Let's look at the process of sending gifts and verifying if these were received by winners.
Premise: activating the key and giving correct information (feedback) to this site is something only the winner can do and they should have an incentive to finalize that in a reasonable short defined time, and without involvement of mods and other real people.

Essence of the problem: now can occur situations when winner can expose (reveal) the key but not activate it on own account, and not give feedback for virtually unlimited time. This also means that if foul play took place (e.g. key is sold), this win is not visible to any user on site (nor to sgtools), and rulebreaker can continue using the site for unlimited time unless:
1) gifter themselves will care (or someone who noticed gifter's old GA with no feedback and notifies the gifter) and will start getting in contact with the winner to resolve this case or, if this is not working, involves mods
and
2) mods will investigate the case.

So, not self-evident things should happen involving interest, manual work and actions of multiple people. And the point is NOT that gifter needs a feedback. Maybe they don't care. This site needs correct feedback in reasonable time for rulebreakers to be timely (ASAP) and properly handled and for flow to be more hassle-free for everyone. If a winner doesn't handle their win, doesn't matter purposefully or not, they should be in some way pointed to resolving old matters before continuing to the next or unintended things will just pile up.

As one possible solution (maybe a drastic one) as title says, when a gift is marked "sent" by the gifter, the winner could be prevented from entering new giveaways until feedback is given (received or not received), which also implies the winner should try/activate the key. This will make flow smoother and even lift some of SG mod ticket load as far as I understand.
As alternative, light version, this "locking" can happen only after winner reveals the gift key, so that moment of activation can be timed by the winner.
Remark: of course marking feedback needs to be enabled after revealing the key, not waiting 7 more days to mark e.g. "not received", which is not how current algorithm works.
Another simple, cosmetic solution would be to push to winners pop ups or some other signals that they have unhandled wins...
There are also "simple" alternatives such as automatically forcing "received" feedback after key is revealed, either immediately or after 7 days pass, but if this happens silently, we can have a lot of cases of "got suspended because forgot to activate" etc. which doesn't look like a great solution. A task of handling own wins should be passed/pointed to the winner in more explicit way.

Nothing terrible will happen if winner will spend a couple of clicks activating a gift they won and just got sent, before proceeding to entering and winning more giveaways, right? Btw Steam keys can be activated from any browser, also from mobile.

Example of an okay scenarios which would be prevented:
Gifter sends a gift, winner reveals the key, is online often but they don't mark feedback for weeks. Winner may not even activate the game on their account. After contacting/waiting a long time, gifter may have to involve SG mods to request forced feedback. People will spend more effort, etc. on such a trivial thing as making the winner to activate their win and mark a feedback -> Now every winner will care themselves to handle receiving the gifts asap if they want to continue taking part in any further GAs.

Example of a worse scenario which would be prevented:
Gifter sent a key to the winner, which sold the key and while gifter is first waiting what happens, maybe tries to contact, then they are waiting for ticket response, months can pass during which the same rulebreaker continues to win games, maybe sell more. No one can even see these non-activated wins in winner's win list because they are not there until feedback is given.

To recap:

  • Some winners don't give "Received"/"Not received" feedback ever (or for months) while the key can be revealed (hence not safely rerollable anymore).
    Note: SG moderator says that gift still can be rerolled and if it is not working, this will be, again, handled by mods. Personally, I can't see how all this manual involvement can be a greater solution than preventing such by mechanics, which this suggestion is about. Not to say that if rerolled exposed key is not working, we have another upset winner involved.
  • Not marking feedback can often be accompanied by the winner not having the win activated on the account, which means mostly 2 things: winner didn't bother to activate the win or they used the key not on own account (e.g. sold), violating the rules. If rulebreaking took place, it should (and could) be discoverable more automatically and faster than now.
  • Either way, activating the key and giving correct information (feedback) for site is something only the winner can do and they should have an incentive to finalize this in a short time (say 7 days), and without involvement of mods and other real people.
  • Resolving this can be (and probably should be) achieved by user motivation (e.g. to take part in future giveaways or get rid of warnings), or people will keep forgetting all the time.
3 years ago*

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3 years ago
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Then not received should be available to mark after revealing the key.

