10: If you are blacklisted by someone, they are automatically blocked from your GAs as well, so they are not doing themselves any favour if you like to give away games. ;)
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11: Please thank the gifter if you win a game from them! (to be honest it feels disappointing if you pay money for gifts and get no words from the winner)
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so true i made a giveaway for 10 copies and only one winner said thank you....
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Addendum for 1. : you can safely say "SG", I say for example "Adding you from SG!"
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12: do not say thanks to all giveaway that you enter. you'll be flagged as a bot. if the giveaway asked for a question or something, you are free to answer, but do not just say thanks for entering.
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+1
Bot or no bot, but it's simply annoying to get notifications from people spamming every GA they enter with the same message.
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13: (More of a personal rule really) Say thanks again after you've finished playing a game that you won and give a short review. :)
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I was meaning to do thread like this but im too new to know stuff, thanks!
Also wtf! I didnt know about number 3 ! Thats awesome, wish it was bit easier than typing tho (no I dont use the browser plugins yet)
Adding one:
14: Just because someone joined your giveaway 30 seconds after its done doesnt mean they are bot, there are thousands of active human users that can at any time of the day click "new" and join the giveaways.
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Maybe add zelghadis's great guide to 4: https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/TLR8m/zelgh-magic-guide-to-basic-sg-puzzling-update-october-2017
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Very important unspoken SG rule: Always praise rat games.
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Thanks for the helpful thread! Didn't know about No. 3, which could be handy in some cases! :)
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Question about n.6: you say it's ruff and not super accurate. How so? It's literally the number peoples LVL is calculated upon.
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I can name at least one. It can take a VERY long time for game values to be modified.
Example, a Fanatical $1 Bundle from 7 years ago - easily over the 95% sale to make it No CV - only got added to the No CV list a few months ago ... six years should easily fall into the category of not accurate.
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But at the time being this number is pertinent tho 🤔
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If you try to contact one of your giveaway winners the best thing to do is comment on one of their created giveaways if they have one made. It's better to do this than try to reach out to them on Steam. Reaching out on steam and mentioning SG can get you a community as the OP mentioned. Sending a friends request might just get you ignored or blocked as they may not know who you are or what the request pertains to. Keeping SG things on SG if possible is a good idea.
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Probably worth also mentioning the changes to winners who don't respond, as this made commenting on Steam less of a necessity than it use to be.
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n. Installing ESGST will make your life on SG a lot easier
n+1. Deleting a giveaway will decrease your giveaways slots. Even if it didn't start and nobody entered it
n+2. Even mentioning that you were blacklisted most probably will add more blacklists
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(edited)n+2) If you want to get more blacklists, just complain about getting blacklisted for no reason.
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if you hover over a date you can see the exact time in your local time (4 hours ago* and so on)
if you hover over the * you can see the edit time
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My personal rules that I find helpful:
- Don't get involved in drama. Let it die quickly by not answering to a person who is not going to change their mind anyway.
- One bad comment doesn't necessarily make somebody a bad person. Neither you. We all have bad days and inner demons.
- Being blacklisted ≠ you're being attacked. Being blacklisted ≠ you're worth less. Being blacklisted is neutral. You're enough.
- Ratio isn't your god, there are various ways people are generous on this site.
- There are some userscripts that might enhance your stay here, for example ESGST.
- Sync your SG account if you've recently added games to your Steam wishlist – it might take a couple of days to autosync.
- Often used acronyms: SG means SteamGifts, CV means quantity and (real) value of your giveaways, GA means giveaway, cg is a nickname of a founder of this site, BL means blacklist, WL means whitelist. There are probably more.
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Small addendum: WL can also mean wishlist sometimes, and it's not rare to see the whitelist being referred to as blue heart because of the button.
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It might be useful to clarify that the five random characters for a giveaway can only be numbers and English letters, both lowercase and/or uppercase.
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I'm petty sure they stole those letters from the roman people who invaded them
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Yes, but actually not. The original Latin alphabet was a tad smaller than the current basic Latin alphabet used by English, for example the letter J is a fairly recent invention, it was originally just a variant of I.
But I was mostly pointing out to not expect anything with a diacritic like Ñ, since some users use "special" characters as a means of obscuring the URL with the intention that one will notice the little extra and replace that letter for its base form.
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I'm sorry but I'm pretty sure you missed my petty point -- I didn't missed an 'r'.
In countries speaking a latin language the 26 basic letters are called the latin alphabet. Then the additional letters are varying among languages and that is making the French alphabet, the Spanish alphabet, the Italian alphabet, the Portuguese alphabet, the Romanian alphabet, and so on. The ancient original alphabet (20 to 23 letters) is very often called the Roman alphabet to avoid confusion (because it is a latin alphabet, obviously).
English people are adding no letter, but the alphabet should be theirs ? They even use common nouns like fiancée with an accented letter without accepting that é in their alphabet ! That's not only the opposite behavior of what we all do on the continent but a looting, a theft, a robbery !
