Allow a winner to ask for a reroll?
Maybe because of CV farming?
Make GA for 1 person, invite 4 random "strangers" who will request a reroll....profit!
Comment has been collapsed.
asking for reroll by winner could remove his entry, but don't ask me how to implement that
Comment has been collapsed.
then would be exploitable in other way. You're a winner of GA with 5 entries? Ask for automatic reroll just because you're a dick and so GA creator gets 0$ CV. If he'd see he had 4 entroies b4 GA was over maybe he would give hints to puzzle or invite extra person, but now you just screw him up
Comment has been collapsed.
Shit. At first I thought it was a great idea and then you guys started saying about how much exploitable it can become. xD
Comment has been collapsed.
well, tbh it's not the 1st, nor the 2nd, 3rd or 5th time something like that gets suggested on SG, and always turned down because of possible exploitation ;) so people who are active here on forums for a long time mostly already seen topics like that, heard exploitation arguments so didn't have to come up with them themselves right away, just knew these argument since the moment they've seen another "auto-rerolls" topic :>
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't like the idea, but for other reasons.
But I don't see how CV farming is any different. Right now you can make invite only giveaway, and then have 5-7 friends join, then n-1 of them post in the GA comments "If I win please reroll". Or am I missing something? Why would strangers want to reroll?
Comment has been collapsed.
the difference is that if n-1 of the request reroll - reroll tickets being validated by actual human, support very quickly notice what they are doing and ban them all. In automated system they can go unnoticed for a very long time. You give them easy system for safe unnoticeable exploitation.
Comment has been collapsed.
Is that actually against the rules though? I think it kind of violates the spirit of the rules, but as long as the game does end up activated on the final winner's account...
Like for example I know that some giveaway groups have a certain win:gift ratio. Isn't that essentially the same, but on a larger scale?
Genuinely interested in your thoughts.
Comment has been collapsed.
While I personally dislike ratio groups it doesn't look the same - the game end up with random winner anyway. There is a rule in SG that GA need to have 5 entries to give CV - it's there so something like trading game but delivering it via GA to also boost your CV in the process is not possible. And also not to make possible to earn CV if you want to give the game to certain designated friend but also getting CV for it. In general you only earn CV if the winner was chosen randomly and not by you. And this system would invalidfate this process. All you'd need to have is 4 people willing to help you (or 4 alt accounts) and you could get CV for GAs with basically 1 entry which in normal circumstances would give you no CV. It's a way to go around the rules thus I believe it to be against the rules.
Comment has been collapsed.
I understand your thinking better now, and I agree for the most part.
While I personally dislike ratio groups it doesn't look the same - the game end up with random winner anyway.
Theoretically: How about we find three other people, make a group, and everyone needs to make a giveaway for Dark Souls III? That way everyone will win one giveaway, and all of the others will need to be rerolled due to previous win. The winner for each giveaway is random because you don't actually know who will win, yet the outcome is that everyone will need to buy a copy of the game to send off, yet also get a copy of the game.
Comment has been collapsed.
That is actual flaw in the system and a way to exploit it. Yet it's harder to make this exploit work that it would be to make proposed thing exploited. To pull out your exploit you need at least 5 people, are wanting the same game and 5 copies of this game. To exploit automated rerolls mentioned here you need one person wanting a game and 4 random people, and you need only 1 copy of the game. Also as rerolls are manually viewed and apporved right now such a scheme can be noticed and partakers can be punished. Especially if you continue to do the same the pattern will be vissible very soon. In automated system you can exploit on and on as much as you want and be unnoticed, because noone is managing the rerolls and cannot notice what you are doing.
Comment has been collapsed.
I see, and agree. I do wonder if support would ban for that though. It's not a "fake giveaway" in the traditional sense. And the winner is allowed to reject gifts for any reason.
So do you think that people who enter giveaways to help the GA creator get CV and post that they don't actually want the game, are rule breakers?