The lack of mods is apparent and some automation for mechanics here would help. "Lack of mods" is not going to be ever solved in a long run.
I didn't understand from what you said how rerolls can happen with not-discovered unactivated win. If winner isn't marking feedback, a gift is not even in their wins list.

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You don't understand.
This all happens only after and is triggered by the gifter delivering the key. Yes gifter has 1 week to do that, no problem here.

And yes if key doesn't work, the winner can mark it as not received which it indeed is. If gifter is willing to fix this, they can replace the key in the key box and press "send" again, and it can work the same way again.

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How things are done will be just naturally adjusted by users. Changes come, people start doing things a bit differently.

No wrong feedback is needed. Just mark correct feedback.
"Multiple wins" effect can ALWAYS be avoided by the winner themselves if they want. By revealing and handling one key at a time. If you happen to be sent a second key by previous gifter, don't reveal it and request reroll/deletion of GA. Site can also handle this automatically but it is additional work, probably not needed because these cases are extreme rarity.

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Not sure what you are arguing about. Even the possibility of this supposed multiple wins effect may or may not be countered already by current site mechanics, thread is not specifically about this detail and neither me nor you know the site codebase. Also, you can write such "points" about literally any suggestion.

  • There is already plenty of situations when some users take advantage of this site and if this is being noticed by someone else, mods have to do manual work. Almost all rules and mod activity are concentrated around forcing users to behave honestly and reasonably even if they don't want. Some situations are less typical than others hence adding more code to avoid these is just a question of unfeasible at the moment trade-off.

  • A lot of things have been automated already in these years and if dev team is still alive and inspired to maintain the site, a lot of things will continue being added.

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I don't like it. Why are people so worried about getting feedback right away? It makes no difference to me if someone marks my giveaway received after a few hours or a week. The winner has 7 days to activate the game and mark it received. Some people wait to activate the game and continue entering giveaways from their phone while they are away from their computer. There is no reason to block them from entering giveaways when they have done nothing wrong.

I think a good idea would be if a winner has not given feedback after 5 days, SG should automatically send them an email that says something similar to this: You won a giveaway on SG 5 days ago and you have not left feedback. If you do not leave feedback by the 7th day, the giveaway creator may request a new winner. If you had an issue with this giveaway and are in contact with the giveaway creator or support you may ignore this message.

Also, a reroll request should be approved automatically and not require a support ticket if certain conditions are met. If 7 days has passed, there should be a single button for the giveaway creator that either provides received feedback or processes a reroll. When this button is pressed SG should automatically check the winner's Steam account to see if they have the game activated. If the game is activated on the winner's Steam account, SG should mark the giveaway received. If the game is missing from their account, SG should automatically approved the reroll and pick a new winner. If SG cannot sync the winner's Steam account, then a notice should be given that says it couldn't check the winners account and you need to try again later if the winner's account is not set to private or fill out a support ticket.

Edit: I have never had a reroll request take months. SG support has always been pretty quick for me with rerolls and deleting giveaways, it's just the user reports that can take forever because there are so many of them. In my experience a reroll or deleting a giveaway usually takes 1-3 days. Also, I don't think you understand the rule about 30 days for a non-activated wins because it is not explained well. If a winner has broken a rule, you can request a reroll and that reroll will be approved no matter how old the broken rule is as long as the winner has not already been suspended in the past for that individual infraction. If a winner has broken a rule in the past 30 days, all reroll requests will be approved for anyone that requests one in those 30 days. So if someone already reported them and got a reroll approved, your reroll will also be approved if it is within 30 days from the last infraction.

I went to look for this rule to see how it is worded and I think it was removed. It now just says: "If you are selected as the winner of a giveaway and then your account is suspended, the giveaway creator has the option to request a new winner.".

3 years ago*
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I am not worried of getting feedback right away. This topic goes simply from real cases. And it is not about reroll requests.

