What would be the best way to deal with this issue?
I don't see the issue..
Quite literarily too, i use site option to hide dlc that i don't own base game for since i can't enter them anyway
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It would be interesting to know, how many SG members use this option. I personally know about it, but don't use it, because it would prevent me from seeing GAs for DLCs for free games, that I have not yet added to my library, but may be interested in. Most users are likely not even aware of this possibility, though (which probably will not be the case among those, that read this thread).
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Most users are likely not even aware of this possibility
Really? I'm surprised if that's the case. Me, I've used the "Hide DLCs for unowned games" option since the very beginning. I'm rarely interested in DLCs for the games I do own, let alone for those I don't :D
Though you have a fair point there about DLCs for free games.
That said, if mass DLC giveaways by some individuals are becoming a problem, I'd say deal with them on an individual basis, based on their previous giveaways ;)
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+1, no interest in DLC for games I don't even own lol
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this obviously gives him an unwarranted high visibility on the webpage
It's not so sure. In my opinion, most users have the "Hide DLC if you're missing the base game" setting enabled and therefore do not see these DLCs.
Edit: It seems I'm too slow to reply before others... lol
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same as the previous three posters, I also hide DLCs for games I don't own.
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I prefer to manually hide items. You don't see the item ever again after that.
I don't see any issue with allowing pointless bulk giveaways, to me it's just treated like another crappy game that's gonna be hidden with a click.
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It's not really directly at our cost.
I simply put creators of such GAs on my ignored list.
It is however at the cost of devs giving away real stuff to get the exposure and promote their games. Indirectly it can affect all of us, possibly discouraging them from making meaningful GA.
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“Meaningful” giveaways. I have over 13000 giveaways filtered out.
Don’t blame steamgifts, blame Steam for the pile of crap that’s on there.
Complaining about a few giveaways is a waste of breath.
Filtering out the crap will inevitably only show the good stuff
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At one point I reported a game that was being used by it creator to abuse the CV system by raising the price of the DLCs.
There were many DLCS and on steam the price was set to to two hundred dollars($199.99) or more for each and the base game plus all DLCs were being sold for pennies on Russian crappy sites.
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So your complaint isn't about DLCs, it's about dev's/user's abuse of the system to garner CV.
Yep, there's blatant "bulk" abuse. But also think of those people who "write reviews to get free games" bullshit. They often get more than one key, and fob them off onto SG, and that also inflates their level here on SG, for free. If your complaint is about levels/CV, then the practice I just mention is also unfair to normal users. If you want to mete out justice, sweet as, be the SG social justice warrior. Your other choice is to concentrate on not worrying about it (blacklists work, if you really think they're here to win games (a lot of them aren't).
Most of the time my giveaways list is less than a page, and at most 3 pages long, so neither DLC, nor featured games really factor into "being more visible" in my opinion. I used to care more, but when you start looking at it more closely, you start condemning more people than you had initially intended. Peace.
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Your other choice is to concentrate on not worrying about it
Being a practical son-of-a-bitch with better things to do, I often find this the best option.
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I agree that that kind of GAs can be annoying and I wouldn't mind if something was done about it, but like others have said, I think the easiest thing to do is to hide DLCs for unowned games.
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Just use the search to see all 50+ copies giveaways at once instead of ever having to look at the featured ones.
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I don't see the problem there, because I hide use the "Hide DLC if you're missing the base game" setting.
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Hmm... depending on how he exploit the loophole, it can be a problem. If we take in consideration that he/she is promoting a game developed by him/her is free advertising to begin with, and for what i understand from the rules, this should not be allowed. But what i believe it's a higher risk somehow, is that even if cheap, those DLCs have a cost, so they will be adding points to the GA maker, maybe just a few, but points after all, that with MANY Giveaways eventually will get a higher lvl on SG (if that didn't happened already), which will put him/her person in the position to enter high level GAs, just for giving away crappy DLCs (or perhaps no, but still not fair), and also it will increase his/her ratio in a HUGE way, because giving away 300 copies of DLCs will allow him/her the chance to win 300 games (of course highly doubt that could happen at least in a short period of time) before getting a 1:1 ratio. So basically that person should have 300:1 ratio taking in account to what OP says ratio, which somehow mean is cheating the system
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If we take in consideration that he/she is promoting a game developed by him/her is free advertising to begin with, and for what i understand from the rules, this should not be allowed.
