How We're Planning to Fix Bundle Keys and Contributor Values (Option #3)

Oh, and to add to my suggestion - to account for the difference in price of different games, why not let the creator of the giveaway set the price for entering, and make the contributor credit he/she gets scale with both the number of entries and the price he set. (Again, this will work pretty well with historical giveaways, and a good default price might be based on the current price on Steam.)

So, if I create a giveaway of Fortix, and set the price to 1, and 100 users enter (at a cost of 1p), I would get 1x100 contributor points.

Someone wanting to boost their contributor score could offer up Skyrim, but set the price at 100p, hoping that enough people will want to join in the giveaway. Lets say 1000 people do - well, that's 100x1000 points.

Someone less concerned with maximizing payoff might decide to also put Skyrim up, but decide to set the price to 10p. At this price, 5000 decide to join in the fun, for a total of 10x5000 contributor points.

When a new bundle comes out, and we are flooded with Sega Bass Fishing, this will mean that the number of people entering any given giveaway of the game will drop. Where earlier, you might see 500 people joining at the default price of 5p (5x500 contributor points), average numbers joining will drop as supply increases. Suddenly, you see only 100 joining at 5p, giving 5x100 contribution points.

Crafty contributors can then decide to compete on price, setting the price at 3p instead. This will reduce the number joining the 5p giveaways, and increase the number for the lower priced giveaway. Of course, those with lots of points to spare, may decide that less competition offsets the price difference, and still go for the more expensive giveaway.

Either way, the contributor will be "paid" a fair market value for the game, as decided by the interest in their giveaway.

Sounds good. It's how basically how playblink does it.

Half Life 3 confirmed!

Seriously though, what about just basing this on the wishlist?

This the best from all 3 imo. The voting system is kinda erm.. it should be based on our wishlist maybe? We can check the top100 already on the site, so this shouldnt be a problem.

I liked all the previous proposals, but this losses me for a bit. I hear what you are saying but this raises a lot of questions and yes this would need alot of discussion. Could you make it more clear how the modified contributor system would work? Will this affect the points when entering giveaway? If yes how?

Some how this seems that it might bring more issue in the future. Also this is not answering the issue on how to deal with the bundles. Some how the 1st option changed the issue of how to deal with bundle keys to how to change the contributor system.

So far if I had to choose between the the 3 options I would choose 1 or 2, but 1 is the only one that gives an option on how to deal with the bundle issue.

That's not a bad idea. Maybe tie it into wishlists?

If I understood this correctly then; I dunno I feel like going by that, the value of Skyrim is OVER 9000!!! while a game like Anno 2070 which isn't on as many wishlists would suffer just because its not a triple A title.
While yeah that may seems fair but it also punishes anyone who puts up a game of equal or maybe even greater monetary value purely because it appeals to a smaller audience.

Hm, I honestly don't think this is a good idea. Changing the value of a game will always lead to complications. For example, this isn't immune to abuse- if the people trying to abuse it have even a small fraction of access to the way it work, then they will find a way to do it. Add to that the flaws the others pointed out already and it doesn't seem to actually fix anything.
Personally for now I'm for option 1 after finding a way to remove some of it's flaws or just removing contribution altogether if nothing else works.

Meh, I like the idea of instituting a feature similar to this that could at least track what games are most popular, or even help keep people abreast of such giveaways, or maybe even implement a type of giveaway limited in visibility/ability to enter to those who have them in their list. It could take on wishlist involvement or not, just depending. Making contribution values dependent on this, though, I just don't know. At first blush, it seems like a very problematic proposition to say the least. That's not even considering how to apply it retroactively and make a conversion. You'd basically be completely scrapping and overhauling the system that way, which might well just make more problems than it solves. I can't really get behind something like this without at least having a much more fully-fleshed-out proposal that covers the major pitfalls that would come along with it. Again, some interesting ideas that might be nice to implement in other ways, but still vastly inferior to what has already been proposed in its current form.

I like this idea best so far, it brings games to the site that people actually want and rewards the givers for providing them. It also keeps the sense of community because everyone is voting together for games they want to see here. Keeping the value over time is also great.

I despise this option personally. I am a niche gamer, rather than a mainstream gamer. This will make it less worthwhile to fulfill the niche part of the market.

Anytime you go for public votes, the Bell curve shows that you will end up with the average choice being the winner. Any votes off to either side are downgraded as less valuable. Voters who trend left or right will still vote for the average, as well as their own side. But the outliers will be disincentivized based on their less-average appeal. I think this will destroy variety and cut out a bunch of smaller target markets.

This option seems a bit arbitrary and too randomly judged. Bundle wise I prefered option 1 (or not even 20% of them). As an idea in general, option 2 is good as well though it seems like a subtle and more refined blacklisting feature.

I can see people who would choose to give away the cheapest and most popular games in order to take the most out of this system but what's so great about this option is that the people who get the gifts will benifit the most seeing they will likely get their most wanted games.

I like this one.

I'm fine with this idea, if the masses like it.
Option 1>Option 3>Option 2 IMO.
I'm not certain this option achieves the goal of ending indie bundle abuse though. Bastion for example was likely a very in demand game when it hit the indie bundle scene.