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't believe so, because they may not want the game but will still activate it if they win it. I know I was aked in the past to enter GA as 5th entry, entered, won and activated the gift. If they enter already knowing that "if I win I will ask for reroll" just so GA creator gets CV - then yes, I personally do believe it to be aganst the rules. But it being able to be proven is a different story. After all in the end you only see "I reject this gift" and you have no idea what is the actual reason for this rejection. You may only guess and dealing punishment based on your guess is a bad idea always. No proof (even circumstancial if strong enough) - no crime.
Comment has been collapsed.
It would be interesting to see support chime in to see if they suspend if it's obvious.
Comment has been collapsed.
Just disable automatic rerolls if the giveaway has fewer than a certain number of entries (say, fewer than 50.) That's low enough that it will be available for the vast majority of giveaways, and would probably be easy to implement.
Comment has been collapsed.
What are u talking about? If SG will add this feature, it obviously will give you only 1 free reroll. And if you want more, you should do request as it works now.
Comment has been collapsed.
"...it obviously will..."
I am sorry time traveler! I did not know you had inside knowledge of future events.
I will try not to find valid reasons to question such changes anymore. I hope you can forgive me.
Comment has been collapsed.
Don't you think that multiple free reroll makes no sense and will create new ways for scam? Meanwhile steamcompanion is already using single-time reroll, and there are no complains about that.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm so very confused about your confusion.
I assume you did read my initial comment?
Comment has been collapsed.
It seems reasonable.
Somebody might trade for a game and then win it because they forgot to withdraw from that raffle.
Maybe some notification after sync that alerts you to still being in raffles for items that are in your inventory.
Comment has been collapsed.
ambi, pls... you don't activate the key, you either regift it or trade it fast!
Comment has been collapsed.
Steamgifts could also hide the key. The winner can only see the key if he/she click "reveal key". It is already implemented by Steamcompanion
Comment has been collapsed.
Chaosmxd's suggestion would solve this completely.
I am 100% on board with this suggestion. STEAMGIFTS STAFF PLEASE LISTEN! D:
Comment has been collapsed.
+1 and after they reveal the key they couldn't ask for a reroll, only mark as not received if the key is not working after 7 days.
Sounds like a good idea to me. :D
Comment has been collapsed.
That would solve this issue, but not the possible CV abuse suggested by m3rc.
Comment has been collapsed.
Another advantage to adding a "reveal key" button: If someone wins your giveaway, doesn't mark it as received, and never seems to log into the site again, you could ask support to check if the user has revealed the key and reroll if and only if they haven't.
(This happened to me. Someone won one of my giveaways, but never marked it as received, just dropping off the face of the earth.)
Possibly there could even be a button gifters could press to do this automatically... "if it's been over two weeks and the key hasn't been revealed, push this button to reroll." Something like that.
Comment has been collapsed.
I was going to say something similar. I do like the idea of a quicker re-roll but let's say I'm a giftee, I take my key, ask for a reroll and then someone else gets a "key already been used" error and the gifter gets a "not received" flag on their page.
I do think "simple" processes (arguably such as a reroll) should have some degree of automation, as opposed to having to open a support ticket and wait for that to go through, but simple problems don't always have simple answers.
Comment has been collapsed.
Fair, I am certainly glad to see there's a method in place to handle some system abuse.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes, this would be good. I had to ask Jeffhowe to reroll a few GAs he created for the February and March events, because I won two times the same games.
Comment has been collapsed.
cant it be programmed, so that when you win a game you automatic leave all entry's for a game (same for games you synced from steam?)
Comment has been collapsed.
nope, because there are fake GAs around here. Let's say you''ve solved ultra-hard puzzle for GTA V, you're one of just 2 solvers, you have 50% chance to win the game. But in night before GA ends you won Ga for the game which turned out to be fake. too bad - not only you won fake GA, but to add salt to the injury now you also cannot win the real GA because site automatically kicked you out of the GA.