It's always been allowed, and even encouraged, that developers make giveaways for their games here.
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You are right, my bad SG encourage developers but my concern remains.
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Exactly... and the abuse like in the example, if allowed to spread, is very likely to actually discourage developers from making meaningful GAs here. Why should they give real games away, if someone pretending to give away a huge number of copies of a junk DLC will get more promotional exposure, than them?
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from FAQ
After you give away a game 5 times (whether in the same giveaway, or in multiple giveaways), it will begin decreasing in value. The value is decreased by 10% for each additional copy. This means if you decide to give away 8 copies of a $10 game, it would add $74.39 (10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 9 + 8.10 + 7.29) to your contributor value. This has little effect on the majority of users, but prevents individuals from receiving a high contributor value from gifting a large number of promotional gifts, games obtained through pricing errors, or keys from contacting game developers.
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True but even if he earns 1.2 pts for each copy after 300 it would still have been getting LOTS OF POINTS. So i get what u said but i still believe it's somehow exploiting a loophole in the rules. For avoid that rules should be more specific regarding DLCs and also ratio for massive GA and stuff.
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You get CV for giveaways not points. Everyone gets the same amount of 6 points every 15 mins. After ~50 copies you barely get any CV anymore. In sum even with 300 giveaways you'll only get the CV for 14 copies.
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You still don't get my point i see. If you do 50 giveaways, even with no CV at all you would still get a 50 GA count that will modify your ratio. Now, when i said points, i thought that was clear i was talking about CV, what other points would i'll be talking about if not. And last but not least, even if you get 1CV per copy, after hundreds of copies you will end up with lot more of CV POINTS. Anyway, this is one of those situations were you gotta agree that we disagree on the pov of the other. Unless ofc you wanna keep discussing it until one of us change the way he think :P
Have a good day bro :)
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You're right I misunderstood you. For me ratio is always CV sent / CV won and not number sent / number won which you can of course also take as ratio.
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finally we getting somewhere haha. YES!
CV is Contribution Value meaning it will depend on the quality of the GA (aka expensive AAA will give more CV than cheap indie ones. Ofc there are exceptions as with everything), while RATIO depends on quantity of games given and won. So if you won 1 GA and made 2 GA then your ratio would be 2:1
So... THAT is what they can exploit with cheap DLCs making his ratio skyrocket and be 300:1 or even more ^^
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while RATIO depends on quantity of games given and won
No, not always. Many people use CV sent and CV won to determine someone's ratio (for instance, groups often use it). People here have become too used to those who hide their poor CV ratio behind a better won:sent ratio.
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Yes, always. CV means CV and that is what i've said, games given and games won. Now that people might hide this or no, it doesn't change how the system will detect you when you enter a GA even using sgtools which work exactly like i've just said. Different thing is if some people start creating more complex filters but most are too lazy to do that, so we end up just doing it with basic filter or not at all, which in conclusion will mean real CV, which in terms of giving 500 games and winning 1 will mean 500:1 ratio.
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You do realize there are two different ratios possible on this site, right?
Some people (and groups) use won:sent and some use real cv won:real cv sent.
I'm assuming some language barrier here, because it's pretty common knowledge.
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CV and real CV ratio are the same system, it only changes the real price of games, not the count of GA won and sent, therefore ratio would still be the same
Easy example :
you give away 4 games that each copy costed $30 but it actually costed you $10. And after that you won 2 games that presumably costed $30 but they actually costed $10
So... your ratio is 4:2 (won/sent) right? then you will have CV $120/$60 / Real CV $40/$60
Which in real terms would mean you won more than you give, but your RATIO would still be 4:2 no matter what
I did not mentioned even once that individual people, or groups could not make filters with sgtools to prevent them joining, i've only stated that SG system will not take in account that type of ratio (CV ratio) but it will take in account RATIO per se.
I assume the same thing, we have some sort of language barrier here, because it's pretty common knowledge that RATIO is not CV ratio.