I have had many winners who weren't marking received for months after revealing the key (so there is no point in rerolling them). Some of them weren't activating the game they won also for 2+ months until I contacted them. Winners don't even care to activate a win and finalize the matter, how ridiculous happening on this site can get sometimes.

Even now I have a winner who won and revealed a key 3+ months ago, game is not on their account. I have no idea if they just don't care of wins, or they did something else with the key. And there is not enough mods to handle these things. (Also, these issues are not worthy of mod work anyway sine these can be automated by transferring all the procedure to the happy winner.)

3 years ago
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To tell the truth I had similar problems with lvl 0 and lvl 1 people too and my fix for these problems was to do GAs for levels 3+.

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That winners sell/trade the wins in 99% of the cases and sure they don't interest for the activation in their own account or the rules of the site.

My solution is the same as Zarddin's. Level 3+ GA's.
As long as it is needed to have enough, active, mods to handle such situations in a proper way.
It's a bit sad to be forced to that step but all other solution tries weren't successful for me.

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I have had many winners who weren't marking received for months after revealing the key (so there is no point in rerolling them).

Why you waited so long? After 1 week - contact them, ask to activate. Wait maybe a day or two, if no action followed - file a support ticket. Boom! Problem solved. And yes, I'm talking about my experience here. That's what I do in such cases, and it always works.

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Some people respond to contact, some don't. Then I file tickets and they are not resolved for months, which is of course not something to blame on a few people working on pure enthusiasm and in my opinion shouldn't even go onto their table in the first place.

And from a gifter's perspective this is not great when you see a person who revealed your key and didn't activate it, didn't respond to contact, continues to use site. Obviously, decreases appeal of making (similar) gifts.

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Are you filing a user report? Those are not a high priority for support and don't get resolved quickly. I don't think I have ever waited longer than 3 days when requesting a new winner and most were done within one day.

As you can see from the stats, there are 1800 unresolved user reports and only 25 reroll requests.

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I went to look for this rule to see how it is worded and I think it was removed. It now just says: "If you are selected as the winner of a giveaway and then your account is suspended, the giveaway creator has the option to request a new winner.".

It was never in the guidelines from what I remember. Only as one of the reasons behind re-roll request on the ticket creation page.

"If you are selected(...)" was actually added during latest guidelines update, to make it obvious to the users. As previously it was not written anywhere really.

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You are probably right. It was probably just the reason for requesting a new winner that says "Did not activate previous wins this month". There was a discussion a long time ago where someone asked why it says "this month" and I think it was explained by a support member how it works.

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I get it is annoying when people go weeks without marking gifts as received but just because you sent it doesn't mean it's been activated.
I have been on vacations for a couple of weeks and won GAs in the meantime, most of which I had entered before leaving, and wasn't on SG a lot because of spotty data. I tried to activate as soon as I was able because I don't like leaving people hanging but sometimes people have no choice.

Sure, if they can enter GAs, they can access the internet but that doesn't mean they can activate.

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Firstly, keys can be activated from a mobile phone using browser in mobile.
https://store.steampowered.com/account/registerkey

So if someone can enter giveaways they should be prepared to handle wins. If they don't want to bother with activating wins, they can wait with entering giveaways too.

Your first part is talking of something else. Here, point is that winner has already revealed the key and continues to use the website while they can keep the gift without feedback (and even not activating the key on own account) for virtually unlimited time. Then real humans have to deal with this which is absolutely unnecessary.

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but why? do you really need feedback right away? anything will happen to you if you receive feedback few days later?

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Some people dont even give feedback EVER.

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No, for a few reasons, and these are just off the top of my head.

  1. There will be those who will mark a bad key as Received (or be forced to wait for up to a week) just so they can keep entering giveaways.
  2. Rerolls can take a few days, depending on the reason for the reroll. This doesn't even account for the amount of time for communication between winner and creator, which can add a few days.
  3. The giveaway creator can mark a gift as "sent" and never send it, preventing a winner from entering giveaways for up to a week (until it can be marked Not Received).

