Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, thank you for this beautiful site, cheers :3
Comment has been collapsed.
I can't find anywhere confirmed information about topic: is level requirement in GA settings applied to whitelisted or not?
If it is applied, it would be nice to change the system so, that it would not. Example of why it would be great:
Public groups could create group GAs with level requirement (for obvious reason, to filter out people who doesn't give away), but with possibility to add to GA some list of people who known to has low CL, but is a regular member of a group or deserves taking part in GAs in any other reasons (depending on group purpose/mechanics).
It shouldn't bring harm, as anyway people are usually adding either some nice people (who was polite, helpful etc.) or generous people, who deserves wider access to giveaways (they have anyway big CL)
If CL requirement is already discarded for Whitelist, please comment with reply.
Comment has been collapsed.
Level requirement is applied to WL GAs as well.
To counter your argument it may also go other way around. Someone may be WLing not only high contributors but also all other ppl for whatever reasons fe feels like. Maybe he like chatting with them, maybe they are nice or helpful, maybe they have funny avatar and maybe they wrote in his WL topic. Nonetheless he may decide that some big good new AAA game should go rather to ppl who also contributes GAs to the community and thus he may wish to only give it away to someone who is BOTH on his WL AND lvl X+.
Comment has been collapsed.
Thank you for sharing with us. I look forward to watching your progress.
Comment has been collapsed.
Happy Holidays, cg!
Just to share my humble opinion:
Ability to make a giveaway for free game is a good thing. But I think those should not give any CV at all, to prevent abuse. And maybe even don't counted in a number of giveaways user made, if possible. This way generous gifters will be able to share the game to those who missed massive giveaways in the past, but it will keep abusers away.
Registration requirements are a hard question indeed. I would say it's too easy even now, because from looking how many people violate the rules one may think they don't appreciate their membership at all. On the other hand, some good people can't register just because they are poor, and this is bad, because giving to a poor is very good thing. One of the solutions may be invite system in addition to the current system. But it should be strict, to prevent abuse. Let me tell you how I see it:
I hope that this way people will invite only their fiends, and make sure to tell them the rules. Also, because there is no advantage for inviter - it will not be refferal system, and this will help to avoid spam with invites. And people who have enough games on account can join without invites, as before.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's a good point, but if it will be handled automatically it would be even better, isn't it?
Comment has been collapsed.
No, it happens because it's not handled at all. When steam changes something - SG just takes new data. Situations where steam returns incorrect data are not handled. And this can be handled by some rules:
Comment has been collapsed.
Just trust me, point 2 happens, and quite often. My level on sg changes from 7.3 to 3.5 without any actions from my side - this should not be this way. And if now it is just a fluctuations inside same level, I remember quite good getting next level without doing any giveaways and then falling back to previous level. It's even strange you never noticed it.
And yes, it's a legacy design choices, and this needs to be revised, that's why I was writing about it. It even can be that cg already have it in his todo list, who knows)
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, if fixing this does not require html parsing - that's even better)
Comment has been collapsed.
cg stated that problem is that not enough ppl can join website, that because of increasing bundle list # of new monthly users dropped a lot. And he looks for an idea to again bring more users in without allowing multiaccounts. But in general he looks for a way to bring more ppl in. Your invite idea would do the opposite, it would DRAMATICALLY cut down users. Even if just with invite system, without any additions, many ppl will not waste time to look for invites, many ppl will not know anyone from community, many SG users will not bother sending invites at all. And if we add another idea that inviter gets punished for invitee crimes it would basically almost kill any new blood from coming to SG ever. I mean I personally know maybe 2 or 3 people TOTAL that I would trust enough to bring them in and risk suspension if they do sth wrong. Most ppl wouldn't bother at all taking any risk such as that and would never invite anyone.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, I probably should state it more visible - I don't suggest to remove current system, invite system should be a bypass of this system, to let good people without enough games on steam account to join the site. The usual way should stay too.
UPD. I tried to fix my post to make note of this. Thank you!
Comment has been collapsed.
oh ok then, then it's a valid suggestion. I still prefer a simple idea of copying Bundle-Value system (15% of Value for bundle game and 0$ Value for free game), but if your system leaves current system + invites it's a valid counterproposition ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
there are hundreds of thousands of registered users plus users who tried to register but didn't have 100$ value. There are "only" few tens tops of active and semi-active users and big chunk of them are just lurkers/enterers who don't bother contacting support at all. But yeah - even then 5 support members to work through tickets from "only" few tohusands active users who write tickets is still not nearly enough.
Comment has been collapsed.
You've done great work so far. I look forward to the improvements that are yet to come. Good Luck and thank you for your dedication towards providing us a better experience. :D
Comment has been collapsed.
For user registration, what about a one-time bundle status forgiveness for the purpose of registration? Pick a date some number of months in the past, and let those games before that date qualify for the $100 needed to register. It's not likely that there are tons of accounts/unused keys lying in wait, and some of those games haven't been bundled again for years.
Comment has been collapsed.
Happy Holidays and thanks to you and all the staff that make so great SG! ^^
Comment has been collapsed.
Happy Holidays, cg!
These all sound like great suggestions. I'm hoping you'll consider another one that hopefully wouldn't be too hard to implement? Because sometimes the small things can make a huge difference!
I'd really like to see the GA creation page allow a wider range of gift links. HumbleBundle links are great but could we also have HumbleBundle store gift links added? Indiegala also makes up a significant portion of bundle games given away here and they have established gift-link format as well.
It would also be nice to be able to set a standard message in the key field at GA time that says "sent by email" or something to that effect.
Thanks again for all you do for us!
