We encourage users to write comments thanking the giveaway creator for their generosity, although this is not required.
This is unnecessary IMO and could mislead new users, most people dislike generic "thanks" comments for entries I think.
Maybe change it to thanking the creator if you win.
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I agree, that could be read a little broader than many people like. Maybe something like “...for their generosity upon redeeming your won game,” or something similar.
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Personally, I only write a thank you, if I win something.
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If you don't want people to write thank you for your giveaways, you can make a clear note in the description requesting this and people tend not to do it then. If I was giving away a big game like Cyberpunk 2077 for example, I suspect quite a few would appreciate a few thank you messages and gifs so making such a giveaway. Horses for courses I suppose and that's why I think it is worded in such fashion.
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We encourage users who win a giveaway to write a comment thanking the giveaway creator for their generosity, although this is not required.
How's that?
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It may be worth rephrasing it to:
We encourage users to write comments thanking the giveaway creator for their generosity, although this is not required. We also encourage gifters to accept thanks comments graciously and not blacklist people just for being nice.
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personally, I really like when people thanks the giveaway creator
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Or change it to upvote like system. You would thank the Creator by doing that, instead of spamming the tread.
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First thing I thought of when I've seen the comments in this thread. People don't like getting thank You comments, cause it makes a notifications, but it would be nice to thank them, without bothering them. And it's something popular among the forums and social media sites. Likes, reactions etc. It would do its job well :)
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Yay, thank you!
There still could be an "executive summary" version of the Guidelines with a quick bullet list of some of the main and/or easiest to get tripped up on things (one account only, must activate on your account, contact support instead of calling out, decreased value of bundled and free games, etc.), but this is such an improvement, I have no complaints. :)
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More like: "You can't tell a giveaway creator that their giveaway is fake even if it's for Red Dead Redemption 2 and they only registered on SteamGifts that same day" 😉
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I believe this refers to when a new account gives out a highly desired expensive game.
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It is to give new people the benefit of the doubt and that if it is fake, let the mods and support staff deal with it.
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I adjusted that line to help make it more clear.
To remain respectful to giveaway creators, do not write comments that question the legitimacy of their giveaways. For example, it would be inappropriate to comment that a giveaway is "fake" when you notice a new user has created a giveaway for a highly desirable game.
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I would say no from what I understand, as it is only allowed to "advertise" your steam group if it is used to gift people games through steamgifts and they dont explicitly write that you are allowed to do so which they do in the Giveaway Advertisement Paragraph
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Group Recruitment
In this category you are allowed to promote your Steam group, corresponding group giveaways and events, and relevant products or services (e.g. a website with group information or statistics). One of the primary aspects of your group needs to be SteamGifts or gifting using our platform.
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Now that I read it again you could say that relevant products is also the curator page
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The main clarification is the last statement, which is basically that of GROUP giving - i.e. everything has to fall under a group. You also have a curator in that group? Cool, just don't advertise your curator directly.
You are able to advertise in your comments, but only when it is both relevant and valuable to the conversation... [e.g] a user is searching for new strategy games, and you have a Steam curator page highlighting your recommendations from that genre, you could share a link since it would be helpful to those reading.
At the end of the day, it's a list of "Guidelines", meaning they're up for interpretation in some areas, and the mods shouldn't have to police every little thing that happens.
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Please consider adding a Table of Contents to the FAQ?
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+1. This page is shorter than the FAQ one but a quick table of contents at the top is always helpful.
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The table of contents would be longer than the list of guidelines themselves :P
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It wouldn't include everything, of course, but just the general headers :D
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It can be made as collapsed list. By default only headers shown, when you click on header - appropriate section gets expanded.
It has however a downside - it will make searching on page harder (this can be solved by "expand all" button).
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It was a joke. All you've done is confirm what I have said though.
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Well, joke or not - you are right, it seems redundant to have a separate table of contents. So thanks to you I've thought about this "best of both worlds" solution.
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Thank you so much, cg! This is great news!
I was just reading the guidelines and I have a concern about the rule 4 under User Content. I remember that someone made a suggestion to change it because it could be misinterpreted due to phrasing but I saw no changes in the final version. Maybe it was just an overlook?
I would appreciate if you could check it, just in case.
I hope it's okay if I just quote here some of the comments I found about the subject.
Personal attacks or hate speech. Threats or harassment is not allowed, neither is slurs against race, sexual orientation, or gender.
Excuse me? If that phrasing is intentional, it'd be extremely insulting, to say the least.