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There are two different ratios people use on SG.
There is a won:sent ratio.
There is a real CV ratio.
If you just say ratio, one could assume you mean either of them.
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My bad, i thought that was clear that RATIO is RATIO and CV RATIO is CV RATIO.
For what i can tell basically you are not reading what i'm saying , or you want to be right.
Anyway, this is one of those situations were you gotta agree that we disagree on the pov of the other. I'm done explaining myself saying again all the same.
Have a great day/night bro :)
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Yes, obviously he is exploiting a loophole in the rules.
And to be direct, yes it is annoying for the ones that don't hide DLC's for unowned games.
I have them not hidden to find from time to time interesting games or people that grab somewhere 8 copies from free stuff, that are given only 1x for each account, and want to jump at my BL because of that fact.
But i don't think that the sg support will do something against it because they aren't enough, aren't enough motivated, aren't enough active and they have a lot of other stuff that are much more important.
So i would bet that nothing happen after your ticket. Besides that you wait long 8 months of course.
I reported in the past the worst examples of exploiting such stuff. Because other Devs give their cents game away, a few cheap DLCs and then high priced DLC's. 10$, 25$, 50$, 75$ and/or 100$. They cheat themself then at high levels and sell the DLCs for cheap at other sites, so other people cheat themself high levels with them too.
The support go against such behavior with a "reduced cv" or "no cv" change, as soon as you make them attentive at such stuff.
Please don't take my words in any form against the support members as persons, a lot of them are at my whitelist as a little sign of appreciation for their work and invested time (+ be friendly people). But i am too long at sg and saw too much important stuff that aren't done to be in high hopes at such "little" stuff.
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I feel like it'll be better to just prevent obvious dev accounts from entering giveaways. They can do it via their personal accounts should they wish to try their luck unless they abuse dev keys on those as well. Then I feel like they should at least be warned not to do such things or have their giveaway CV hardcapped to the first 5-10 gifts per game on said accounts..It just doesn't feel fair for 'devs' who abuse obviously overpriced selfmade games/DLCs to gain CV just to enter lvl 8-10 giveaways.
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Exactly my point. But apparently is not against rules, guess nobody understand the meaning of "loophole" in the rules lol
So basically what i should do is make one of those cringy 2 cents games get steam approval then start making massive giveaways for keys that will promote my crappy game and in the meantime my ratio will sky rocket in the process so i would no need to worry about low ratio anymore xD.
Edit: oh and i almost forgot that i would still get some CV from it as well before it reach the no CV barrier (?
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Don't think there's a no CV barrier, just that only the first 5 will get normal/reduced CV and the rest will get reduced/even further reduced CV. Why I kinda want them to at least add a hard CV per game cap for 'devs'. So even if they did abuse, it'll only go so far. Though I guess giving away $100+ each 'game'/'DLC' will counter it, in which then I feel said 'devs' should just be perma suspended for abuse.
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CV reduces by 10% per copy over 5 copies. At a point, it becomes fractions of a penny per copy, thus negligible for all intents and purposes.
Though I guess giving away $100+ each 'game'/'DLC' will counter it
In a case such as this, you'd contact support. They will investigate and either reduce CV or eliminate it altogether for particular products as they feel appropriate.
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That's the problem, we should no need to contact support for things like this, it should be already stated in the rules.You saying "as they feel appropriate" it actually worry me even more, because without established rules me as a mod can decide who is breaking the rules and who doesn't and if you are my friend i might let you pass because we are buddies you know.
Which all this ends in a corrupt circle. No thanks. Clear rules keep friendship and make boundaries more visible so people don't try to jump them without suffering the consequences.
Last but not least... even if they get less then a penny, or fractions, or whatever they get, they still get something, and we are talking of massive GA. So in the end, it will end up with lot of CV accumulated for doing that if nobody contacts support, but the biggest issue here isn't CV, but ratio, which i've already explained too many times already.
Have a nice day.
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it should be already stated in the rules
It has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.
even if they get less then a penny, or fractions, or whatever they get, they still get something
Not if you do your due diligence as a Steamgifts user and contact support when you observe someone abusing the system.
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I get what you mean, but even if they handle it case-by-case there should be some sort of standard rule regarding this and then be dealt that way.