Also issue with auto-remove making you lose points. Let's say you have 270P. You win this GTA V. You are in 10 other GAs for GTA V. Not to lose points you first spend your 270P, then you leave 5 GAs, you spend 300P, leave another 5 GAs, spend another 300P. If auto-remove would be implemented the moment you win GTA V you lose 570P you could spend for other GAs. Instead of 600P you get 30P. People are already bitching on forums about points they "lose" per one deleted GA. Now imagine the drama for losing hundreds of points from XY GAs.
Comment has been collapsed.
How about removing entries when a won GA is marked as received or the game shows up in the user's library when he syncs?
Comment has been collapsed.
@1. A lot of people mark as received the moment they win just to hide this red notification. You still have 7 days to activate the game anyway, so they don't risk suspension or anything.
@2 Unless you sync at least once a day or preferably few times a day it's pointless. As stats state: http://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/giveaways - Giveaways run depending on type of GA on average for 30-90 hours. You have to sync once every 168 hours. So depending on tyupe of GA it would not work in 46.5% of the cases (ifor Invite only GAs) up to 82,2% cases for Public GAs. Implementing a system that in best case scenario works half of the time in worst works less than 20% of the time is kinda pointless.
Comment has been collapsed.
as i just had a brainfart with a possible solution you made me see that it wasnt as simple as i thought.. :)
i still believe there might be some ways to meaby solve some of this.. (for instance getting returnpoints to go over 300 (as you cant help it) but the autoremove vs puzzlesolving one is indeed a very strong argument!
Thanks for the awesome responce and good argumentation Zelghadis :)
Comment has been collapsed.
still you could lose some points ;) we had option for points refunded (deleted GAs were giving back points) in SGv1 but if you hit 300P you no longer regenerate points - so let's say you prepare to go to sleep, you spend all of your points, so you know when you get up you have 250P regenerated overnight. 10 minutes after you log off autoremove hits and set you directly at 300P. Your points no longer regenerate and you "lost" 250P ;p But points are free anyway and I personally see all crying over "lost" points stupid - just pointing there are people who do not think that way and do cry and with such a system would cry even more ;) But main reason remains Fake GAs- if you lost a legit GA because you won Fake one it's a double shitty situation.
Comment has been collapsed.
For issue 1 I'd say it would be fair. Maybe that would teach people to not mark something as received if they haven't received it yet.
Comment has been collapsed.
as mentioned elsewhere - it's not against the rules and they may do so if they choose to do so. Simple as that. If you contact Support with "not activating" ticket that happened less than 7 days ago they will tell you themselves it is ok and person may be punished only if 7 days passed and there's still no game in library.
Comment has been collapsed.
No, because I see too many possible ways this could be abused.
Comment has been collapsed.
+1
i was going to post this, and it's also unnecessary.
Comment has been collapsed.
Instantly - it's a bad idea, people above already described why.
But, allow to make a reroll by ticket system - I think it's a nice idea. It's a real problem when ga creator don't want to do a reroll and you already have the game - what should you do in this situation? I think moderators can prevent abuse this way. Of course GA creator should be informed about this happening. But probably its' too hard to implement(
Comment has been collapsed.
In this case (usually happens with big featured GAs) you create support ticket as winner and Support handle it ;0 It was already discussed on forums by staff members and they explained it's the way to go :>
But yeah - not instant, but ability to request reroll as winner would be nice to have - but again, in current site system it could be exploited to steal game then request reroll.
Comment has been collapsed.
Chance to exploit is already here - If I win a game I already have I can activate key on another account and then say "hey, I already have the game, reroll please". If you ask a support, not GA creator - it won't do much difference.
Comment has been collapsed.
you don't need reroll to do this. You can activate key for game you don't have on another account and claim key didn't work as well. This is different exploitation that CV farming exploitation we're talking about.
Comment has been collapsed.
Do you by chance have a link towards what the staff said?
Or other wise which category the ticket should be put under?