As as aside, I recently had someone take nearly three months to activate a game they'd won from me and mark feedback (I even had another user let me know I had an old unmarked giveaway), but in the end, they did activate it and there was no foul play. This isn't the first time I've had this sort of thing happen. Not everyone who doesn't activate immediately is out to break the rules. In fact, I'd go so far as to say most aren't, and a little communication between the giveaway creator and the winner can usually resolve many situations.

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"and a little communication between the giveaway creator and the winner can usually resolve many situations.'

As such, i feel most of the time its because of communication. There should a common outlet instead imo. A profile messaging board or something.

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We have avenues for that already (the giveaways themselves and Steam profile). If the winner/creator don't reply, we have consequences for those actions (rerolls, marking a giveaway Not Received). The problem here is that the OP is suggesting something that prevents users from entering giveaways while using those avenues of communication.

And I have to disagree about a messaging system. You're opening a whole nasty can of worms with private messaging. It's much better to leave those communications out in the open where, at the very least, moderators can view them.

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I must agree with Tzaar here. When I was new I was also thinking about messaging system but now I know how bad and toxic it could get.

Also some rerolls took 1-2 weeks for me and I would not want to ban someone from entering other GAs just because he found the game on sale and bought it before he did win it from me or because he had this game on his Steam account but it was profile limited. Everyone makes mistakes.

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Tbh, i dont find the environment here toxic. the messaging should be open like steam profile. I do not open my steam profile thus i felt the need for it. Thankfully, i had not have the need to use such messaging service.

I feel the msging will be a more personalized feel for the profile, and msgs for the person. Not exactly an outlet to resolve gifting issues. To make it private that only persons involved will be able to read or an open msging service, that will be an issue of contest, imho.
Cheers~

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99,9% people are great but that 0,1% could make messaging system into a spambot or some other problems that we could not think of now could emerge from messaging.

I also don't open my Steam profile so if someone wants something from me they can add me to friends and that way write to me :)

I just have the feeling that because what we write on SG support and other people can see it stops some people from being nasty.

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Thank you for the reply :D

3 years ago
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"It's much better to leave those communications out in the open where, at the very least, moderators can view them."
It is what i am suggesting with profile messaging where all comments are visible. Not too sure if it has to be hidden from other users but that would be added coding.

Personally, i do not open my Steam profile for comments, that will open more than a can of worms. I feel SG is still fairly "governed" and not as much toxicity, thereby the profile msging will be msgs for the specific users. Of course there should be an option to report(we already had that system)/block any harassment.

Also i am just raising the issue as i had been thinking about it since joining, not specifically replying to the thread topic. :)

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Ah I get what you're saying now. You want to be able to comment on someone's "SG profile." My bad, I misunderstood you.

Ok, I get it, and in an ideal world, it's a great idea. Unfortunately, we don't live in that ideal world, and it would add a lot of additional work for the mods (work that has nothing to do with giveaways). I've seen some pretty horrendous things posted in this forum over the years, but part of the reason "arguments" or "trolling" end on the forums is because users are held publicly accountable for what they say and do. Allowing SG profile comments would only allow certain users to continue that behavior on one another's profile, and quite possibly escalate it.

I too keep my Steam profile comments turned off (except for friends), and ... well ... that's the reason why. Some people simply cannot control themselves.

3 years ago
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Thank you for the input ^^

3 years ago
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All your examples reveal that you didn't understand neither the issue nor proposed solution.

  1. Bad key can be marked as Not Received and unlucky winner continues entering giveaways. If users erroneously mark bad keys as received, it is not related to current topic and is happening sometimes now too.
  2. This is not about rerolls when winner has already revealed a key.
  3. If GA creator marked gift as sent (and this is not true), blocking the winner from entering GAs until win is handled, unlucky winner can mark gift as Not received which it is, and continue using the site. No problems here.

This requires being able to give feedback after revealing a key, not waiting for a week, this is part of proposed automation.

Yes I also had a winner who I had to contact and ask to activate on their account a game they won from me and mark it - no foul play took place on winners side, they just didn't really follow the wins. And I agree to what you say.
But I don't see how extra motivation (enabling entering future GAs) on winner's side can hurt here.

