Remove the freebie from your account under your list of licences: https://store.steampowered.com/account/licenses/
It will likely show up as a "complimentary", which you can click on remove. (All freebies can be removed in this manner - games, dlc, etc).
You should then be able to see it in your giveaways list.
I personally can't think of any games this affects where my suggestion doesn't work. As far as I'm aware, this only affects chapter-based games that you have downloaded the first chapter or portion for free. I believe this affected other games like Life Is Strange for example.
As for implementing this fix on SG - it just won't happen.
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Would removing Hitman 2 from my account cause me to lose access to the legacy DLCs that having Hitman 2016 automatically added to Hitman 2? I mean if I later reverse the process and add Hitman 2 back to my account through the licenses page (you can do that, right?) I would still have those DLCs?
What I'm trying to make sure is that I wouldn't lose those DLCs permanently by doing this.
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After removing the free starter pack, it doesn't seem to have any effect on the DLCs because those are each their own separate license.
So this does seem to be completely safe.
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Games that are owned by people, and only played through free trial over the weekend are reported as the same appID by SteamAPI. So it's not possible to distinguish between them. If you'd allow people to enter in Hitman 2 (because 1st episode is free) - everyone who owns full game would also be able to enter.
Would be easier if developers would release 1st episode as DEMO with different appID - it would be possible to track it. But right now it's not. Same as Tumblestone giveaways. Base game is F2P and full version is treated as DLC. But both owners of full game and trial version are reported by SteamAPI as owning the same appID.
There is no fix to this problem other than manually removing trial / 1st episode from your account. Same as there is no fix to not being able to enter in DLC giveaways for games with "Profile Features Limited" tag on Steam.
It could be added to FAQ, but we'd need to wait for it. Recently we updated guidelines and it took months to complete. And this kind of Steam-side changes are random, so point about "profile features limited" for example could get outdated literally few days after it's updated. And FAQ is updated every few months from what I remember. So outdated information would be visible for months to users that check it. And yes, site admin is only one that can make changes, and they may not have time to check if Steam changed something to update it fast.
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Thanks for the detailed answers. That explains a lot.
I had thought that the main package for the app id being "free" (sites like steamdb even list the price for the game as free) might be a way of detecting games which do this. Sounds like that wouldn't work though. It's just too bad Steam doesn't make distinctions for things like that.
I didn't realize updating the faq was that big of a process, but that makes sense now.
If something about this ever does get added to the faq, it might also help if it answered the question I asked Mayanaise about whether you lose automatically-added DLCs forever when removing a game with a free trial.
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I had thought that the main package for the app id being "free" (sites like steamdb even list the price for the game as free) might be a way of detecting games which do this.
Hitman 2 - is a free "game demo" of 1st level. When you activate it you will have appID 863550 in your libray, but no DLCs.
Hitman 2 GOLD - is a package that contains "demo" level and rest of the game (and by "rest of the game" I mean individual levels that count as DLC for Steam). When you actiavte it you will have appID 863550 in your library plus DLC.
But Steam does not report owned DLCs in any way (there are few games that are exceptions). Only way to check if you have DLC is to have you in friends on Steam, and try to buy said DLC for you. And SG can't have "everyone" on some bot friend list, and bombard Steam servers with request to buy DLC every time user enters DLC. Or sync account.
If Steam would have some order in how they do things. Like they created separate "soundtrack" category to stop treat OST as DLC for game (which meant that you had to own base game to buy OST, even when you may not care for game, but love soundtrack):
Or if they'd add "DLC" tab on profile and list there all DLCs. Then it would be possible to track when user has 1st episode, and when whole game.
If something about this ever does get added to the faq, it might also help if it answered the question I asked Mayanaise about whether you lose automatically-added DLCs forever when removing a game with a free trial.
Honestly no idea. I never even thought about situation like that. And I do't have any free games with DLCs to check it.
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It really is too bad Steam is so screwy in that regard.
Honestly no idea. I never even thought about situation like that. And I do't have any free games with DLCs to check it.
I can now confirm that DLCs are separate licenses, which aren't effected by removing the demo license. Even with the demo license removed nothing else went away from my licenses list, and I can enter for the game again.
In case it's ever helpful for the faq, I think the only way DLCs could ever be effected by removing a trial or demo license is if DLCs themselves were somehow included with the demo license itself.
Which would probably never happen in the first place because it wouldn't make much sense for a dev to do that. And it would also mean if the demo license was re-added to an account, the DLCs with that license would also come back with it.
Hopefully that made sense, lol.
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For example:
I've realized that Hitman 2 counts as "owned" on my account even though I never bought it, just played some of the free starter pack.
I'm sure there's other games which do something like that too.
Problems it causes:
That means you can't enter for that game of course.
Besides that, I always have "Hide games you own" on, but that means I can't see Hitman 2 giveaways even if I specifically search for giveaways with its app id.
I don't want to turn "hide owned games" off. But I do want to be able to see and enter giveaways for Hitman 2.
The faq and guideline don't say anything about this kind of situation.
It is kind of unusual, but a significant problem if someone runs into it. Also over time it's likely more games are going to end up doing something like that so it will end up affecting more people.
Suggestion:
Ideally, I'd suggest there being a list of games which get marked as "owned" for checking out a free trial. And games on that list are treated differently. (Like there's at least an option for them show up even with "hide owned games" on, and allow people to enter.)
Lists of games with unusual properties are already kept track of here (profile limited, and removed games which no longer add to game count have to be tracked I'm pretty sure), so that wouldn't be all that different than what already happens.
But at the least, it would be helpful if there was some kind of mention in the guidelines to tell people what to do about something like that. I'm sure plenty of people don't even realize these games are being hidden automatically with hide owned games turned on.
Myself, I had no idea at all until today that Hitman 2 giveaways weren't showing up for me. I had just thought no one gives that game away, ever.
The only reason I found out that it was happening is because I happened to see it in a group giveway on the group's giveaway page, which doesn't hide owned games. Otherwise I never would have known.
I wonder how many other games that's happening and I don't even know it. And the same thing has to be happening to other people too and they don't even have any idea.
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