As we all know suppport is busy so it would be a shame to get suspended for non activation if the ticket takes too long ^^
thx in advance
Comment has been collapsed.
do not have the link, but if there's anything not-related to any ticket category just create "Other" category. And while you wait - don't mark. Generally don't do anything on your own when you are waiting for support answer/help. Leave GA unmarked if you cannot contact creator.
Comment has been collapsed.
Doesnt that exclude you from sgtools till it is fixed?
Or does that just count those that are marked as received?
Comment has been collapsed.
you got to mark as received for it to count on SGT.
Comment has been collapsed.
IIRC you should just leave it in "awaiting feedback" status while you wait for the reroll. The win notification will be there though until it's rerolled. It won't show up in your win list, so it's good for SGT
If you haven't already notified the giveaway creator about the reroll, you should post in the giveaway comments so they know.
Comment has been collapsed.
you create support ticket as winner and Support handle it
Wait really? I thought they needed to have the GA creator make the ticket. I dunno though.
Comment has been collapsed.
yes but support have other ways to deal with such a things. One is add ticket to admin queue and cg may remove single copy and thus it's winner from GA while not deleting whole GA. This way GA creator gets CV for remaining copies and just one copy is invalidated (have it done for one of my GAs myself). Also support may advice you to mark as not received or to leave GA unmarked. This way if you got official support reply if you do so you are sure to be safe and that won't get suspended later on for example for not leaving feedback.
Comment has been collapsed.
[Edit] It seemed open to abuse but a possible solution would be to hide the key, unless you view it then you won't be able to ask for a reroll anymore
I like that idea. An option to reroll before you can see the key/gift link. Don't know if that's hard to implement?
[edit] and bitching about the lost xp is only for "bitches". Let em bitch and move on...
Comment has been collapsed.
still abusable for CV farming. 5 people join GA, request automatic reroll until designated person wins. GA creator still gets CV. Any automatic reroll system is open for abuse and exploitation thus should not be implemented.
Comment has been collapsed.
Only make the first reroll automatic.... Problem solved for 99% of the cases.
Comment has been collapsed.
so give people only 25% chance to abuse and farm CV in uhnjfair manner and have only 25% of GAs abused by them instead of 100%. Funny how different definition of "problem solved" can be.
If engine in your car would explode the moment you turn left or something and manufacturer repaired the problem by making sure that it will have only 25% chance to explode would you be hapy and considered he solved the problem? :>
Comment has been collapsed.
So CV farming is really a big problem apparently. It's the first time I really encounter it. Haven't thought about it that seriously till now.
Comment has been collapsed.
well there are ofc bigger problems in the community like regifting, multi-alt-accounts, bots, non-activation etc, but yeah - CV farming been around since SGv1 and never got fully resolved, so adding new ways to exploit it is simply bad idea, because it will make not-biggest-but-not-smallest problem bigger and will force staff and community to work a lot towards fighting it. Not worth it imho for same of having few hours faster rerolls.
Comment has been collapsed.
So here are the issues/solutions that were raised so far:
-
ambidot - activate won key and get a re-roll.
Solution: Key will be hidden, once your reveal it, your re-roll ability is revoked.
But what can be done with Indiegala link / steam gifts? Still a problem. Any ideas? -
m3rc - CV farming (the example given was unclear to me, why stranger will re-roll, they're strangers, they don't give a crap. It could work by coordination with 5 friends though)
Solution: Requesting a re-roll by the user will remove it from the entry pool.
I think it's a good solution. Don't know if easy to implement, don't think it should be hard though. -
Expanding the issue - zelghadis: getting 0 CV from removing the 5th entry, because the winner is an asshole/wants revenge/reasons.
Update: CV Farming seems to be a bigger issue than I've initially thought. Cheating the system to get a predetermined winner is a possibility with good coordination inside a group. Group will re-roll until the designated winner can get the game (which he/she might have already got the key for) earning the gifter full CV while cheating.