3 years ago*
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Bad key can be marked as Not Received
... unlucky winner can mark gift as Not received which it is.

I'm not sure you understand how the current system works. You cannot mark a giveaway Not Received before a week has passed. That means there may be up to a week a winner cannot enter giveaways, due to a creator's error. And you're not even accounting for the time it takes for creator/winner to communicate to get issues resolved (unless you're actually pushing for winners to click NR before allowing the creator to get a proper key? I'm sure that will be popular with giveaway creators ... )

If the creator has a week to deliver the gift, I'm not sure why we should be coercing the winner (through limiting entry) without giving him a week to activate and mark a giveaway.

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Yes, I understand how current system works, but this doesn't matter as it can be changed if another design would work better.
As I explained just in previous post: This [proposed procedure] requires being able [for the winner] to give feedback after revealing a key, not waiting for a week, this is part of proposed automation.

And yes I don't see why not mark NR before allowing creator to get a replacement. Issue still can be solved by placing new key in the key box, gifter pressing "send", feedback resetting, winner again handling the key and feedback, for example.

Creator has a week to deliver the gift (simply because they may not be online every day for instance).
When gift is sent, next time winner is online, they can handle the key, finalizing the matter with this particular key. Yes they may also not be online for many days before that but then not entering giveaways is not a problem (since they are not getting on site in this time anyway...).

I don't understand why putting handling the win (key, outcome) on the first place before the ability to enter new giveaways is a problem and is viewed by some people as some sort of punishment. It can be done in minutes next time user logs in on SG after winning and is a happy moment anyway.

Then, there are "light" versions to do this change. E.g. force "received" feedback by default after key is revealed either immediately or after 7 days and see what happens. Either way, activating the key and giving correct information for site is something only the winner can do and they should have an incentive to do that, and without involvement of mods and other real people.

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This. Thank you. You said it better than I could have.

3 years ago
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Winners will need to correctly mark their gift as received or not received within one week of the gift being marked as sent by the giveaway creator.

Guidelines says winner has one week to activate a key for a reason. Penalizing winner by disabling ability to enter giveaways goes against this rule. It's bad enough that we already can't enter for game we won even if key is duplicated/invalid until we mark it as not received or until giveaway is removed. I see no reason to make it even worse. If anything - it can be done in one week after key was sent.

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Any existing guidelines, rules, mechanics can be adjusted if a change would help automatize the process. This is for site devs to decide what changes are worthy their work. We all know that there are a lot of tickets and very limited amount of mods who are handling these for free in their own time.
There is no good reason why a winner who is able to reveal a won key should have a week to try this key out to understand if they key is working or not, while still entering more giveaways.

Your example is petty. It is not very often that user receives a gift in the first place. This is a rare and celebratory occasion.
Then, it is even more rare that a key is sent and is not working. If someone is not able to enter giveaways for short time for some game because a gifter failed to deliver a key, for god's sake, it is nothing. No big deal.

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Any existing guidelines, rules, mechanics can be adjusted if a change would help automatize the process.

As I said, existing guidelines are there for a reason. So, you need a better reason if you want to change it. Your suggestion will not make things better for anyone, whilethey will make things worse for many users. I was on both sides - I was in a situation when I could not activate key instantly, and I've had a winners who have not marked the key for a long time. And I can say that current system is better than your suggestion.

There is no good reason why a winner who is able to reveal a won key should have a week to try this key out to understand if they key is working or not, while still entering more giveaways.

There is A TON of good reasons why a winner may not be able to redeem a key. Steam being down, account being stolen, phone with authenticator being broken, and I can continue this list if I wanted to. You lied.

If someone is not able to enter giveaways for short time for some game because a gifter failed to deliver a key, for god's sake, it is nothing. No big deal.

It's still a better reason than your reasoning for this change. If winner did not mark your key as received for a week, for god's sake, it is nothing. No big deal.