I'm assuming it isn't, however, and with that in mind the phrasing should instead be:
Personal attacks or hate speech. Engaging in threats or harassment is not allowed, nor are slurs (eg, such as towards a race, sexual orientation, or gender).
Specifically, the issue is in you specifically highlighting those three [race, sexual orientation, and gender] as being the exclusive basis for the rule violation, when sex, disability, religion, and other factors have all been issues which attracted hate speech and harassment on the forums in the past. They should only be used as examples, or the list should be exhaustive and complete. Else, the entire rule just ends up being hypocritical and nonsensical, in a "You can be a bigot, but only in the ways I approve of, okay?" kind of way.
I've also improved the flow of the first part of that sentence.
I'd also like it if you'd clearly note that bully-stalking is against site rules, in the vein of "Note that frequently engaging with a specific user in a manner that is clearly intended solely to confront, criticize, or belittle that user can potentially also be considered as harassment." Y'know, in consideration of the fact that you all have let a specific user stalk me around the site for ceaseless off-topic harassment for years on this site now without taking any action on the matter whatsoever.
There should also be something specifically included to limit "blacklist-whining", given how disruptive that behavior typically is. This is especially true when the behavior is presented to an excessive degree, in a hostile manner, or within inappropraite contexts [such as whining about blacklists towards the OP of a thread made to grieve over a recently deceased relative].
Thanks. This is concerning to me as well. The absence of any mention of religious, and for that matter, political and national, affiliations as could be used in making personal attacks on users, is the elephant in the room here. It doesn't make sense to close one door and leave others wide open.
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Thanks for bringing this up. At first glance it seems like a minor change in wording, but it is an important update. I revised that line to...
Personal attacks or hate speech. Threats, harassment, and slurs (e.g. insults towards a user's race, sexual orientation, or gender) are not allowed.
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Thank you New Guidelines(人Θ'o)
#JP_Guidelines_Memo
Is such a note in demand ...?
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Maintaining the quality after all these years. Thanks for keeping the lights on bright, CG!
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Beta keys which do not provide unrestricted access to the full game in the future, guest passes, demos, and coupons cannot be given away.
I think it's more effective to start the sentence with what to do (or not, in this case), i.e., change from passive to active. That is:
Don't give away guest passes, demos, coupons or beta keys which do not provide unrestricted access to the full game in the future.
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. It is also necessary to keep this feedback up-to-date if the status of the gift changes.
This conflicts with the FAQ, which says that a gift should be marked as not received one week after the giveaway has ended. It's also not clear to me how a winner can know when the gift has been marked as sent (I haven't entered or won anything in years, so it may be something that winners know, but the FAQ at least doesn't address it).
To me it sounds reasonable that the user be given a week to mark as received once the creator has sent it, but would mark as not received if it wasn't marked as sent within a week. If the giveaway creator has marked the gift as sent, and the winner hasn't received it within a day, I feel that's ground enough to contact support. (Though it's probably better to detail this in the FAQ rather than the guidelines.)
Also, I feel that "It is also necessary to keep this feedback up-to-date if the status of the gift changes" should be made more explicit. I assume this normally means "once you've received the gift, mark it as received", but what, for example, if a game key was later revoked? Does that constitute a change? Is it something that the FAQ should address?
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You get a notification when you win, yes, but do you get a notification when the gift is marked as sent?
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Yes you do! The gift icon is lit when you won, and is blinking if the key is sent :)
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Ah, thanks! Hopefully the date the key is sent is also written somewhere, or it would still be hard to comply (like if you were away for a few days and didn't see the blinking icon).
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To me it sounds reasonable that the user be given a week to mark as received once the creator has sent it, but would mark as not received if it wasn't marked as sent within a week. If the giveaway creator has marked the gift as sent, and the winner hasn't received it within a day, I feel that's ground enough to contact support.
Seriously, wow. [I think you're contradicting yourself, btw] You talked about being away for a few days, but you expect others to activate within 24hrs? THAT's the reason users are given a week! :P If you don't login for the whole week after a gift has been won, then that's your problem :P Also, if a gifter takes more than a week to provide the key, but then they provide the key and you activate it, and then mark as not received, that's called theft and lying, and will likely get you suspended.
I really hope I read what you wrote wrong, and this is a complete misunderstanding
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Sorry for the very late reply (took a break off SG).
Yes, you misunderstood. Let me try to clarify:
A gifter has a week to send, but, once marked as sent, it's assumed that the gift should be available to the winner almost immediately. That doesn't mean that the winner must accept it immediately, just that if they want to, it would be there. A grace period of 24 hours is much more than enough for a mail to arrive.