Does anyone have a solution to zelghadis analysis?
I'll update more issues/solutions when they are raised (comment here with them to help!).
Overall, right now I think it's a good solution for GAs with keys and I'm supporting it.
Comment has been collapsed.
and for your solution for m3rc problem I already added anpother way of exploiting it the other way - GA creator getting 0$ CV not because of his fault, but of winner being a dick trying to screw him over.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sorry, I've missed it. I'll update my comment.
What about not removing it from the entries, but from the RNG itself?
Comment has been collapsed.
not sure what you mean by removing himself from RNG - if his entry remains in GA then m3rc problem is still a problem - winners can do the same until the "right" person is chosen and wins. So it's a lose-lose situation. Winners not leave entry pool - exploitation that m3rc mentioned is possible. Winners are removed from entry pool - exploitation I mentioned is possible. There is no 3rd way.
Any automatic reroll system that does not require support can and will be exploited one way or the other. It's not like this suggestion is discussed for the first time. It was suggested in SGv1 years ago already and many times since then. And result is always the same - instant/automatic rerolls are not possible because they can always be exploited.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm not a veteran like you, for me it's the first time I see this suggestion :)
On the surface it seems plausible, but you made valid points against it.
By "removing from RNG" I meant that when the re-roll happens previous winner entry won't be among the optional winners while the creator still gets to have his CV intact.
In the case of very low entry pool which constantly get re-rolled the exploits becomes apparent (why would all those people keep re-rolling when they entered to win?) and then a support ticket can be automatically created to alert support and discuss it with the creator.
Another option is a cap of re-rolls based on percentage, 20% for instance, before that option becomes unavailable and the creator can make a ticket like he normally would? So a 10 entry GA will have 2 re-rolls available and so on.
Comment has been collapsed.
first of all - it won't become apparent. Rerolls are invisible for normal users so how would you spot someone and report it? Even more apparent things like not activated win, multiwin, regifting etc - still require support tickets, I don't see how it would be any different. And if there's automatic detection system - any system can beexploited. The moment you suggest exact system I or someone else will figure out exploit for it Would it report for same 5 users? Then take 6 users and switch 1 each time, with 6 users you already have 6 combinations of 5-user groups. Or take 7 users - 42 combinations. or with only 10 users (finding 10 users would not be that hard) you already have 30240 possible combinations, so you are sure no two GAs will have same 5 entries in them and nothing will ever get reported.
Capping on any % is no solution. What would 20% cap mean? That I can cheat only on 20% of my GAs and cheat only to get 20% of my CV. But I'm still earning 20% unfair CV compared to fair user so the system is still wrong. I can still exploit it, just to lesser extent.
Comment has been collapsed.
Apparent to the system, not the users. The system would recognize it.
Human systems can and are abused too, all the time. The purpose here isn't to create a bulletproof system, there's no ideal solution to anything, the only purpose is to lower the strain on support or ease some processes for users. There are a lot of automation system that work adequate enough and only need some minimal human supervision.
Not sure what you mean with those combination examples. But nevermind, forget the auto-reporting, I've just spit-balling ideas.
Capping on any % is no solution. What would 20% cap mean? That I can cheat only on 20% of my GAs and cheat only to get 20% of my CV. But I'm still earning 20% unfair CV compared to fair user so the system is still wrong. I can still exploit it, just to lesser extent.
Where's the cheat in here? There are still other entries that will win after the capped re-rolls will be over and won't get a chance to move it along to another user. What is "get 20% of my CV" got anything to do with my proposal of capping the re-rolls?
It seems to me like you think that every possible process that can be imagined and put to practice is bound to fail. That seems like a fallacy to me.
Comment has been collapsed.
Difference between cheating human-based system and automatic system is that with human-based system you can never know if it will work. It may work one time with 1 human and may not work another time with another. Thus there is much greater risk of getting caught if something is verified by human as well. Bigger risk, less people willing to take it. And also bigger chance that noe who takes the risk will sooner or later get caught. If you find a flaw in fully automated not human-verified system like one that's being proposed here you can exploit it too your heart content without risking getting caught - because you already know system is not catching you.
