The ones marked with single asterisk are bundled ones and are giving only 15% of their value
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CV is based on the full US Steam retail price. Temporary sales do not affect CV. When creating a giveaway a game with no red asterisk will give full CV, 1 asterisk will give 15% of the full CV, and 2 asterisks will give no CV. The CV you have on your account will always fluctuate with the current full retail price. If you give a full CV $60 game and get 60 CV, then in the future that game drops permanently from $60 to $40, your CV will now be calculated at $40 for that game even though you created the giveaway when it was $60. Your CV will always continue to be calculated as full, reduced, or no CV based on when you created the giveaway.
Every user's CV will slowly drop over time as the price of games on Steam are permanently reduced. There is not much that can be done about it because the site uses the Steam API to check the current cost of the game and it would require a lot of data to log the price of every game given away at the time every giveaway is created. At least, that is why I think the site works this way, I don't know much about how websites and servers work.
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Not all games fluctuate in retail value- some publishers will prefer to keep retail value up to make discount %s look bigger. Usually retail price dropping is more a halmark of high retail AAA games or of more obscure indie games, than of high profile indie games or of already discounted AAA games. Though, again, it really varies by the publisher, and even by game.. ID Software's Rage went from a retail of $39.99 to $9.99 after several increments, while EA published games have been known to increase in retail value [relative to previous pricing, not sure if any've increased relative to their initial retail price].
Generally speaking, newer high cost games, early access games, and obscure indie games will be the ones you'd be giving some consideration over possible price drops. Games that initially retail between $15 and $30, indie or AAA, tend to always be fairly reliable in not decreasing retail, so long as they're not fixated on online multiplayer (which may mean the game'll go free at some point) or an obscure indie title (as indie developer published titles are rather chaotic in their marketing approach, compared to mainstream industry published titles, and less visible games tend to more reliably kneejerk developers into impulse decisions).
Ultimately, the key is in learning to get a feel for which publishers or game types are "red flag" games, and just not minding any price drops that happen outside of that (even if you can predict with fine accuracy, it really isn't worth the energy to do so; At that point, if you're that keen on making the most of CV gains, you'd be better off doing bundled games to begin with. Rather, keeping an eye out on games with the potential to price drop is more for the sake of not having to go, two weeks after making a giveaway, "damn, I coulda made TWO giveaways, and made TWO people happy, had I only waited!").
With that in mind, as touched on, >$30 AAA games and any multiplayer-oriented games would be the primarly game types I'd note as being especially prone towards drops. Likewise, any game that's likely to get a "Complete" edition is nearly for sure going to eventually get a price drop along the way.
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In short, worrying over retail price really is more an in-depth (or "high level") way of approaching giveaways on SG. Early on, your main consideration when purchasing a non-bundled game should be in confirming it hasn't actually been bundled and just not yet updated to that status on SG (as such needs to be done manually), as any updates would apply retroactively to the point where the bundling (typically determined by having a 90%+ discount, not necessarily by being in a promotion labeled as a bundle) occured.
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Excellent guide! Thanks for providing us the general picture of the market!
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and it would require a lot of data to log the price of every game given away at the time every giveaway is created
That's not the issue, exactly. The main problem is that Steam misreports prices on a regular basis, for various reasons [most notably, any failure to properly sync returns a result of "0" for pricing, as do free weekends], meaning that all those incorrect prices would have to be manually corrected. The amount of labor that'd require'd be impossible for this site to even begin to cover, meaning that exploitation and unfairness would run rampant.
Comparatively, automatic adjustment of pricing is objectively fair, as it affects all purchasers of that game equally, and as it reasonably conveys the extended value of that game; This meaning that it follows the same principles as making purchases at different sale points- your higher cost purchase earlier on is directly equitable to having purchased a game at a worse sale price, meaning CV loss games function no different from any other purchase offered up on SG (in requiring one to assess the value or merit of the product versus its return or the giveaway intent. To further support that from another perspective, you're not losing any more than those who purchased the game for their own use. For example, for a paid multiplayer game that goes free, in many cases everyone'll be as irritated as you over the perceived loss of investment, not just those who purchased the game for giveaways.
