Do you think the new ability to remove and restore games will be used to abuse Steamgifts?
4 days and not a single comment?
They then put it up for trade or "because they won, they decided to buy the game and give it away".
Wow, this is a brilliant idea! I never thought of that! You're right. It's a scummy move, indeed.
About steam Gifts, what about checking by becoming friends with the winner and see the winner's "[Winner] now owns [Game]" pops up in your activity feed? (assuming you tick the "Gets or pre-purchases a new game?" box on Friend Activity settings)
Or does restoring license also trigger that?
Also, what about the "view gift history" part? Does accepting (but not adding to library) the gift shows as "Redeemed" or something else?
I agree that it will give much work to do for SG.
Could this be easily prevented if key sellers (Humble Bundle, GMG, etc) used the oauth method?
(IIRC, with the oauth method, you need to sign in to your steam account to redeem it. So, it will shows to whom the key is redeemed)
Comment has been collapsed.
ya I was a little surprised by no comments for a few days myself.
Checking if they have it by becoming friends would only work, if they don't have their account set to private, some people do and can be done easily. Also I'm not sure all the date for the removed game is delete or not on the steam account. If it all goes when you delete a game, there would be no trace of it. If its not, you might have some evidence but would screenshots be enough to convince steamgifts support that someone has actually owned the game seeing as how screenshots can be faked.
I'm not sure if your "view gift history" would change or not, I don't believe so, but again I believe only you can see your own gift history and would a screenshot be enough evidence if someone say 6 months after they won a gift from you hits the "not received" button.
If it shows who the key is redeemed to, again its like the view gift history issue, will a screenshot be enough evidence when screenshots can be faked easily.
My head is hurting cause of all the possible issues and ways to solve those issues that bring up other issues.... lol
Comment has been collapsed.
I still can't see any possible impact on steamgifts. The verge article mentions that you can now possibly remove games from your library - as i take without any compensation or else. Its just gone. So the only possibly misuse i could imagine would be to repeatedly win a game remove from library, sync and rewin it. Kind of trolling behavior. But just imho... thats pretty dumb to even begin with.
Edit: you didn't include the link from aeternitas ... well i honestly don't know if that matters. Consider my reply as invalid though.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you own a lot of games that you have not won on steamgifts, like I do for example you could go down a list of games and remove them and win them and then restore and make it look like you just added to your account, least to steamgifts itself as it doesn't look for number of hours played and when they were played.
So I could go though nearly 1000 games this way and as long as no one looked at the hours played and when they were last played I could get away with this. Even if I could only trade off those games for a dollars worth of stuff, thats potentially over 1000 dollars I could scam.
If I kept my account fully private even to friends no one could prove what I was doing, because I could make it public long enough to sync up to steamgifts and then make it private again, there are many others who do this already.
What I have been suggesting in my original post and other posts will be very rare, but you would be surprised at what scammers will go though just to get even a single game thats only worth pennies. What would they be willing to do, to get a game thats worth 20 or 30 or 40 dollars still that they could trade off for that amount.
Comment has been collapsed.
One more reason they should simply disable accounts that are switched to private. But say that aloud and wait for the veggie flinging...
Yes I think it will be allowed to scam because SteamGifts is a big community and along with nice and generous people you also get a ton of uninvolved users who only think about how they can squeeze the most out of it. If there's a way, it doesn't matter if it's risky or complicated, they will use it.
Also if I have learned anything about how this site is run over the here, I don't think anything will be done to address potential problems introduced by this change, except maybe in 2 or 3 years when some retroactive restriction will be enforced which will affect negatively legit users.
Apologies if that sounds not very optimistic.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ya I'm not so sure its veggies that will be flinging everywhere. lol. Also private profiles are not allowed as if I remember right. but people get away with it cause they can go public for a few seconds while the scan happens and then switch it back. If steam support is investigating something it can be hard for them to find certain info if accounts are set to private though.
Comment has been collapsed.
Nope, private profiles are allowed: check the sync page. There's a problem of course with making sure a profile is always public, SG only checks every now and then, prolly because bandwidth and load and stuff, like many days or a week, maybe more?, but if private profiles were forbidden, users could report them whenever they spot one.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm starting to understand the phrase "This is why we can't have nice things" and the proverb "One bad apple spoils the whole barrel".