About combinations you freely move along with because you don't understand them - maybe try to understand them, because that's a pretty important argument here showing that with only 10 people I can get enough combinations that automatic system won't catch them. Let me explain in example. Let's say your automated system catches people, let's name them ABCDE if they all enter GAs and reroll among them until one of them win. It's easy to spot because it's always ABCDE entering and one who is designated to win this time (because maybe he paid for this win) always win. But if we introduce 6th person - F, there are already 5 combinations of people entering GAs - ABCDF, ABCEF, ABDEF, ACDEF and BCDEF - it's already not the same people every time so not so easy to spot and also not so easy for system to catch. But if we have 10 people doing this scheme it's already tens of thousands of possible combinations - impossible to spot or catch, who can freely exploit automated system.
As for where is cheat - cheat is in your 20% cap. 80% of GAs will get capped before you get to designated winner. But 20% of GAs will get reroll to designated winner before hitting cap. So if I make 5 GAs intending to cheat I will not be abvle to cheat in 4 of them, will have to deliver to other winer than designated one, but in 1 I will be able to cheat. And it's already 1 more GA that I would normally be able to because normally I wouldn't be able to cheat and pick designated winner in any of them. Thus Wwhile I had to deliver fair and square 4 GAs and got fair CV for them, one I managed to cheat before got capped, yet still boosted my CV, so 20% of my overall potential CV can be cheated this way.
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks for the complete explanation. I've updated my comment with your analysis.
Comment has been collapsed.
This is a problem only with caps like 20%. A cap of 3-5% with a requirement for the GA to have 100 entries minimum to qualify for the automatic reroll gives a much lower chance to cheat the system than making a private GA with 5 entries, where the designated winner has 20% to win the game without the need for a reroll. In a bigger group of participants it's also less likely extra rerolls will be required. That's why I would suggest a constant cap creating warning tickets instead of blocking the rerolls(private value, fine tuned to give a reasonable number of warnings) and a limit on the minimal number of entries in a GA.
Comment has been collapsed.
Then what's the point of having a new option developed when it won't be useable in most of the cases? Rerolls and double wins in general are way more common in groups, private GAs etc than in big public GAs, because chances for double win to happen in big GAs with hundreds of entries are way way smaller. Discussed already with talgaby below. In examples there - he doing publics only had a grand total of 2 (!!!) cases where it would be useful. While I had 22 cases, but none of them would work because they were not "100 entries minimum". That means that in this particular comparison less than 10% GAs qualify. Then what's the point of implementing a new system if it can only be used in less then 10% cases and rest got to be solved manually anyway?
Comment has been collapsed.
100 hundred is probably too much, based on the statistics it should be around 50. With 2(1 for GA with 25+ entries?) automatic rerolls allowed it leaves only 4% chance to use it for CV farming. On the other hand if we're taking about a 20% chance to cheat the system being to high the same applies to the group from the case you described. Think of it this way. Somebody buys a bundle game and instead of activating it he gives it away in a group like the one described. With 10 giveaways with 25 entrants each he has 10*4% to win the game back. Only the designated winner changes from a friend to the GA creator himself.
Check my post here. Problem of using private/group giveaways with low number of entries persists regardless of the fact if automatic rerolls are implemented or not and they would contribute to only a few % of chance to circumvent the system
Edit: Don't get me wrong I'm not against private/group/whitelist giveaways. I'm only stating that every type of giveaway with possibility to restrict entries to a defined group of users can be used as a CV farm and some of them already give much higher chances for that than the discussed auto reroll functionality.
Comment has been collapsed.