Regarding the last point, i agree that SG users should do their diligence. If i see a user exploiting the system like this i would certainly be contacting support as it should by everybody, but the thing is most of the SG users will not do it, they will just ignore that, thinking it's only some dev spamming crappy DLC, and then hide them and maybe just maybe perhaps BL the person and that's it
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Like many have said I also hide DLC for games I don't own so it doesn't really affect me personally but I can't see how it could be annoying for others.
I guess the ones that would be the most hurt by that would be the developers promoting their own game without giving away an huge amount of key but people still see them so I don't know that it's a huge issue and beside I really can't think of a solution that SG could implement without being unfair to people who use the feature giveaway properly.
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Aye. This is pretty much how I see it.
Although, it's not about it being annoying to be honest. If someone is giving away 1000 copies of a trash DLC for a mediocre game that no one actually owns, they're essentially getting free advertising. New users, people who are not logged in, and people who are just browsing the site are probably a pretty big number for a site of this size, so it's working for them.
In the short term, that's not hurting SG, but in the long term, it probably is. If more catch on to this loophole, all they have to do is create some basic cosmetic DLC for their games, give it a fancy name and give away 1000 copies. They're not going to care if they only get 10 entries, so long as they've gotten those clicks to their store page.
With those hogging the space at the top of the forum, it might deter honest developers from giving away 50 or 100 copies of a game that people might actually want to try. At the end of the day, the ones giving away legit copies of their games are paying for their advertising by giving to the community. The ones giving away shitty DLCs are not. =)
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You're right if more people do the same it could become a real problem. It's really tricky though, I can't imagine how they could solve it baring not featuring DLC giveaways and that would really be too bad for honest people who want to share some legit giveaways.
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Considering how valuable DLC giveaways are [due to their scarcity, both in bundles and in giveaways in general] the few decent high-quantity DLC giveaways we've had have been more "worthy" of their featured position than most of the base games up there. Beyond that, the argument is that one can inflate prominence via copies they don't intend to deliver, but that's not really too different from spamming trashy base games you do intend to deliver.
SG has never done anything about the latter, either, and it'd be weirdly biased against DLCs to focus on them alone.All the more so considering that, as others have noted, dubious quality DLCs are usually far less of an issue to the typical SG user [due to easily being able to hide those for unowned base games en mass] than dubious quality base games are.
Well, if we really think it enough of an issue, cg could implement something complicated, such as
"50+ DLCs are only featured with prior staff approval; Approval is guaranteed for any DLC which has previously been bundled, has a number of positive reviews on Steam exceeding the quantity desired for the DLC giveaway, or has given away an equal or greater amount of the base game on SG."
/
That all said, even though the underlying issue may not be that significant, staff allowing a 10,000 copy giveaway of anything without properly vetting the merits of it still remains something of an issue. That really should not be happening. Even an AAA base game shouldn't be given that much freedom without proper vetting, considering the inherent dubiousness of 10,000 copies. Which raises the question: Who is giving out that many giveaway slots without putting any thought into the matter?
So no- at a glance, this [current, specific matter] seems to mostly boil down to a matter of improper staff behavior and weak staff oversight, rather than an issue with underlying systems. There are so many better ways this could have been handled within the framework of the current system, and it's clear the publisher in question couldn't have accomplished anything of note on the topic without a staff member first carelessly paving the way for them.
Beyond that, as I said, if there are still issues, they can be addressed by careful consideration of the underlying systems and how 50+ giveaways are handled. There's just no clear justification at this point for arbitrarily targetting DLCs for outright exclusion as a solution to the matter.
/
Well, as one off-hand solution, cg could just give publishers a preset, non-variable X number of slots to begin with [versus the current "ask for whatever you want and hope you get a staff member who doesn't give a spit about the matter"], and then change it so that any unclaimed keys on 50+ giveaways are considered as Not Received (solely in the sense of lowering available giveaway slots). Then it'd self-manage itself, perhaps?
After all, if they're getting enough Receiveds, then their overall slots will continue to increase, so it shouldn't inhibit legitimate publishers any. And special exceptions could still be made, when necessary- but strictly, rather than the current "Why do we even bother having this be run by staff to begin with?" arrangement.