Now that I checked your profile I understand why you suggested it. It seems you never participate in giveaways, so never win, and of course you will never will face the consequences of your suggestion. So, it's just selfishness and elitism - "it will be more convenient for me, and I don't care about the others"

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Let guidelines and site creators think of their reasons for what they are doing and what can and can not help them. And what is better :)

This is a feature suggestion thread. Creating models, mechanics, automating things is my profession and part of my nature. While I make suggestion on this forum as my sincere gift to the site devs and as a small fun project of my own, of course I am not planning to program this. It is up to them to see if they want to do/add something and if they have resource to do that. Since this is a hobby, fun project for all of them <3

There is A TON of good reasons why a winner may not be able to redeem a key. Steam being down, account being stolen, phone with authenticator being broken, and I can continue this list if I wanted to. You lied.

If you were in a situation when you could not activate key instantly (which normally requires using a browser and authenticator), you probably would survive in this situation without entering giveaways too. You can wait until Steam is not down. If your Steam account is stolen, you really should stop entering giveaways since wins have to be activated on the same account. You can continue with your list, I already see the "level" of these examples. Oh boy. You are surprising individual.

You lied.

Thank you too.

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Let guidelines and site creators think of their reasons for what they are doing and what can and can not help them. And what is better :)

It is your right to make your suggestion, but it is my right to criticize it. And guess what, looking at comments - it seems majority of people don't like your suggestion too. Too bad you did not add a poll. And you know what? I like automating things, and it's my profession. But automating should not bring inconvenience to users, it's not an end in itself. As I said in my first suggestion - automating this after one week passed since key sent it a good idea . But even then - your suggestion is bad, since it solves nothing. If giveaway not marked properly after one week since key is sent (or probably one week) - it should be automatically re-rolled if key is not revealed, or automatically marked as received if it was revealed (winner should be able to change the mark to not received afterwards). I would also suggest to disallow marking giveaway as not received if user has this game on account (this can be implemented separately from other suggestions). See, there is a lot that can be done without penalizing people for doing nothing wrong.

You can wait until Steam is not down

Same as you can wait for key being marked as received. Your arguments are invalid.

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I am glad for you if you feel objectively empowered in this situation. You are a happy person.

Thanks god no systems from sites to governments are built by people's voting.
(No, I don't need a poll, and you are free to provide constructive critics, good counter-examples, additions, simplifications, alternatives.)

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You are a happy person.

No, I'm not. But that's unrelated.

Thanks god no systems from sites to governments are built by people's voting.

Thanks god no systems are built by people's suggestions.

(No, I don't need a poll, and you are free to provide constructive critics, good counter-examples, additions, simplifications, alternatives.)

Been there, done that. If you don't care about all of the above - good for you. You are a happy person.

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Thanks god no systems are built by people's suggestions.

Actually,

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This too. There are also group ratios. I have seen cases where one is running a deficit right on the borderline of the group's custom cutoff mark and cannot activate a key without being kicked from the group, even though they have giveaways running that would more than fix their ratio.

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On an unrelated note: Can you reject a gift?

3 years ago
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You could ask for a reroll.

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Using what? Commenting on the giveaway itself?

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Exactly 👌

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... and then asking the gifter to request the re-roll. Once support sees your message that you have agreed to a re-roll, they'll process it without question.

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Yes. There is a button to reveal a gift key. Just don't do that and request a reroll / deletion of giveaway.

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FYI once I revealed the key tried to activate it yet steam said I already own it. It wasn't a DLC so I'm not sure why I was able to enter it. I indicated I didn't use the key and asked for a reroll. So revealing is not a problem for a reroll.

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It is not, but it is better to not do that if you have a choice. Not-revealing generally eliminates you as a suspect for selling a game if rerolled key turns out to be used. Cases are different though.
There is a lot which is based on trust.

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Yeah I agree, unfortunately I revealed before checking. Better I'll be tagged as a suspect rather than gifters hard earned money gets wasted.

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If Steam is still learning about the game you'll be able to enter the GA even if you own it. Not sure if that's the case with what you are referring to but that's another example besides DLC. What game was it?

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I don't remember what the game was but that might be the case. As a support can you check my history?

3 years ago
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As SuperMod I can check previous winners of particular giveaway, but I need to have link to the giveaway.