My only other serious qualm with this is that is strongly encourages submitting mainstream, high popularity games... and discourages variety and niche genres.
On a purely selfish level that would be disappointing as I've been tending to slip a little further from mainstream tastes every year.
Like I said, there is an element of bias in my opinion though as it would likely lead to less appealing games for me to enter.

I prefer option 1.

1 >> 3 >>>>>> 2

So... what is it that we want?

I think coming up with all these different suggestions is a bit... well, chaotic. I think we should first get a clear idea of what we want to achieve by potential rule changes. Once we know what we want, we can look at the options and consider how well they match our goals, and what can be done to improve this.
In the following text, I will use "we" to represent the SG administration, or the site rules (which is different from the community, which is basically a living organism and cannot be easily controlled or quantified).

1) Do we (SG administration) want to punish anyone at all? If not, then we must preserve the current contributor status, and stop persecuting bundle giveaways, and let the community/gifters decide individually if they want to allow bundlers to join their giveaways. ("Anarchy")

2) If we want to punish the bundlers, do we accept any collateral damage, punishing the innocent? If not, then there can be no retroactivity involved. All giveaways up to this point must retain their contributor value, even at the risk of some bundlers slipping past the radar (but some have already done so anyway). We can limit the value of newly created giveaways, and we can ban/suspend those who directly disobey the rules (as we are trying now). We can add new and different giveaway-limiting options and let the community use those they prefer. Contributor giveaways might -- if they are perceived as such -- gradually become obsolete, but not as a result of a direct or arbitrary intervention of the administration. ("Liberalism")

3) If we want to allow some collateral damage/punishment, will we offer a chance for an appeal? If yes, how do we handle the appeals? How many of them do we expect? Will we have enough manpower to process them? In undecided cases, will there be presumption of innocence, or guilt? If no appeals will be allowed, should we justify it somehow? ("Authoritarianism/Dystopia/?")

4) If everything else fails, do we want to destroy the old world and create a new one, better? If yes, are we sure we thought it out, or will we need to destroy the new one too, sooner than we'd like? Are we prepared to live with the new rules, or will it be an ongoing experiment, which can be at any time changed from the ground up? How much of the old world can we afford to lose? ("Mad scientist")

If option #1 is implemented in its basic form, it punishes bundlers, together with some (relatively predictable) collateral damage. If care is taken (no retroactivity, ability to show inventory history...), this collateral damage can be reduced, maybe significantly. The more collateral damage we prevent, the higher the probability that some bundlers may initially escape punishment. Much of the old world is preserved.

If option #2 is implemented, then it depends on whether it replaces the contributor system, or accompanies it. If both are active at the same time, the community itself might decide over time (see paragraph 2). If contributor system is removed, collateral damage is severe and universal. Transforming the old contributions into new friends is almost impossible, and the new world looks very different from the one we learned to live in.

If option #3 is implemented, the collateral damage is unpredictable and universal. Transforming the old "money contributions" into new "popularity contributions" is unpredictable, or rather, "unaffectable". This could be reduced by initially regarding the popularity of already existing gifts as equal to their price, and applying the "real" popularity only to newly created giveaways. However, the ratio of old to new popularity values would need to be chosen very carefully, so that the relative balance is preserved, and even the old giveaways "matter". This new world bears some similarities to the old one, but not as much as in the case of option #1.

I don't think you need votes at all. Base it on the amount of giveaways that are created for a particular game. If it's a ton, its value would decrease. Games which don't get a lot of attention would increase in value over time to a cap.

Best option,
3>1>2

I like option 1 the best out of the 3 suggestions.

Interesting idea but I agree with others that it could lead to only the mainstream games being voted for. There are some games that I wouldn't have even known about if I hadn't seen a giveaway for it on here and looked it up.

I still think the best option would be to either remove the number value from contributor giveaways so it is either you are one or you're not - regardless of value. If there is no number value it cannot be exploited. Or remove the contributor points and replace it with bonus entry points after people give away a game. So people will still be rewarded for giving away a game - they will be able to enter more giveaways, but it still allows everyone to enter any public giveaway. There should still be private and group options for those who want to limit the users that enter. But main page giveaways would be open to everyone. Maybe you could combine this idea with the vote idea, so people would get even more bonus entry points for giving away high demand games.

I'm not sold on this idea at all. We might see less obscure titles on the site and quite frankly I discovered the existence of a few games because of people giving away something I had never heard of. I don't think people should be "punished" for giving less popular games.

If I want points based on game popularity, I'll go on Playblink. Option 1 was still better, with a few tweaks to take a date range into account.

I think option #1 is the best, if it doesn't count giveaways created before a certain date i.e. the launch date of a bundle.

Too complicated. Option 1 is best. Option 2 is better than 3.

The reason we had the contributor values in the first place was because it was useful, the issue is not the contributor values. the issue is how it is being misused. all option only address the issue because they remove the thing all together and in turn no loophole, this does not solve the issue nor will it for the next thing put in place.