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All good ideas, I guess the problem is that it would require more of the staff time which seem to be already stretched to the limit looking at how long some of the ticket take to get resolved. I imagine they could always add more staff which would be helpful either way, honestly I'm not quite sure why they haven't already since they seemed to be pretty swamped with the existing work already. Although I'm sure I don't everything that happens "behind the curtain" so they probably have their reasons...
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Well yes, DLCs for the games I don't own in featured section are somehow annoying. And no, hiding all giveaways with DLCs from the games I don't know is not a great option too, because that would also hide DLCs from games with profile features limited (or others not detected by SG for any reason). I would prefer an option to show in "featured" only DLC from the games that I own, but all DLC in the main list. But I do understand that this is way too specific to implement.
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because that would also hide DLCs from games with profile features limited (or others not detected by SG for any reason)
But you wouldn't be able to enter these anyway, only DLCs you might actually miss out are DLCs for F2P games you haven't added to your Steam account
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Lol, I haven't thought about it. Silly me. Thank you!
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Haven't read comments, but a simple fix would probably be to not feature the giveaway until it actually has 50+ entrants.
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Good thinking :). Actually, a variation of this could possibly be the most elegant solution: that a giveaway could not be featured, until it has as many entrants, as the number of copies included.
This is an important difference, because the number of copies strongly influences, how much exposure it gets, if there are more, than 2 featured GAs running at the same time.
Still, the question remains, how easy/hard would it be code it in?
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So you wamt to prestablish the fact that 10k+ copies, most likely much lower will meber get to featured (most entries come from featuring)
Same as others i dont see exploit point, what big deal is if some giveaway site features GAs for some DLCs, do they exploit money, or CV?
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I think the original is better. In the past, there has been successful giveaways with more copies than winners (8k entries / 10k keys) where everyone who entered got a key. Some minimum threshold of entries to be featured.
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Another good point, but setting it at 50 will not stop the placement abuse by someone expecting like 200 entries, yet creating a 2k copies DLC GA. However this should do the trick, without being too restrictive: "A giveaway will not be featured as long as the number of copies included is 4 times or more higher, than the number of entries.'
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i see no issues at all with this, maybe i'm blind.
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Worded a bit more simply, I believe the concern is that devs/pubs can use DLC giveaways to promote their game through SteamGifts's Featured Giveaways feature, without ever giving away their game.
Further (and I don't know the algorithmic details of this myself), said dev/pub can make these giveaways for thousands of copies (knowing full well that fewer people own the game than the number of copies given) in order to ensure that their giveaway is ranked higher than others. (?)*
Summarized more: Shovelware devs get free advertising, we get fewer small-quantity Featured Giveaways in our face. And it's likely to get worse rather than better.
*to be honest, I've never really noticed this.
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UPDATED: Reading the replies so far, it seems, that I didn't make my point clearly enough. The issue is not, that those GAs are annoying, it's simple enough to put their creators at the ignore list. It's also not the CV gained by them, as they get CVs for the stuff delivered, not for those extra keys, that nobody can/want to claim.
This exploit (read below, please) is not really directly at our cost. It is however at the cost of devs giving away real stuff to get the exposure and promote their games. Indirectly it can affect all of us, possibly discouraging them from making meaningful GA.
Some developers (example anonymized description below) have begun to abuse our "Featured 50+ Copy GAs" system. For now it's just a few of them, and the issue is not yet painful, but if we don't stop it now, we certainly will see it more and more often.
We could make some complicated rules, limiting DLC GAs made by a developer to a number based on copies of the main game previously given away by him on SG, or on total copies of the main game previously claimed by winners on SG. This however could be a pretty cumbersome process, having to include cases like GAs, that can't be entered ("Steam is learning..." and "Features Limited" games), and giving away totally worthless DLCs.
So, I think, that the best way to address the issue would be to just remove all DLC GAs from the featured list. If it's too hard to program this, it can be done by introducing a simple rule, that any DLC GA can not contain more, than 49 copies.
Here is anonymized description of the problem, copied from my current Support Ticket:
Obligatory 1 cent DLC GA.
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