About the steam gift activation: I've just tested it. Last week, I removed Saviors. Today I bought Saviors as a Gift then activated it. The activated Gift still shows up on the Activity Page
That's already a solid evidence to prevent your Gift copy to be misused.
"But what if the winner activated it just for the lulz?" damn...force him to reveal that game's support page? (ツ)_/¯
About steam key: If screenshot is not solid proof, you would need software like TeamViewer.
My head is hurting...
Well...there's always whitelist and high level restriction.
I don't think there's much we could about this situation. Could it be improved / prevented? Sure, but it's on valvE.
Will valvE react on it? Maybe when it's starting to hurt them? Like this recent explanation about Security and Trading
...We see around 77,000 accounts hijacked and pillaged each month...
Comment has been collapsed.
i didn't know you could restore a permanently removed game, do you have a link/source for me?
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, I was just going to post the same. Everything I saw was about how you can now "permanently delete" games. I haven't seen anything about an ability to restore them.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmm, that's interesting. I wonder how much stock I should put in that. Perhaps I'll go try it on one of my own junk games and see what happens.
Comment has been collapsed.
Huh, yeah, this actually does seem to work. I got rid of and then restored a game.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, sorry, it just took me a few minutes to figure it out. You actually have to click the "this game is not in my account" option to get to the screen where you can restore it.
But yeah, this does appear to work. I removed and restored Serious Sam 3.
Comment has been collapsed.
ok good to know its confirmed that you can restore a game. Did it give you any kind of info on how long you hand before you could no longer restore it?
I still have lots of other questions myself so still considering doing a test on something I'm not so fond of, though when I restore it it will be staying.
You by any chance didn't go and check to see if it was still on your games played list did you? Thats one of the questions I have is if someone can see the game on the list.
Comment has been collapsed.
It was a game I never had played, so no, I didn't think to check the games played list. But I'll try that for you later today. (I'll find something I really detest.)
I didn't see any information on limitations either when I removed the game or when I restored it. I will check very carefully this next time, but tentatively I'm going to say there wasn't any.
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks. But I'm actually puzzled by that--my real cake day is in September. I must have entered bad info at some point...
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah, that is what I meant. Embarrassing to say, but all this time I've been here I thought "Cake Days" were birthdays. I even made a cake day giveaway on my own birthday.
You learn something new every day...
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm not sure you can restore the game after you have it removed. You're rescinding your 'contract' for that game. It's like when you move away from your old house to a new one. You can't come back without buying (or renting) it again.
Personally, I find this whole removing thing a stupid matter. You don't want to see a game in your list, just hide it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, thanks for the info! So does this mean if you were gifted a game you previously had removed you're able to drop cards again?
Honestly, what are those guys thinking?
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't know about that, thats actually a pretty good question. I would hope that the steam back end would be setup in such a way that it would know that you had the game before so shouldn't get new card drops.
Oh and since my post above, its been confirmed that you can restore games by a couple of people in this thread. And not only that, you can delete, restore, delete again and restore again many times.
Comment has been collapsed.
In a way this could be wrong. If you got it as a gift, someone paid for it and thus there's no illegality in droping new cards.
BUT
In the same way, you could just buy it the same game again and again. Sounds stupid, but there's those 95% games that are sold for a dime and the value you get back selling cards are higher than the price you paid. How much was Uncrowded a few weeks ago? Here in Brazil it went for BRL 0,06.
But the important thing here is: If you sync your steamgifts account after removing a game can you enter a giveaway for this game?
Comment has been collapsed.
Since its not showing up in your game list yes you can, but it works the exact same way as free weeks/weekends. After the free weekend is over you can resync your account and it will be removed off your "owned games" list on steamgifts and you are able to enter giveaways for it. This has actually happened to me a couple of times when I forgot to sync up just before thursday and not thinking I hit recync on thursday afternoon or night or friday and once the weekend is over and the game is finally removed off my account (which can take up to a week or 2 thanks to Valve time) I could enter giveaways for that game again.
And ya the potential for abuse if it sees each serial number of a game as a new one which gives you cards is very high. Again this is something I'm kind of interested in testing, even if it is just throwing away 20 or 30 cents. Though I would never abuse something like this myself, there are others that would like you pointed out.
