | 9 |
| Ratio | 8,7% | 7,3% | 5,9% | 6,2% |
Turkey
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 76 | 77 | 81 | 72 |
| Invite | 8 | 6 | 6 | 5 |
| Ratio | 10,5% | 7,8% | 7,4% | 6,9% |
Germany
| Cyber City 2157 | Hyposphere | Enigmatis 1 | Enigmatis 2 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Public | 83 | 91 | 98 | 77 |
| Invite | 5 | 5 | 11 | 7 |
| Ratio | 6,0% | 5,5% | 11,2% | 9,1% |
And here is the combined data. It is sorted from highest to lowest ratio, with some additional stuff: how many of the winners showed up as having some kind of infraction on their account (no matter how old), and how many rerolls were made. Don't forget that the pool we are talking about is 8 (+number of rerolls) winners per region.
| Avg. ratio | Rulebreakers | Rerolls | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Southeast Asia | 9,8% | 2 | 0 |
| Turkey | 8,2% | 5 | 3 |
| Germany | 8,0% | 3 | 1 |
| North America | 7,4% | 1 | 0 |
| Taiwan+Hong Kong | 7,0% | 1 | 0 |
| China | 6,7% | 2 | 0 |
| Poland | 4,7% | 4 | 0 |
| RU/CIS | 3,9% | 4 | 2 |
| South America | 0,9% | 3 | 1 |
While it is not a representative experiment by any means, it does give us some interesting insight on some things.
But I guess the biggest surprise for many will be that South America is not only dead last, but by a horrible margin. Sorry amigos y amigas: it may not be a secret that a Ukrainian guy maintains AutoJoin, but it is you who are using it in the absolute undeniably largest percentage.
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Was the description written in Spanish? Could just be a language barrier for South Americans.
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Everything was written in English. Russians and Chinese are actually a lot worse when it comes to English, and so is most of Southeast Asia (where pretty much Singapore alone pulls up the percentage for the region).
If it would be around 4%, I wouldn't be suspicious, but as I stated, the link was there. It showed the same for all regions.
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Yeah, I was expecting numbers for South America to be similar to China and Russia, which is why I thought there might be something else affecting the numbers. I don't know enough about steam player demographics in South America, but when I was in school, the ESL students were mostly South American, not Asian or European (with a few French Canadians mixed in lol). Not saying that's a good representation of the BRIC population, but I think you get the idea.
One other thought that came to mind is, could it be possible that some of the users that clicked through to the private giveaways are alt accounts of people running bot networks for mining games? I mean, even if it's not alt accounts, just having one person tell their friends about the private giveaways could already affect the numbers (assuming they have a lot of friends on SG that are in the same region, which is very likely if you are in China or Russia). Servers in South America are expensive, so less bots/alt accounts. LOL! Just a theory.
Also, on an unrelated note... just thought you should know... English in Singapore isn't as good as you think. They mostly speak Singlish. Not English. Haha! Proficiency in countries like the Philippines is higher, for instance, but most people in SEA outside of Singapore don't buy/play as many games on steam, so you don't see as many of them on SG due to their accounts not being high value enough to even qualify to join.
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Singlish is still good enough in written form and they at least do understand written English pretty well. (Unlike in some other Asian country, where it may be an official language, but good luck conversing online in English…)
By the way, a ton of Indonesians are here as well, and Thailand plus South Korea is actually the most populated representatives of that Steam region on SG. Granted, Korea is more likely dropping that English-speaking ratio. :) (Thais tend to at least manage with very basic English. Due to tourist business, I guess.)
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Where is the SG user stats, by the way? I'm still new to the site.
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Nevermind. I just found the link at the bottom navigation bar.
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Huh. True. Then what Steam region is Korea? Because whenever I see a game excluded from Asia, the Koreas are always on that list.
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Oh, I didn't think South Korea would be lumped in with SEA. Are they? Haha! I thought they would be their own region, much similar to China or Japan. But yes, you're right about Singlish being ok for written English. I have a feeling, though, that a lot of those players from Thailand on SG aren't even "Thai". Haha! Probably a lot of expats skewing the numbers from over there. LOL! South-East Asians, again with the exception of Singaporeans, just aren't buying that many games on steam despite the huge player base. Check out the numbers here: http://steamspy.com/country/
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Look at the average ratio on level 0 in the starting post. Looks like it is SEA that is pushing it up.
I was surprised as well, as I expected NA or GE to be at the top, but it was nice to see at least one region almost reaching two digits in the ratio.
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I somehow missed the original post, and I've yet to read the update on regions. But for the experiment above, did you have some points optimizers, i.e. people entering the hidden giveaway but not the public one to optimize the ratio chance/points consumed ?
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No, I only had people who only entered above a certain level range in the original—although there were level 10 users who entered all 22 giveaways for given games. Since the entry fees were low (10 at max), spending double was still worth it for everyone.