Your point on data logging seems reasonable as well, but wouldn't technically be a real issue; Even putting aside that it'd only be a secondary issue to the above points, there's the fact that Steam no longer does flash giveaways, and SG's regular syncing schedule (whatever that may be) would be more than enough to cover any present promotions, though there may perhaps be some instances where users would have to wait to get the correct pricing synced (due to SG not timing the sync at the exact time of the promotion's start or end). In the end, it's just another reason on top of several as to why a dynamically locked pricing structure wouldn't be managable or desirable.
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Sorry my bad english
When you create a giveaway you can see if the game give you
FULL VALUE (no asterisk)
or
REDUCED VALUE (1 asterisk *)
or
NO VALUE (2 asterisk **)
if the game is FULL VALUE (no asterisk) i personally use this formula and it for me work (but i don't know if work for others) for calculate the value of cv sg give
So BEFORE you create a giveaway
First you go see in the Official Faq here https://www.steamgifts.com/about/faq have this scheme:
Level 0: $0.00
Level 1: $0.01 - $25
Level 2: $25 - $50
Level 3: $50 - $100
Level 4: $100 - $250
Level 5: $250 - $500
Level 6: $500 - $1,000
Level 7: $1,000 - $2,000
Level 8: $2,000 - $3,000
Level 9: $3,000 - $5,000
Level 10: $5,000+
Then So by follow this
you can calculate how much a game give to you in this way
divide price of game \ with interval between levels
Example:
if price of a game on steam (usa) is $24,99
and your Level is 2
interval between level 2 and level 3 is = 24,99 (25,01 to 50) or ( 50-25,01) =24,99
So for calculate how much you will get you can do
price of game 24,99
divide for interval between level 24,99
so 24,99/24,99
Result = 1
so game will give you 1.00 contributor level point
BUT if you is at level 5:
level 5 to level 6 is $250.01-$500,
interval is $249.9 in Contributor Value
so 24.99/249.9
you will get around 0.10 Contributor Level point instead of 1
So level 2 you get 1 point,level 5 you get 0.10 etc.
if You is Level 6 game you give away is price $19,99
The interval between level 6 $500 and level 7 $1000 is =
499,99 (Count from 501 to 1000 or you can do opposite 1000-501)
You divide price of the game you give away for the interval
19,99/499,99 = 0,039
This will give you contributor value that add to your account
so you will get around 0.03 contributor value for give away when if the price of it is 19,99 and your level is 6
So if before you is level 6,48 after give away that game you go to have 6,51
if you i Level 7,game you give away is price $50
Interval between Level 7 and 8 is 999
You divide price of the game you give away for the interval
50,00/999= 0,05
You will get so around 0.05 Contributor level point
Example if you is at Level 7.05 then you will go at level 7.10 (7.05+0.05)
ABOUT REDUCED VALUE OR NO VALUE:
If the game is "REDUCED VALUE " (1 aterisk) it give you much less cv points (15% of the price) ,
Example if the game price is $50 it will give you 7.5 point and not 50 point
you can see the game is reduced value because when you create giveaway it show an asterisk
if the game is "NO VALUE *" it give nothing (2 asterisk **)
For Example some games that is bundled in bundles give reduced value instead of full (and also in other rare conditions as a 90% discounts on steam etc) , or games that has been given for FREE is give 0 gv value.
BEFORE to create a giveawawy You can know if game has been bundled by use this too:
https://www.sgtools.info/lastbundled
or https://barter.vg
Search for the name of the game
After you give away already a game You can see your contributor level "progress" in this page
https://www.steamgifts.com/stats/personal/community
You must go down in the page at the fourth row then you can see a sort of "contributor level history" and here you can see the difference of cv you earn for every giveaway
After you give away already a game You can help yourself also by use this https://www.sgtools.info/real-cv , write your username here then it will show you for every game you giveaway if it has been full value or not etc.
Useful Links:
https://www.steamgifts.com/about/faq
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/RqwrY/contributor-levels
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/XaCbA/list-of-all-cv-levels-and-their-corresponding-real-cv
Opinion:
This said in my opinion the CV must to work in a different way and not like is now,so my idea is this,if someone make make a giveaway about super doraemon videogame it must give value cv 99999, if viceversa make giveaway of any other game that is not abou super doraemon must give value 0,but this is just my idea.
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Is there any general formula for it, or is it all arbitrary?
How much does locking it behind whitelisting and/or region-locking bring up the CV value?
The only thing I know is that the games marked with double-asterisks do not have any CV value.
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