Normally support does not need to have history of giveaways that were re-rolled for particular reason, so site does not store it on user profile. I can't even think of situation where we'd need to have access to it. If winner requests re-roll and it's granted - it's considered to be case closed, without a reason to go back to it.

3 years ago
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After digging e-mails I finally found it! I think we can count it as DLC.

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Woao8/influent

3 years ago
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there doesn't seem to be any interest in relieving the burden on the mods with better automated features. many users will poo-poo any ideas to fix it. good luck.

3 years ago
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Remark: of course marking feedback would be possible right after revealing the key, not waiting 7 more days to mark e.g. "not received".

7 days delay before you can mark giveaway as not received was added to cut number of tickets, as impatient winners were marking giveaways incorrectly because key was not sent immediately. And we had to solve Requires received feedback tickets. Also it gives window of time when creator can try to explain the situation.

Nothing terrible will happen if winner will spend a couple of clicks activating a gift they won and just got sent, before entering more giveaways, right? Btw Steam keys can be activated from any browser, also from mobile.

It would need to be proceded with change to basic rule of the SG - winner has 7 days to activate their win. We all have lives outside of the site, we may need to go on vacations, meet with family etc. And while we can spend 10s to browse the main page, we may want to dismiss thought of needing to activate game straight away. Plus being in a hurry leads to mistakes, and I'd prefer people doing it calmly when being sure they are logged into correct account. So I don't see "I activated game on my brother account by mistake" tickets.

Gifter sends a gift, winner reveals the key, is online often but they don't mark feedback for weeks.

If win is not claimed after a week - creator should send ticket to request new winner. If key turns out to be used for any reason - it's possible to revert re-roll and then it's "original" winner problem to explain themselves to the support.

then they are waiting for ticket response, 4+ months pass during which the same winner continues to win games and no one even can reroll them because according to SG rules, only last month of non-activated wins counts for reroll and the game they may have already sold is not even "non-activated" because they didn't mark any feedback there at all.

  1. If creator allows giveaway to be in "awaiting status" for 4 months and not take action - only they are to blame. If they sent request new winner or required received feedback ticket and they take long to be resolved - that's on the support. But at least request new winner tickets are solved on daily basis, so if you have ticket that waits for 4 months - it means support asked for more information and creator of the ticket never replied. In this case ticket is outside of the queue, as support member decided we need more info to process. And without action on the creator end it will stay virtually forever unsolved.

  2. You misunderstand how 30-day rule works. If you see winner of your giveaway has inactivated game:

    • if they were not suspended for it in the past - suspension will be issued and giveaway re-rolled in all circumstances
    • if they were suspended, and giveaway they did not activate ended in past 30 days - suspension will not be issued, but giveaway will be re-rolled
    • if they were suspended, and giveaway they did not activate is older than 30 days - there will be no suspension and no re-roll
3 years ago
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There is so much misunderstanding even from someone who is a super mod that I feel confused. I have added more details to OP since your comment.
The suggestion thread is targeted at site developers (cg and possibly others, afaiu their list is not a common knowledge).
Again, as a user I don't even know if developers pay attention to suggestions, now that I think of this. This decreases motivation for future. I don't recall much dev's comments generally on suggestion threads either.

About your points:

as impatient winners were marking giveaways incorrectly because key was not sent immediately

Of course marking "not received" should not by design be an option before gift is marked as "sent" or deadline (7 days) pass. (This is not related to current suggestion.)

It would need to be proceded with change to basic rule of the SG - winner has 7 days to activate their win.

Winner still can have 7 days to handle their received win from time of sending. This is not strongly related to suggestion.
Then again, details of rules and guidelines can (and should) be changed when and if needed, if flows / procedures change in result of site mechanics development. Development makes sense if it brings improvement. Developer decides if improvements are worth the effort.

If win is not claimed after a week - creator should send ticket to request new winner. If key turns out to be used for any reason - it's possible to revert re-roll and then it's "original" winner problem to explain themselves to the support.
If creator allows giveaway to be in "awaiting status" for 4 months and not take action - only they are to blame.