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Some may wonder: "Hey, does that mean that even level 10 guys use auto-entry bots and scripts?!"
The answer is: likely, but it is not that simple.
What about level 8? I'm asking on behalf of this guy ;-)
(obviously please don't call out anyone, this is a general question)
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Yep, there are candidates. You should be able to see the entry list of the giveaways up there, just do a quick check on names who don't appear in the invite-only ones.
On the other hand, keep in mind that my primary suspicion is that they use one-click entry.
Still, considering that the post above more or less proven that South Americans are the biggest bot-users, I think you can combine the two and just have a very high-percentage candidate for a user with high levels and an auto-entry bot.
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Update:
I did a much smaller scale follow-up, this time targeting not levels, but regions. Here is the result:
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/EWTuj/#NpbKEqw
You may have seen that I ran a little experiment to see how entry numbers fare if we post the exact same game from level 0 to level 10, with the same start and end times.
What I didn't tell was that I also hid another experiment in that series. It started several weeks and over two dozen packs in, when people were pretty much getting used to seeing these 11-12 packs on the front page.
This one tried to explore the topic of who reads descriptions a little further than some of the similar known attempts went and it also tried to include several different kind of scenarios. The core was always the same though: when I posted a public pack of these level 0–10 series, I also created a similar series in the same level range, where the links to these hidden giveaways were hidden in their respective public counterparts. And these are the results:
Game #1: The Lords of the Earth Flame
A choose-your-adventure game of average ratings (72% in all languages, 65% with reviews written not in an Eastern European language), trading cards, and bundled only twice.
The link to the invite-only counterparts were posted as direct links in the descriptions. Both series ran in the same time frame.
*4 from level 0, 3 from level 1.
Game #2: Crime Secrets: Crimson Lily
A hidden object game from Artifex Mundi, bundled three times, decent mediocre ratings for a HOG, trading cards.
The hidden counterpart was posted as simple text code that told the unique giveaway ID the users had to paste to their browser's address bars. Both series ran in the same time frame.
*3 from level 0, 6 from level 1.
Game #3: Adam and Eve: The Game - Chapter 1
Bundled seven times, no cards and abysmal ratings (27%), all because it has bad controls (even though the game looks good and something that had effort in it).
The private giveaways were posted as direct links, but they started 20 minutes after the public ones ended and they ran only for 24 hours.
Game #4: Turn Around
Only bundled once in a Groupees Greenlight bundle, has cards, and 45% ratings.
The invite-only counterparts were posted as direct links, but they started the very same second the public ones ended. They ran for 24 hours.
*4 from level 0, 9 from level 1.
Game #5: Sarab: The Dark Tower
An RPGMaker game with no cards, so far 100% ratings, and bundled only once in a random old IndieGala pack.
The private ones were posted as direct links, but they started ten minutes after the public ones ended. They also ran for 24 hours.
*2 from level 0, 6 from level 1.
If you wonder why the ten and twenty minute thing, it is because ten minutes is how long a short-term information is usually stored in the memory and twenty minutes is the average threshold where events there get fuzzy and semi-forgotten already. Or, in other words, it was a small safety device to see who were determined enough to get a second chance at a game.
Now, keep in mind that these are bundle games, mostly of mediocre or worse quality. The numbers won't give a 100% accurate representation of what is expected on this site, but they can also teach us a few things:
Some may wonder: "Hey, does that mean that even level 10 guys use auto-entry bots and scripts?!"
The answer is: likely, but it is not that simple. On the highest level, where entries on the public ones were low enough to check, I did some comparisons between those who were in the second round and those who weren't. I discovered that a hefty portion of the highest level(s) is made up of Chinese and Russians who got there using a nice amount of region-restricted giveaways (on average; some had under 25%, some over 85%). Disregarding of what your opinion is on that subject, in relation to this experiment it also adds one important information: those countries are among the worst when it comes to the percentage of the population who even understands basic English. So the answer may be that they literally had zero idea what was even in the descriptions. (Although it won't exactly explain that if they saw the direct link even in those where the public ones ran in parallel, why didn't they enter there too.)
Before you get the pitchforks: it was not just this two country, based on region-locked wins, there were users from North America or Germany who never discovered the hidden ones as well. And in the case of the former… yeah, sorry, it would take really hard convincing that you are not farming the site with a bot at worst, one-click entries at best.
What's the moral? Not really much. Don't think too much into someone with a high user level, because everyone seems to be, in general, similar on this site, low-level or high-level. There are some differences, naturally, and yes, level 0 and level 1 can mostly be considered a key cemetery if you post something there, but even then, you can see that level 0 is not a never-ending mire of bot-farming leeches, there are some people there as well who care about what you post.
And another moral is that if you want to do some promotion for something other than the posted game itself (your YouTube channel, Twitch channel, Steam group, the latest CS:GO scam you want to jump early in on to be high enough in the pyramid scheme, and so on), don't expect too much reach, no matter on what level you post your giveaway at.
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