I have thought of this so many times. 3 weeks ago was my second time dealing with this (I was the one who won a game I already had)
If the winner is honest, he will ask you for a reroll without touching the key (if you send it through SG) if not, well you end up with a winner who can do whatever he wants with the key/gift because he is not seen as a rule breaker by the site.
Automatically removing you from all the giveaways of the games you already own (after Sync) should be a thing (if of course it can be done as I have no idea of coding and shit)
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Automatic removal of entries isnt really safe. There are free weekend to worry about and sometimes Steam API just screws up in general.
Certainly this is an exploit that might happen, but is it common enough to warrant inconveniencing a great number of people?
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Agreed, if Steam was more reliable we wouldn't have these types of issues. And since Steam won't ever change, I don't see the point of all the additional programming and server time for this when the solution is going to be so inelegant.
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This is fine (for me) actually, because the winner buy the game himself (almost similar case with "I won a game here and the game is good, i should make a giveaway for that game too"). As long as the winner have the game they won in their account i'm fine with that (idk about other people though).
Rare case is, when you won a ROW copy from a giveaway, and said, you're from RU/CIS which the game is cheaper of course. You received the ROW copy, and buy yourself a region locked version of the game. Then you basically can do anything with the ROW copy you won (trade/sell it for profit) since you have the game in your account and people wont suspect you for not activating/regifting. Well, that is still rare case i've read about it sometimes ago.
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I always say the game is a gift when creating giveaways, that way you can check on the winner... Just in case... :)
Oh, and I suggest always checking on the winner before you send them anything. If you're giving away a game with a big discount, maybe they bought it too... :) I've had to ask for a few re-rolls for that reason, nothing evil going on people just forget. :) Do you remember every game you bought in the past 30 days? I sure don't... :) Or maybe one of those evil regifters wins, I've not had one of them win anything yet, but it's better to ask for a re-roll before they get the key... :)
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I send by Steam Gift for the games I buy but key ones I sent automated from SG. Well, so far I didn't check them since I don't know when the user will activate after marking for "Received". Well, I think the limit is 7 days still, so I made a check for the keys right now, one profile is private, two has activated okay, one did not also for one more of his win.
So yeah, there's also private profile in this matter. Safest method seems to be adding the user first and then doing it whichever way. But then again, you still need to keep track whether they activated or not, so just handout through SG and check back 7 days later is sort of same(Well, you can only avoid private profile still).
And well, about the buy history, you can just buy first and then go to your Giveaways -> Entered, and search for the game name to quickly remove your previous entries. You don't really need to remember them, just remember this? :P
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Good enough so far I could prevent it from happening by manually removing entries but, if you enter some game giveaway, and you obtain that game while the giveaway is still running, your entrance is still left registered. You can even remove your entry and join again until the automatic Steam sync comes through or you manually update it. And even if you manually sync, your entry still does not get removed, you have to manually do it. Only after manually removing it after a forced update of Steam sync, you get the message, "Exists in account".
What is bad about this? Well, let's imagine the ways the giveaway creator is delivering the gift by:
So yeah, having the game already registered, you can exploit and re-gift what you've won, using your chance. I thought for ideas too, but iterating through every game in a user's Steam games across giveaways created by all those games that specific user has entered, sounds like too much workload. I thought the other way around, entered giveaways of the user over last Steam games update of the user, I guess could work in better performance, but anyways, removing the matches, automatically? Do you find this bug something of "exploitable" caliber, and had you known about it?(Perhaps was known, didn't come up with results in search though) I find this both ethically, and as stated by rules, wrong. I know it's similiar to DLC packed game editions where you can enter because Steam API can't read through that detailed, but I still think this is preventable, at least.
Thank you for your time reading through.
TL;DR;
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