The winner has a week to mark as received from the day the gift was sent, but may mark as not received as early as 24 hours after the gift was marked as sent.
This is meant to go against gifters not really sending the gift but marking it sent. A gifter should only mark a gift as sent once it's really sent.
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This is meant to go against gifters not really sending the gift but marking it sent. A gifter should only mark a gift as sent once it's really sent.
I've never seen this happen, have you had cases where gifters have sent you blank keys through SG? If you're talking about emailing links to winners, I have never done it, and I've never won a giveaway where a gift-link was emailed to me, so I really don't know how common this practice would be.
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I'm not sure it's actually a problem. It was just something which I felt was worth modifying in the FAQ, simply because when a gift is marked as sent then there's no point in giving a sender a grace period, and if something does go wrong the winner should be able to escalate it (almost) immediately instead of waiting for the week to end.
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Due to the large number of support tickets and reports we receive, we encourage users to be patient when waiting for help. It is not necessary to bump tickets, and if your ticket is pending, it is in the queue to be reviewed by a support member.
It would be good to say what you consider a reasonable response time. If the user has been waiting for a month or several for a response, should the user still continue to wait patiently, or, if not, what should the user do?
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It's hard to predict "reasonable time", as number of active support members and time they can spend on moderation can vary a lot.
Response time will be different when we have dozen of active members and are in the middle of cucumber season, and different when we have 5 active people in the middle of the Christmas season (so they both have less time and more tickets to process).
We are not paid, so it's hard to expect us to have "enter live chat and have response in less than an hour" support center approach.
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Sorry for the very late reply.
Nobody talked about one hour.
It shouldn't be impossible to defined what is reasonable. I'd say that a 1 month is not reasonable regardless of the time of year. Even if support has too much work, it's most likely that the request will become irrelevant by that time.
The idea is to give users some notion of what to expect, and give support some guidelines. You could say something like: "Most tickets get a response within two days, but it can take up to a week, and even two weeks during busy seasons." That gives a good idea to the user what to expect, which both tells them that they shouldn't worry too much if it's been under two weeks, and that if it's over two weeks, then mostly likely something went wrong.
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probably between 1 hour and 2 years, based on my 67 ignored user reports. ^^
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"Avatars need to be appropriate for all ages. If you have a NSFW Steam avatar, please change it prior to using the site."
I just needed to point out my avatar is the cutestttttttt
my bunnies <333
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Chat
steam://friends/joinchat/103582791432125620
When browsing SteamGifts in a browser, it is at the bottom.
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Comment rules are still pretty short and vague. Don't you think?
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If you're referring to the one paragraph with the "Comments" heading, it's a subsection of advertising, so it's short because it only pertains to advertising in comments. The entire "User Content" section is fairly detailed and it covers everything else users need to keep in mind when commenting.
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What happened to the rule that says giveaway creators cannot ask users to perform an action for their entry to be considered valid? I think that was a very important rule.
Before
You cannot ask users to perform any special action in order for their entry to be considered valid, such as liking a Facebook page, or following a Twitter account.
After
If a user has access to your giveaway they are free to enter and their entry will always be considered valid. Use the available group or whitelist options if you would like to add restrictions to your giveaway, or create an invite only giveaway and distribute the link either manually or with the help of third party tools to those that meet your requirements.
Reason
Trying to clarify that users cannot invalidate giveaway entries (e.g. if you didn't write a poem in the giveaway comments, your entry will be invalid and I'll select a new winner), but users can have restrictions for distributing giveaway links (e.g. write a poem and I'll invite you to my giveaway).
Edit: I just went back to the Proposed Guidelines thread and searched the page to find a section I didn't see before that says this rule was removed. I can understand if the new wording of the rule was causing confusion and needed to be changed, but I don't think the rule should have been completely removed because it is an important rule.
It is not that uncommon to see a giveaway creator write some kind of conditions in the giveaway description requiring users to do or agree to something to enter and I think we need a rule to point them towards that says they are not allowed to do that. It is very common to see giveaways now that say "by entering you agree to delete the giveaway if the key is invalid". There have actually been multiple threads created where users are asking if that is against the rules and I have been able to point to that rule, but it no longer exists. I actually just found out this rule is missing because someone created another thread today asking about it and I wanted to check to new guidelines to see if it changed, but it couldn't find it.
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I guess I didn't make my comment clear. When I said "what happened to the rule", I meant where did it go, why doesn't it exist anymore. It is not in the guidelines or FAQ.