Ofc problem exists - I've myself reported quite a few such users, but automated rerolls make already existing problem even bigger problem. No matter if you make it 100% easier, 20% easier or 5% easier for them - you make already existing problem even bigger and that's the problem here. All that for sake of saving few hours on rerolls (they rarely take any longer). So my opinion remains unchanged. I'd love to see winners being able to request reroll same as creatora and I'm fully in favor of that change (if we get "reveal the key option that is), but nope to any automated system. Automated systems can and will be abused, and unlike human-monitored system if you find a flaw in automated system noone will catch you, you're not at risk that after X tickets someone notices you're doing something wrong, because there is no human supervision.
Comment has been collapsed.
But there could be a human supervisor. I do believe that the systems keeps data about rerolls in the database. What's the problem in writing a query which would find suspicious cases which than could be checked manually? At elast in my oppininon the biggest problem of stamgifts nowadays is lack of automatic tests which would discover such frauds. The site depends on the giveaway creators to do check the winners. I once had a winner with around half or the games not activated on his account and that started almost 2 years before. Nobody noticed that earlier. There was no problem with getting a reroll for that case but it took time. And time is the biggest problem here. There are some users who check the winners and other don't In the end more and more giveaways are created as private/group/whitelist/lvlx+/sgtools protected cause for normal public giveaways without restrictions you can be almost sure that a double digit percentage will end with rulebreakers as winners. More and more people make restrictions only to avoid the inconvenience of handling those cases.
Unfortunately the site becomes less and less what it used to be few years ago. Rerolls could be autoamted to save the support time so that they could review more suspicious cases regardless if they were reported by the community members or discovered automatically by the system.
Yeah an automated process can have bugs and should be supervised but generally it allows to save time and allocate the freed resources to other more important matters.
One automated reroll for a 20 entry giveaway rises the chance of ghettins a specific winner to 10%, while simply getting only 5 entries makes the chance 20% without a need for a reroll. If the system also checked if you own the game before allowing you to reroll I do believe, that the impact on the system would be neglectable. Simply keeping the number of entries lower gives a better chance to cheat the system than allowing extra entries and counting on the automatic reroll.
Comment has been collapsed.
Already exmplained here - with just 10 users you can get enough unique combinations that will be enough for all of them to easilly reach level 10 before thety run out of these combinations. As each GA will have unique set of entries your query won't find anything suspicious.
As for rerolls - in another topic Support already told that they are not nearly the biggest timewasting problem. After all checking most of rerolls takes them 1 min or so, and there are not as many of them as one may think.
System cannot check if you own the game when you enter Ga - it would require conecting to steam Api and checking it every time you enter GA. 1 GA easilly generates hundreds or thousands of checks. SG is DDoSing Steam and Valve bans SG from using API and nothing works anymore.
Comment has been collapsed.
As for rerolls - in another topic Support already told that they are not nearly the biggest timewasting problem.
I must have missed that post. Would you happen to have the link handy? It would be good to know especially with the Support Statistics page.
Comment has been collapsed.
Not link,sorry, but I remember reasoning behind it. Reroll is easy to handle, because first - you have all the evidence "at hand" usually either a comment with rejecting win or not-activated/multiwin history viewable with one click, unlike many other tickets you don't have to do any investigation, you just see the data, verify if it's correct and you approve. Second thing is if reroll is that what also takes a lot of time is actual writing answers to tickets, explaining stuff etc. It's not the case with rerolls, as you simply have to write like a one word, or sometimes just a smile and click approved. Look at it this way - see how long each of us take to write a single answer in this discussion. Now imagine writing something as long, often also linking to something or copying art of FAQ etc as an answet to a normal support ticket. Now compare it to how long it takes you to write "rerolled" "approved", "ok" or ";)" and clicking "Approve" button ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, each individual reroll ticket might not take a long time, but considering so many of them come in (far more than any other Support queue), it actually tends to take the longest time to clear.
Comment has been collapsed.
I was thinking more about a query finding all the GAs with multiple rerolls.
As for the check. You would have to manually sync just once to see the reroll button. We're talking here about rerolls from multiple wins.