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I don't disagree with you, it's more of a practicality thing related to what to expect from URL's as I had mentioned before, and calling it the English alphabet for the sake of disambiguation seems reasonable enough to me.
And don't get me started with the English speaking nonsense of "we don't use diacritics" but they write stuff like café and Zöe with zero self-awareness, but then you see the word "read" and have to deduce which of its two possible pronunciations it is by context alone, fucking mess of a language.
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I think it'd be better to add an only to 11 so it says "say thanks only after you win a giveaway" and combine it with 12.
13 could also be tweaked for clarity. I recommend putting quotes around "Thanks for skyrim/badrats" then adding an are to the other half so it says "when solving a puzzle are both running jokes"
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Amazing tios. I am already an oldndog here, but it will be very useful for many new users
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1.1 Same goes for Humble Bundle - Do not mention SteamGifts to HB support if a key has failed to activate after giving it away here - They see SteamGifts as key-reselling/trading and claim it's against their TOS. You can get banned from HB if you do.
8.1 There is no way to find out who blacklisted (or whitelisted) you, there is no search function for that. You may now and then stumble upon a locked GA wich will tell you the GA creator has blacklisted you, but that's it.
8.2 Having a bad day? Irritated with short fuse? Yeah, stop commenting here, the blip on your blacklist curve will annoy you with yourself for a looooong time, just not worth it in the long run - take it from a guy who's "been there, done that'' and had to (somewhat) learn the hard way...
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8.1 open the giveaway in private browser
you can now see who made it and if its a train cart you can bypass them and go back to non private browsing
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8.1a alternatively you can use a browser that is not logged in
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Regarding 8.1: For me the best way to find out who blacklisted you is through the big community trains. Tip: You can even look up old trains and use that data to search.
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Rule 8 once got applied to me simply for a single reply of 3 letters: "lol"
Some people just can't be pleased.
I guess the best way to stay safe is don't interact with anyone, which includes entering giveaways.
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Maybe something about when people say 'if key doesn't work allow me to delete giveaway' and that own made up rules don't really apply at all but it's more like a nice thing to let them then that you are forced to?
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Ad. Hiding games -it only works on main tabs. You will still see them in trains/events. Not a 🐛.
If you gift games/keys from bundles, highly likely there will be region lock on them. SG deals threads have information on them, and you can set it properly (you cannot reroll GA because it was region locked). Btw thanks to all awesome people that put much work in those threads
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tip 0. Please activate the games to your account as required, no you can't re-gift, resell or trade them or do anything else with them.
tip 0.1 Better to not use the forum at all in 99.99% of cases. Avoiding blacklists(if you care about that), losing braincells(ask me how I know), providing free education(you're a chad for this one though we're straight up borderline Idiocracy so this one's needed), etc. Decent place to check for deals you might have missed somewhere else though, thanks to a few people who have too much free time, which I'm jealous of but I happily welcome to my advantage when I can.
tip 0.2 Read the guidelines and the rules, no one's perfect so don't stress. https://www.steamgifts.com/about/guidelines https://www.steamgifts.com/about/faq
tip 0.4 Enjoy your stay.
tip # Don't get lured into shady groups with quotas and having to give "high quality games" so you can try to win recently bundled $1 games, you might as well trade your stuff for better value.
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- Reread group rules before applying, or face the wrath of the admin.
- Take it slow as you start, winning 20 ok games feels ok. Winning 1 good game after a while feels amazing.
- Using SG without ESGST is like going on a trek without shoes. You can do it, but whyy.
- Using ESGST, hide low point games and GAs with low chances of winning. Don't forget to hide games like a maniac. So satisfying to see a clean Start page that isn't infested with trash or mediocre games.
- Maintain a good or decent ratio, it helps in many ways.
- Enjoy surfing through discussions, wish each other well and crack jokes. Makes u feel happy and fuzzy. But steer clear of users having a confrontational tone and just plain rude. No internet stranger has ever changed their mind thanks to another internet stranger.
- Remember, winning Games is meaningless if you are doing it to increase your library count. Maintain some standards for your self and respect what you enjoy: Playing Games!
Just because a Giveaway looks mildly interesting doesn't mean it deserves your time. Especially if you have 50+ unplayed games waiting for you. Research the Game before entering. Become super picky, win awesome games, and pls do stuff outside of games. Life is quite short.
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That last point is iffy. Never heard of game collectors? They exist in both physical or digital formats. There are people out there that buy anything, some people focus on buying removed games as collection. Some people simply just want everything. Me personally? I just want to win random things.
Also there are people that enter just to win anything. If i'm here to aim specifically my wishlist, i would be better off not making giveaways and buying games for myself rather than gamble for them. In-fact i have like close to 300 tabs spread out across opera gx and firefox with games that i could potentially end up buying as time moves on, most of these games were finds from non wishlisted GAs or from bundles.