Edit: I went back to the Proposed Guidelines page and searched it to find that this rule was removed. It would have been helpful if the updates in that thread were posted in a more organized order like putting this removal update below the rule change instead of just throwing it next on the long list of changes so it ends up in a random spot. I updated my above comment.
This is what the proposed guidelines page says:
Removed
If a user has access to your giveaway they are free to enter and their entry will always be considered valid. Use the available group or whitelist options if you would like to add restrictions to your giveaway, or create an invite only giveaway and distribute the link either manually or with the help of third party tools to those that meet your requirements.
Reason
Causes confusion because it says an entry is always valid, but we have a variety of reasons where we allow the creator to request a new winner.
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Cool.
But can we pretty please with a cherry on top, get the SteamTrades.com button shortcut back here?
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Thanks. At least I know why the change has happened.
1 voice against many others, I guess... sigh
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A very very very very few loudvoices of the forum. SG is used by more then 75 people...
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I didn't say "just 1" voice, I said I am 1 voice against many others, without excluding that there are probably more than 1. But with the technicalities, aside, it's not that big a deal. If you answer 2 hours after a message on SteamTrades, chances are really high that the person already found their game...
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Looks like site admin was thinking about it for some time now, and upgrading site guidelines could prompt this change as well
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https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/UffAhT9 (CG's comments on this)
https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/CbmfF/how-about-fixing-steamtrades
Threads like this just make it more reason for the button to be removed. Being suspended for even talking about trading here on the forums mean there is no real place for this site and steamtrades to mix even though the creator is the same person. It just muddies the water and creates unnecessary drama and tension when they do.
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That is indeed logical and I agree with this line of thinking. I guess it makes all of our lives easier.
I won't indulge others into why it's harder for me. But I can now see why it's a good thing.
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Okay, I guess you wanted to know.
I have no bookmarks, as I use the Steam overlay, and not a real Internet browser.
Saves me time, because after a big, tiring day at work, the least I want to do is type out every site I used to visit with 1 click.
Now you can see how some other people live. And I didn't "bitch about it" like you phrased it, nor would I like to comment it further as the previous posts above you clarified everything (a few times) already.
Cheers
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I have no bookmarks, as I use the Steam overlay, and not a real Internet browser.
Saves me time, because after a big, tiring day at work, the least I want to do is type out every site I used to visit with 1 click.
This sounds with proper browser's bookmarks with extra steps.
You need Steam AND a game running, shift-tab, open browser with a click, and still type in Steamgifts so you can one click to ST. (Maybe not typing in SG if you set it for your starting page, but setting that up takes longer than bookmark a page). If this is the time saving method...
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It is, otherwise, I have to login to Steam - entering name, password, waiting for an SMS to my phone, then reviewing the SMS, typing the code from it on the 2-factor authentication, not to mention waiting for that SMS sometimes can take minutes...
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Logical that it is faster that way if you wipe every cookie and credentials after closing browsers.
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Sadly, I do, as I am not the only user on that PC,
not to mention that I'm in security and have to do it.
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Here's a quick fix I made using @Agrass code
PS: You have to have Tampermonkey or similar plugins
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What i see is the same old guidelines, i see nothing new there. So they changed some particular things, which i am asking about
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I don't remember exact size of the section it was in the past, but from what i see now it's still a large one. So again i am asking what did they add/change exactly? Guess you don't know the answer either, because then you wouldn't say how amazing it is lol
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Some giveaways stay gifted for weeks, before redeeming. Why was not this being changed? People don't have time to redeem them & check those gifts - but those users at the same time have time to get in giveaways = read BOTs.
Have those have been answered with this update? As I didn't see that.
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After a week, if they don't respond to you, just ask for a reroll. If you wish, you can blacklist them from your giveaways in the future.
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Just saw that 1 of the BOT members BLACKLISTED me. Just wanted to thank him/her for that.
& also wanted to thank all those who entered my recent giveaway. As I found some 10+ new BOT to BLACKLIST myself.
Enjoy the site. ;)
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It don't help much to blacklist them. They can still win from much too much members.
Thats the sad thing.
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"Think globally, work locally."
as the mods here will not BAN them...then it's upon us to BLACKLIST all the BOTs. ;)
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Hi everyone,
The new guidelines for SteamGifts are now live. It's been a long process but I want to thank everyone for their feedback along the way. Overall, I'm happy with the guidelines we were able to put together. I think they're fair and they help to clarify a number of questions the previous guidelines left to interpretation. Please take a minute to read through them when you have a moment. Thanks!
https://www.steamgifts.com/about/guidelines
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