Comment has been collapsed.
if you remove a game you are removing it not refunding it, you lose the key, you no longer have it
Comment has been collapsed.
not to mention steam gifts has a list of won games for their site
Comment has been collapsed.
Not sure why you couldn't just edit your post to put this in it, but just because there is a list of won games doesn't mean every game someone has was won on steamgifts.com.
Most of my games were not won on steamgifts I bought them or traded for them. But if I can remove one of my top games for a week or 2 while I try to enter a giveaway that only has say 3 to 10 people entered into it, I can always restore it after the giveaway is over if I don't win, or wait till I get the game from the person, restore my removed game and then sell off/trade the one I just won from the person.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think the point was that double winning from SG still just isn't an option. Yet that's the main thing people are worried about.
Perhaps, and it seems like this still needs to be determined, this will be a way for somebody to win a game once when they already have ut. But even if it were it would only be at substantial effort.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm not limiting my thoughts to just double winning games from SG. Yes there is a chance that they could hit the not received button a couple of months down the road if they try this but I'm also taking into account the fact that there are many games people have not won on steamgifts.
And yes its a little bit of effort, but if people can get stuff for free to make some sort of benefit for themselves, they will do it. Not everyone will, and I expect this to be a very limited problem, though I think its better to nip it in the bud before anyone starts doing it cause its going to be hard to prove they are doing it if they haven't won the game from steamgifts.
Comment has been collapsed.
yes I know this, but if you can delete, and then restore a game within a certain amount of time, you could remove the game, for a high chance giveaway and if you win, restore it once you get the game from the giveaway maker making it look like you put it onto your account.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you remove a game thats an unactivated win, if you win it again thats a multiple win. Sure it may introduce more problems but the rules are clear and don't need changing. If you remove it you either have to rebuy it or get suspended, if you win it again you get suspended. There's nothing more too it.
Comment has been collapsed.
yes I know this is already a bannable offense already, but if the game you do this to is not on your won list because you got it though some other means (won it on another site, bought it on any number of sites or traded for it) then you can't be banned for winning it twice on steamgifts because you haven't won it twice on steamgifts.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you acquire a game elsewhere and then remove it from your account you either can't enter it as the site still thinks you own it or you sync your account and then you can win it. as you neither own it or previously won it you aren't breaking any rules.
That situation is irrelevant to the rules. If the delete and/or re-win the rules are being broken. End of. We don't need any special measures. You win it, you redeem it, you don't get suspended. You win it, delete it, win it again and you get suspended. All thats needed is the current user win page.
Comment has been collapsed.
Which is why in my first post I said, remove the game, then resync on steamgifts which removes the game from the list of games on your account.
And yes this works because every time there is free weekend or a free week for a game, it gets added to peoples list of games they own if they sync up to steamgifts while the game is free to play for the week or weekend.
What I have been talking about is how its actually possible to get around the rules and look like you don't actually own the game. In my books if you owned the game, removed it and then won it again, that to me is a violation of the rules too, but if there is no way to prove that you owned the game before hand there is no way to prove you violated the rules.
If you remove a game, then come here and win the same game, restore the game, you now have the game on your account but you also now have a second working key/ or steamgift that you can trade off or sell or give to a friend, and there is no proof that they had owned the game before, unless it also restores all the hours played, but then its up to the person who gave the game away to get some evidence that they had been playing the game long before hand.
Also if I remember right, any hours played on a free week/weekend along with any achievements won in that free week/weekend will show up when a game is bought even weeks or months later. So if the game has been free for a week or weekend its easy enough to claim "I did all those hours and achievements when it was free.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ok so, I just tried it out. I really was ashamed that I had a game like world basketball manager on my profile so I removed it. waited 5 mins. went to the help page again and after selecting game I said, can't see it in my library and tatahh it's back on my profile... fyi
Maybe not in short terms but on kong terms things could get ugly around here..!
Comment has been collapsed.
well it really was basketball manager 2010 which I don't even know how it came to me in the first place. Tried to play it and was a real disapoinment =) so I had nothing to lose even if itwere gone=)
Edit: Tried to remove and back it up for 5 times, works like charm ^^
Edit2: Have removed it atm, will try acouple hours later, will let you know about the outcome!
Comment has been collapsed.