My wishlist, i already know that are games that might interest me. Games outside of my wishlist are at times, new finds that get added to my WL but i will still join them if they are being given away in large quantities. I usually prioritize my WL last when it comes to spending points. Makes no sense right? Anyways, look at this the bright way, the odds of me wishlisting a game is pretty high (i usually add to ignore once per 10 games checked on steam and maybe 2-3 games i just skip through), and it is most likely a lot of other people will do so as well, which means, if i entered all my wishlists as priority, it would reduce winning odds for other people out there. These people winning these games could actually play these games much earlier than me. Which again, can be seen as a win-win to some people doing GAs and the winners themselves.
I do agree with the "do stuff outside" portion though. I'm a mostly indoors person but from time to time, it feels good to be outside by yourself or with a few friends.
That second to last point is also iffy with the "internet stranger" portion. People do change opinions. And yes, people are stubborn by nature, some people might change opinions easier than others and some won't at all. If you do research on a subject and then go online and try to debate it, there is always the possibility you attract someone smarter than you on that specific subject, which means, you might learn something new when you do this. This is how we learn and adapt, exchanging opinions and seeing things in a different way. Sometimes ego gets in the way, and that is usually when you see the bad stuff occur.
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Different people use SG differently. In this case, you and I seem to use it quite differently. Which is totally fine! My tips were just me selling on why my preferred manner of usage would be helpful for an SG newbie.
These tips come from my perspective of things, my biases and my short time here. I can see why someone would disagree with some of them. Like I don't see the benefits of being a 'digital games collector' feels a little shallow and meaningless to me. Becz its excessive consumerism, without much quality consumption. Kills the wonder and joy of gaming, imo. For most people, gaming is their hobby and not associated to their livelihood. Hence, why I would advise a newbie against it
And no, one can still find and win cool Games without entering for everything under the sun or going with only just the Wishlisted stuff. Winning quality stuff every few months is far better than winning mediocre games on the regular. Again, this is simply my perspective. Why? becz I won a super cool game called Chained Echoes doing just that!
Additionally, why is it so necessary to feel the need to keep winning even? One should go easy, take it slow and engage with the community in the discussions! Much fun rather than a meaningless +1, one would never ever open. (I mean this in general, not aimed at you!😭)
Regarding convincing internet strangers....Ofcourse it is possible. I mentioned that in the context of SG and not some general scientific or philosophical debate.
I'm very doubtful about it being worth the time and energy spent for it. Not to mention the rumination after one gets off their device. It is better to simply move on and be kinder to yourself by backing off, rather than to fight with someone about some meta SG drama, why xyz game publisher sucks, political issues, etc. It appears very kiddish how adults on SG tend to go offtopic and get mean in unrelated discussions. Add to that, most people don't come into it with open minds, instead it becomes a raging ego war. A heated online debate is just not worth the headache.
Real life matters need our time and energy, not an unfriendly debate on a Giveaway site. Thats what id want to share with an SG newbie.🙃
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trying to make a list for new users here. feel free to add below and i will add to the list. looking for things that are not in the rules/guidelines
DO NOT bring up/use the text steamgifts, won, or giveaway on steam! this can trigger a full community ban.
https://www.sgtools.info/activation can be used to check your winner to see if they have followed the rules. its not always right, but it has been 99% of the time for me.
Make Your Own Search Parameters https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/1kgzB/new-search-parameters
every single giveaway is made up of 5 random characters followed by /name of game example https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/12345/name of game. people use the 5 characters to hide giveaways for puzzles. you only those 5 characters and the / put at the end of https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/ to access them. they can only be numbers and English letters both upper case and lowercase
if you hover your mouse over Gifts Won/Gifts Sent on a players steamgifts profile you can see the number of Received, Full Value, Reduced Value, No Value, Not Received games
if you hover your mouse over the Gifts Won $$$/Gifts Sent $$$ you can see a ruff guess of the Real contributor value/received value. this takes into account if games have been free, in bundles, on deep% sales. its not super accurate, but its far more on the money than the other numbers.
if you blacklist someone before a giveaway ends, it does not remove them from the giveaway. they can still win it
people can and will blacklist you for any reason
asking why you were blacklisted, is gonna get you blacklisted more
9.4 if you run into a community event train cart and the creator has blacklisted you or you them, open the link in a private browser. it will now display everything allowing you to see the link for the next cart.
trying to contact winners https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/8lAqd/changes-for-unresponsive-winners
say thanks after you win a giveaway
saying thanks on every giveaway makes you looks like a bot and sends a notification to the creator every single time you do it
Thanks for skyrim/badrats. when solving a puzzle both running jokes
if you delete a giveaway you will lose 1 giveaway slot.
you more successful giveaways you do, the more you can have running at any one time
if you want more giveaway slots you can contact a mod. some game devs have to ask for more to giveaway 500+ of a new game they made. im not sure how you do this
you will almost always lose contributor value overtime as game values are adjusted. this is usually because they weren't at the proper value when you game them away.
DLC's/Bundles will let you join them even if you fully own them.
Tiny eye icon with the line through after the name of the game that will blacklist the game/dlc so none of the giveaways for it will show up
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