Well, thanks for blaming GA creators. I, for record, didn't even know that rerolling exposed keys is an option and still believe that this is not fine. Having potentially more unhappy people involved may become not worth making gifts for many a gifter. What would be the best course of actions, type of ticket etc. is also not apparent for every user from the guidelines.
On top of that I can't see how any scenarios with manual involvement of either gifters or mods can be a greater solution than preventing these by mechanics, which this suggestion is about.

You misunderstand how 30-day rule works.

As a matter of fact this is exactly how I understand it. Let's just throw this out from equation since this is not important for major points. I simply pointed out that state of non-handling past wins can now circumvent any given time limit, is it 30 days or anything else, so this will not work as designed with these rerolls when suspension has been served (your second option). In cases of rule breaking, if user ever serves the suspension, this can be postponed by unlimited time inside of which also other rule breaking can take place.

All in all, I have been surprised how much resistance a bug/suggestion thread can get :)

3 years ago*
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not all games are in key form, some are gifted right out of steam

3 years ago
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And this doesn't matter for this case. Handling is same. Once gifter has sent the gift, it can be received.

3 years ago
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+1

3 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

3 years ago*
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Surprised theres so much discussion.

Boiling down what I'm reading...

GA creater sends key or Steam gift, then marks GA as sent.

If GA winner who has been sent the gift doesnt want to be denied access to entering more GA's, winner can take a couple seconds and mark the gift or key was received (or not received). And then continue entering more GAs... I know I would not be impacted in any way. If I have time to enter more GAs, I definitely have time to mark received or not received.

I could see that scriptors and bots would be unhappy with this. They would have to script auto mark received or not received to continue entering GAs. Cant think of anyone else that would be inconvenienced... Help me out here, what am I missing?

Re-roll? That can still be done.
Stolen or no access to Steam account? Thats a red flag and the account should be treated toxic until resolved. From what I've read, thats usually resolved in 24-48 hours in most cases.

If I was unable to receive a gift that was sent to me for 7 days for x,y,z reason and I decided not to use the "Received" or "Not Received" button, I would not be offended that I couldnt enter new GAs during that time. Could be a scenario that says otherwise, I'm just not seeing it.

3 years ago*
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If you mark giveaway as received without having game on your account - you can be suspended for inactivated wins.

Whole point of marking giveaway as received is to confirm you received what was promised in the giveaway. It is not there for "decoration" and "automatic tick".

Only way to check if key was not used before, or for another game - is to activate it. That's why activation always needs to happen before marking giveaway as received.

3 years ago
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Not aguing with what you have said here...

It takes the same amount of time to activate a win as it does to enter new GAs (both are done on a web browser). 10 seconds? If its good, they can mark Received. If bad, they can mark Not Received. And after marking, allowed to enter new GAs.

If it takes someone 7 days to activate a win, then they can wait 7 days to enter new GAs would be my point.
I'm just not understanding why it takes 7 days to figure out if a key is good when its using the same tool to enter new GAs.

3 years ago
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I don't disagree that it's easy to activate your wins. Just wrote how it looks from the guidelines point of view.

And IMO SG is not an army. Things does not need to be done immediately, we even sometimes encourage users to keep things in "awaiting feedback" status to either help the creator or the winner.

Fighting with auto-bots should be done on support / site infrastructure end. Not by removing user's ability to enter giveaways. There was one round of suspensions for auto-joiners in the past, and it's something that should be repeated from time to time. But only site admin can analyze data and suspend for this.

3 years ago
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If bad, they can mark Not Received.

As MSKOTOR already said,

7 days delay before you can mark giveaway as not received was added to cut number of tickets, as impatient winners were marking giveaways incorrectly because key was not sent immediately. And we had to solve Requires received feedback tickets. Also it gives window of time when creator can try to explain the situation.

So, if 7 days delay stays - people will be unable to enter giveaways for 7 days.
If 7 days delay removed - support will have to face MORE meaningless tickets.
So, what was the reason behind this suggestion again?

3 years ago
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