Thank you for all the work you've done on this site! Happy holidays ❄️
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User Registration
Probaly do some combined stuff. Value of unbundled games, value of bundled games, registered X years ago, steam-Level Y
Because if someone is lvl 100 thats most likely no alt, independently, of how many games owned.
Maybe playtime and or achievements, but I guess those can be cheated.
Happy holidays and a happy new year.
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This is all really great to hear! I'm happy to see the site continuing to move and to grow. I'm a big fan of being able to give away previously free games, even if I don't get any CV for it. The only caveat there, which I'm sure you're already considering, is informing people when they'll get dramatically reduced/ no CV. Right now it's not too hard, I try to make a giveaway, the game doesn't show up, oh it must have been free before. Without it being that blunt, I can see a lot of tickets being created asking where the user's CV is. I would suggest a preemptive strike on that, simply having a message saying "WARNING: this game has previously been available for free. If you create this giveaway, you will NOT get any credit towards your CV score" or something. Maybe even make it a separate dialogue that the user has to acknowledge before they can create the giveaway.
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I think it is a great idea to allow giveaways for games that have been free, but only if done in a way that does not add anything to the giveaway creators account. I think the ability to give away free games should just be used as a way to give them away in a fair way without having to drop the key in the community forum and let a ninja or bot take it.
I think when someone creates a giveaway for a free game, there should be a little warning message saying that this game has been free in the past and you will not receive any credit for giving it away. I think the giveaway creator should not receive any CV and they should also not receive an increase in the number of giveaways they created.
I realize this sounds harsh, but I feel this way because if you allow them to increase the number of giveaways they have created with free games, people will farm the free giveaways just to increase their number so it looks like they give more. This farming will cause the free giveaway promotions to run out of keys early and a lot of people that actually want the game will not be able to get a free copy for themselves.
Edit: I also think there should be no value won added to the winners account in any way. You can show the giveaway on both the creator and winners sent and won page for future reference, but with 0 CV and no increase in the number of giveaways sent or won.
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Sounds fantastic, I've been wishing I could donate monetarily to the site for years!
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All good things to hear about.
Regarding the ability to giveaway free games, it's a decent idea but I can already tell that allowing for giveaways of games that are currently free would cause, if no feature is implemented to avoid it:
For the second issue, perhaps a feature insuring that it is clear that no CV will be earned from creating a giveaway should be in place. A huge-ass message or something sounds suitable. Also, I would strongly suggest not allowing giveaways for a game that is currently free during the giveaway/promo. Of course, that's only my personal opinion, just throwing a few ideas out there.
Thanks for the cheers, update and hard work throughout the year, cg.
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I'd just rather have the option to hide them automatically rather than manually, if possible.
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Happy holidays and merry Christmas!
First of all congratulations and thanks for all the good job cg and all the collaborators!
Regarding the User Registration challenge/problem, I think it's very important to keep it strict to avoid multiple accounts and bots. After looking at the stats page that is linked in the OP, I am amazed that over %80 of users are level 0, which means they haven't made a single giveaway. That's very meaningful IMO for a site like this focused on making giveaways.
If you want more people to register so that they can participate in forums and start making and entering giveaways, I came up with this idea: lower/eliminate the requirements to register, BUT keep the requirement to enter giveaways, so that they can't enter GAs until:
1) They fulfil the requirements later on.
OR
2) Their PUBLIC given CV > won CV
This way you let people in but make registering with multiple accounts useless.
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User Registration
I think it is fine as it is. It's a shame that there would be many nice people who can not currently access giveaways but I think it is very easy to purchase non bundled games on sale and there are plenty of people who simply don't care for the rules that are making it through. You could make it easier by providing a list of non bundled games currently on sale upon an account registration failure. I'm not sure what message people are receiving when they don't pass atm.
Another idea would be to allow them access to the "previously free games" section only with a lower account value. They could then gain access to the rest upon reaching the correct account value or by contributing a certain amount of giveaways for games that have not been free.
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Merry Christmas to you and yours. I'm glad the site is doing so well. Just because a thing is difficult, does not mean it is not worth doing.
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Firstly - happy holidays and a great new year to you and everybody else!
Secondly, and with regards to giveaways for previously free games. For me the biggest issue with giveaways of free games is not CV, ratio, etc. It is simply that, as you say, it is unfortunate that users miss those opportunities. And the main reason for that is the users that horde multiple keys from any giveaway seeking to exploit them. I'm already pissed off about such giveaways often running out of keys before I get a chance to grab one. It wouldn't make me much happier to be able to enter giveaways from folks who grabbed 30 keys each, denying me a key in the process, just for a small chance at winning a key that might benefit them.
With regards to user registration the site appears to already be far too lenient. From making a number of low level public giveaways recently I've gotten a number of users perma-banned for large numbers of unactivated wins. And through looking through their friends lists it's pretty clear that the site is being farmed of large numbers of games by a small number of users who can take it in their stride when each of their alt accounts can grab 20, 30 or more games before being booted.
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Happy Holidays!
and thanks for all the big efforts!
Always the first webpage I go to... every day!
:)
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These news are really great! I would like to say "thank you" for all the community and the admins for being so awesome this year - let's keep it up in 2017!
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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!
❄❄❄
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