Comment has been collapsed.
as for your second suggestion - you already can do it and I already do it for months ;p write in key section "sent-via-steam" or "sent-via-mail" and it will work ;p Allowing users to write anything there is no go, because then ppl could make fake GAs just to post link to phishing stuff for example.
Comment has been collapsed.
I know you can write it in, I was thinking an option to click that put a pre-formatted message to that effect would be nice. No typing, and it could use localization to appear in other languages. :)
Comment has been collapsed.
A suggestion for users registration could be:
putting a less strict rule for account's value but a % limit of free games possesed;
or a less strict rule for account's value but adding a minimum average value of the games possessed.
Anyway, thank you so much CG for all your hard work and dedication to this site. It's only because of you that this community (that now, at this moment, is so huge) was born (and also because of the support members that was also raised). So thank you, thank you and thank you. Oh, and Merry Christmas ❄
Comment has been collapsed.
662 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by MeguminShiro
17 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by jh82
10 Comments - Last post 2 hours ago by Sooth
27 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by PhilBlank
66 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by DeltaBladeX
25 Comments - Last post 4 hours ago by Mayanaise
3 Comments - Last post 5 hours ago by intexus
46 Comments - Last post 5 seconds ago by Centera
8,119 Comments - Last post 4 minutes ago by SpiderDen
18 Comments - Last post 9 minutes ago by aquatorrent
38 Comments - Last post 30 minutes ago by LordDarkness
109 Comments - Last post 51 minutes ago by Zlia
274 Comments - Last post 55 minutes ago by edsloter
1,203 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by PoeticKatana
❄❄❄
Hey SG, happy holidays, I hope everyone is having a great weekend! It's been a good year for SteamGifts, and we've seen a lot of growth in terms of giveaways. Although there's still a week remaining, I think this December might turn into our highest month on record for giveaway activity, averaging over 3,300 giveaways per day. However, we still have room to improve, and I'd like to see a few changes to our site in early 2017. I'll talk about a few of those now, and I look forward to the community feedback before I start implementing any of them.
Plans
Support
There's been a number of discussions lately asking why tickets are taking longer to answer, and users wondering why we have not yet expanded our team of volunteers to help with the demand. I'm aware of the need for more support, and it's going to be my highest priority going into 2017. The issue with simply expanding our team is the lack of documentation for the wide variety of tickets and edge cases new team members would face. Consistency is an area we still struggle with today when answering tickets. The majority of tickets we face are not simply black and white, and even the most basic of questions, such as, "What's considered an inappropriate comment?", can be a challenge to answer and moderate consistently. I'm in the process of improving our documentation with the help of our volunteers, and writing a set of standard operating procedures to help guide us when answering tickets. Once finished, we'll be able to more efficiently add new members to our team, bring them up to speed faster, and be more confident when handling tickets. Personally, I'd like to see another 5-10 users join our team early 2017, and then further expand again in the months that follow.
Allowing Giveaways for Previously Free Games
I've seen this suggestion show up a few times in the discussions section, and it's one I'd like to implement. As you know, when a game is free, we typically pull it from our game list. This means if a developer briefly distributes their game for free, or if a user gives away thousands of keys on another site, the corresponding game can no longer be given away on SteamGifts. At the moment, it's unfortunate for users that miss those opportunities, since our site does not provide them with a second chance to obtain a copy of the game. We also receive quite a few tickets from users with previously free games, that simply want to find them a home. I'd like to change the way we look at those games in the future, and allow users to give them away with a highly reduced CV, or no CV. I think it'll provide users with more flexibility in terms of what they give away, and it'll provide everyone with a chance to win some great games we've unfortunately removed from our game list.
Notifications
I think e-mail notifications will be a good method of increasing overall engagement on our site in the upcoming year. They could provide users with the option to be notified when games on their wishlist are being given away, or when featured giveaways are posted for games they don't own. Notifications would be easy to subscribe or unsubscribe to with a single click, and not only would they help to grow our site, I think they would be a valuable tool for less active users that don't have the time to check our site daily.
Patreon
This is one idea I go back and forth on frequently, but you might see it tested in 2017. The idea is simple; replace our advertisements with a Patreon page to raise donations. I think the concept of being directly funded by our users would better fit with the spirit of our community, and it would help to separate us from advertising networks, which grow more invasive on a regular basis. If we do ever implement a donation system, it would be entirely optional, and no giveaway or point advantages would ever come to those that donate.
Challenges
User Registration
Looking at our stats, it's easy to see we have less users registering per month, and you might assume this means a drop in activity. However, that's not the case. Our bundle list grows daily, and since we exclude bundle games when calculating registration value, it's becoming more and more difficult for new users to register. It's normal for us to see 75% of users unable to register on a typical day. This is a difficult problem to solve. On one hand we need strict requirements to protect our community against users signing up multiple accounts, and on the other hand, we don't want to block hundreds of legitimate users from registering each day. If anyone has any thoughts on improving this system, please share.
Infrastructure
If you've been a member for a few years, you likely remember the days of slow load times and frequent downtime. We've come a long way since then, and I think in 2016 our site has been reliable and responsive. There's been quite a few updates focused on improving performance during the past year. As well, we have a good backup solution in place with our daily, client-side encrypted backups being stored outside of our servers. Last but not least, we have room to grow. We could likely double our traffic with our current Infrastructure, and reach 5x or 10x our traffic with 20 minutes of downtime to scale our database server. Overall, I think it's one area we're finally doing well.
Thanks to everyone for being a part of SteamGifts this year, and a special thanks to our volunteers for answering tickets and helping to support our community!
❄❄❄
Comment has been collapsed.