This reinforces the validity of 2 changes I suggested in the past:
It doesn't handle the deletion part but at least it would reduce the possibilities for abuse.
Comment has been collapsed.
I agree, it would also be nice is of once received is hit, you are automatically removed from all other giveaways for that game too. I believe this has been suggested a number of times too.
I can't actually agree with this, because of the fact I have seen a number of times when people have hit received right away after they got the game and then the game gets removed from their account because of fraud, so the person wouldn't be able to hit not received right away and it would look bad like they hit received but didn't add the game unless they think about capturing some evidence. I myself had won a game, started playing it, and 2 weeks later it was revoked due to fraud. So a few days is not enough, it can take up to at least a month or so before its gets noticed credit card bill.
I would be ok with the not received option being removed after say 2 months because by then it should be confirmed as a legit buy/trade. But if it does get removed after that point of time some how, you should be able to take it to support. But after so long will screenshots be enough seeing as how screenshots can be faked.
Comment has been collapsed.
Since too many people will hit received before they actually get the gift, either because they don't understand basic English (and expect to receive the game that way) of because they want to get rid of the notification, automatically removing them could lead to problems. But at the very least, preventing them from entering any more giveaways would be a big step towards preventing multiple wins.
As I said, support should be able to change it back for you. I wonder how often games get revoked though. Maybe 30 days after you marked it as received would be a good time to lock it since most frauds would have been caught by then. Anything beyond that could be handled by the support staff.
Comment has been collapsed.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ok, Gwarsbane, here's full information for you. I deleted a game I'd actually played this time. Here are screen captures of the whole process (and the third shows the game's absence from my played game list):
[edited because I had inadvertently revealed my account name. But suffice to say, it's easy to do, and nothing indicates that there will be any limitation on how often or at what intervals you can remove and restore games.]
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, you're correct. Thank you for pointing that out! I wasn't even thinking about it--too engaged in what I was doing.
Comment has been collapsed.
There's already a rule saying you can't say "not received" if you received giveaway - if situation you talk about happens, it's obviously a perm-ban.
But giveaway-makers should receive some notification if giveaway-winner changes feedback, so they could report those situations.
If you have like 1000 giveaways, it might be hard to notice that someone changed feedback to year old giveaway.
Comment has been collapsed.
Guys, you don't think it's a temporary steam glitch when game is turning back after "parmanently removing"?
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes if you restore a game and then resync your account it will show up. But if you remove the game from steam, and resync the game will be removed as if it was just after a free week/weekend that someone synced up their account on by accident.
So till you restore it steamgifts will not see it so will not add it to your games owned list.
Comment has been collapsed.
Don't think it has been tested, but the removed game did not show up in the games played list anymore. nimblemongoose had screenshots but has since removed them (showed his account name so understandable as to why he remove them) but I seen them and can confirm that it was no longer in the game play list.
I'm not sure if they are buy able, but with the method I mentioned you don't even have to put the new code for the game into steam or activate the gift. Just accept the code/gift, then restore the game which can be done in seconds, and mark as received. Steamgifts site itself will not know the difference because it can't scan to see if you used the key that was given and can't scan if you didn't activate the gift that you got. All it can tell is if you have the game or not on your account.
Comment has been collapsed.
yup you can restore and delete the game game a number of times actually, its been tested by people in this thread.
The rumor is that you can restore a game thats been deleted for at least 2 weeks if not long. Seeing as how its a very new feature its very hard to tell if this is true or not. I would hope that there is a cut off point.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmm, yeah, I guess it could be abused. Remove the game, sync, enter the giveaway, readd the game after it ends, resync and use the code/gift to trade. Kinda similar to entering ROW giveaways and then getting and activating a region locked copy while trading away the ROW one. As long as you don't use it on a game you already won you should be fine. I guess it could be also used to get fake CV (make your friends remove that game, enter the giveaway, then readd it). However there are always plenty of ways to abuse the system, if you are really inclined to do so, so not sure it'll really change much.
Comment has been collapsed.
I actually got suspended for removing two won games from my account a few months ago - this was, to clarify, when you still had to contact support for it and beg them to do it. I just accidentaly removed them, not thinking it'd get me in trouble. Well at least the re-rolled giveaway wasn't important, but it still has me on a few blacklists apparently.
