What happened between 2013-2016 and it has SO many comments? :o

Because then the site was as it's best and it went downhill from there?

I think it essentially followed the introduction of Steamgifts v2.0, which had integrated blacklists. Then over the course of a year or two, an increasing number of giveaway creators started to threaten others with blacklists if they posted, "Thanks."

Because for those years the site culture was for people to say thank you on giveaways all the time. Then the site culture changed to only commenting on giveaways after winning.

Between the time when the oceans were filled with bundles and the rise of the gifting restrictions, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Konrads, destined to wear the jeweled crown of permaban upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!

Edit: It did show normally! Yiiiihaaaaaaaaa!!! I'm starting to get the handle on this :D

Pfff, only because a master wrote it for you ... :-P

There were incredible amounts of thank you messages , along with a more active community

Deleted. Misunderstood the question.

Etiquette changed. Early on it was considered polite to write "Thank you" whenever you enter a giveaway, then people came to find that annoying (especially after message notifications were added to the site) and stopped.

Bad Rats giveaways. People talked of little else.

most people on here are bots just looking for free games

there was an actual community, people had a backbone and weren't scared by divergent views or the ocasional shitposting.
still remember being contacted on steam by another user telling me a small group of SG weirdos were making comments that painted me as some kind of monster. When in reality i was barely active, barely knew who they were and why i was invited by their friend to be part of his whitelist group. Then i saw private comments they did demonizing yet another user that was then banned. thats around the time i started spending even less time on steamgifts
SG is but a fraction of what it once was, but honestly i couldnt care less if i can skip on the soap opera drama

On it's second year, SG became public, it was something smaller and harder to get in before. After becoming public the site had a long flush of user and was growing bigger every year and then on 2016 Blacklists and Whitelists were added, people then stopped commenting because anything you say could get you blacklisted.

Jokes aside, a lot of it's user simply grew, and kids nowadays play more on their phones or on consoles, can't blame them, PCs are way too expensive at the moment.

Back on 2015 Steam introduced region locks as well, so gifting and trading became even harder for a lot of regions.

It was SG golden age before Blacklists were introduced

There was a time when steam let devs sell their games for as low as 9 cents each(remember when steam made the announcement that the lowest a game will be is 49 cents), and they had a much easier time getting thousands of keys from valve, and there were a lot more 1 dollar bundles, and it was kind of common to leave a lot of comments, which kind of stopped at some point, I know I got blacklisted for saying thank you to giveaways. With more and more restrictions applied, not just by steam but also by steamgifts itself and the users, it's only natural that curve will go down and will keep going down to a certain point.

That was the golden age of SG. A lot more people active.

those were the times when they give puzzle links mentioning it was skyrim. Then you type thanks for skyrim. Then it appears to be fortix but with another puzzle in giveaway mentioning it is skyrim again. Then you comment thanks for skyrim again. then it appears to be bad rats. See x2 comments.

Jokes aside. The only truth is the blacklist introduction.

Tomorrow I will edit this post and tell how many people blacklisted me by just commenting on this.

Edit1: 5 hours and got 2 blacklist. :)

My 2014 World Cup thread, obviously.

Steam sales started to deteriorate.
A bunch of rude people became hostile towards some well-liked people.
Blink Bundle changed.
Tremorgames closed.
People got lives and new people missed out on the good stuff so things got boring.

I joined the site and everything basically went down hill after that :D

View attached image.

The Golden Age of Bundles happened.

The first Humble Bundles used to be spaced apart by entire months, this was 2010 - 2011 IIRC. By 2012, the bundle market started revving up its engines, Humble had already changed from a one-time gig to a business, new players were joining the fray, IndieRoyale, backed by Desura, IndieGala and Groupees.

Around 2011/2012 SteamGifts was established as a branch of sorts of SteamTrades, where some users had expressed a wish to give away games (I wasn't there, but so cg claimed); back then, the official stance was no bundles, then that decision was reversed and the floodgates opened.

Later, the Golden Age of Bundles ended and the long twilight came about. As a reference, the inception of Monthly took place by the end of 2015, off the top of my mind.

SteamGifts has had its own highs and lows, and those must've played a role, too, but I'm neither qualified nor interested in discussing those.

At the heart of everything there's bundles. Without Humble and bundfles, it's likely SteamGifts would've never picked up the way it did, perhaps might not even have existed to begin with.