I'd try to change the rules accordingly, definitely making already won games (on sg) once marked unenterable, even if they're not in the library of the winner anymore. On the other hand though, I'd wish for something like an "once was activated by user and is now deleted state". But I guess this would open way to a lot of abuse and also be quite taxing on SG servers.
Comment has been collapsed.
That would be great if thats all people would ever do is just enter giveaways for stuff they actually want, problem is thats not how it works. I would say the vast majority do enter because its something they want, but there is too many who enter to win and then use the game to trade or give to someone else or just to make another new giveaway.
Comment has been collapsed.
15,372 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by Almostn33t
8,429 Comments - Last post 2 hours ago by Bum8ara5h
78 Comments - Last post 3 hours ago by ormax3
2,050 Comments - Last post 6 hours ago by WaxWorm
308 Comments - Last post 6 hours ago by hallak65
1,366 Comments - Last post 8 hours ago by Rfedneck
46,817 Comments - Last post 8 hours ago by Yuisis
12 Comments - Last post 1 minute ago by kolja300314
35 Comments - Last post 3 minutes ago by PastelLicuado
25 Comments - Last post 26 minutes ago by Axelflox
10 Comments - Last post 36 minutes ago by Ellemby
121 Comments - Last post 42 minutes ago by NekroNoob
7,924 Comments - Last post 49 minutes ago by Masafor
199 Comments - Last post 1 hour ago by ba2
I was just thinking about the new ability to remove a game and restore it and I think it could be bad for Steamgifts if some changes aren't made. This is all speculation as I don't know how many times you can remove and then re-add games and I'm not going to try it to find out.
Not adding games to accounts and Regifting is going to be much harder to detect. Person has game on account, removes it and syncs back up with steamgifts so now steam gifts doesn't see the game on their account. They enter what could be a high chance to win if they win it, they then return the game to their account so it looks like they added it. They then put it up for trade or "because they won, they decided to buy the game and give it away".
Yes it could show up in peoples list thats they have won the same game a few times, but they could get around this by marking old versions as "not received"
I don't know how many times people can use this ability on the same game or even on different games before it gets classed as abuse on steam, if ever. But the potential is there for abuse here.
http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/4/9848930/steam-library-delete-games-permanently-how-to
Here are a few suggestions on how to fight this.
Make a secondary list of games that were on peoples accounts but have since been removed. It would have to be added to when people sync accounts and it would look at the differences of whats on the steamgifts account and whats on the steam account, and any games that are not on the steam account but are on the steamgifts account gets added to the list. This list would block you from entering giveaways for that game.
Or if the game is on there for at least 2 months, it gets locked on there for good so that even if you remove the game from steam it stays on your list so you can not enter more giveaways for it. Could also be a combo of the this suggestion and the one above.
Lock out the not received after say 2 months. I'm mostly sure that if a game has not been removed off your account due to fraud from the gifter or someone else the gifter has dealt with after 2 months than pretty sure the game is there to stay. Unless anyone has had a game removed after it being on there for 2 or more months? If the game is removed due to fraud or what ever, and the message pops up the person could bring this to steamgifts support and get it marked as not received. If there are too many of these the person can no longer have this done by steamgifts support. Screenshots would be required, though yes I know they can be faked.
More autodetection by steamgifts. When a sync is done, and a game has been removed from steam account but its shows on steamgifts as being owned, a note is put on a users account and maybe brought to the attention of steamgift support. Also this could be used to help detect people who mark games as received but don't actually put them on their accounts and have either a note put on their account or brought to the attention of steam support to check them out, and if its correct they get auto-suspended.
Free weekends/weeks will have to be tracked, and if a person owned the game before the free weekend/week it stays on the list, if the game is still on their account after the free weekend/week is over it stays on their account. Seeing as how it can take a week or 2 for games to eventually come off peoples steam accounts a special check could be made for a couple of weeks after the free weekend/week.
I think thats all the suggestions, not sure if I missed anything that could help fight this before it becomes a problem.
This is sadly going to put a lot more stress on the steamgifts severs and support staff. I also don't know for sure how workable most of this stuff is and I'm sure if it is all workable, it will have to be mixed and matched.
Is this all paranoid, maybe, maybe not, but if I can think of ways to use this new ability to scam games from steamgifts, I'm sure scammers can too.
Comment has been collapsed.