- You win 2 GAs
- You activate one key
- You sync your account
- SG knows that you own the game so it shows the reroll button on the second GA
Comment has been collapsed.
But why after winner asking for reroll not asking about it from gifter. And this problem solved. If gifter think reroll breake someting he just decline it.
Comment has been collapsed.
because it's no longer automated system? Not to mention the fact that like bobo mentioned in this topic, a lot of users don't understand english very well, they are not allowed of complicated rules, may accept not being aware they got no CV and since it's automatic it cannot be solved later on. Why automatic system, if it can be support resolved like it is now (reroll tickets take few hours anyway) but then support may ask "are you sure you want to accept this reroll? You will lose all CV".
Comment has been collapsed.
Why not automated? It Automated, just with lot of checks,
-
Winner asked fro reroll, used captcha and look at warning/blinked text about what he do on some languages.
-
Giveaway creator, received notify about winner asking reroll and must confirm it or declined.
-
If you think it can be abused by farming CV, makes restriction for autoreroll for 50-100 minimum entrys.
Also save old options about reroll.
Comment has been collapsed.
@captcha-warning - people click through multiple things all the time without reading, a lot of users don't speak english, cg stated he doesn't want site translated into multiple languages unless he has support members speaking these languages (that is why we only have english and russian FAQ, because there is russian on support team who handles hundreds of russian tickets)
@2 GA creator may also not know how the CV system works, he may not be aware that he will get 0$ Value because of this. Support can warn him about it in not-automated system, auto-reroll cannot be fixed after it happens and he loses his value.
Comment has been collapsed.
Any reroll novadays gives 0 CV? Why if autoreroll done, it must be locked from support?
Comment has been collapsed.
nope. but reroll with removing entries can. and automatic reroll without removing entries can be exploited.
Comment has been collapsed.
With restriction of 50 minimum entrys, this problem solved.
Update: also support must see how many times autoreroll be done, for catch real abusers. If it be posible, to abuse somehow.
Comment has been collapsed.
and like I said above - useless solution, because it will not be appliable - most of double-wins happen in group and private GAs with less than 50 entries. What;s the point of implementing a solution that will not help at all with most of the cases?
Comment has been collapsed.
I think most situation where need autoreroll its in giveaways with lot of copys from developers, for fast solve issues.
Also in private and little people groups mosty everyone knows the rules. So it can be used well with some restrictions / rules.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's not about people not knowing the rules, it's about people not being online 24/7. When new bundle shows up it will mean may many GAs for games from it in groups (especially bundle-dedicated groups), in private GAs etc. If you enter 20 GAs for XYZ from a new bundle, each with 10-20 entries, you are quite likely to win more than one of them. If you win 1st when you are offline and before youcome online you win another one - that's where a lot of rerolls come from. Not that people want to cheat or don't know the rules, but because they won another GA before they were able to remove their entries from other GAs.
Comment has been collapsed.
Why exactly? It would save few hours max of waiting for reroll or few minutes max for support to handle reroll at the cost of possibility of heavy exploitation. That's why this function would be bad for use.
Comment has been collapsed.
This is good because it excluded support factor. Do not need a mediator for this and save lot of time for many people. Also as i say with some restrictions/rules this function can be used as catcher for abusers. If this option really can be abused somehow.
Comment has been collapsed.
It was written multiple times how it can be abused. And it's not a lot of time saved for support because rerolls doesn't take a lot of support time anyway - they are one of the fastest tickets to resolve.
Comment has been collapsed.
Loose talk, it seems to me that you are afraid of abuse more, than think about the real benefit of this function. The main objective of the site to distribute gifts, and do not farming CV. All abusers already can be found, just looks in they logs of giveaways, no need be in support team for that.
Comment has been collapsed.
Loose talk, it seems to me that you simply want the function thus you don't give two shits if it can be exploited, if it can be hurful - none of this matters, because the only thing that matters is that you want it, so who cares if it can be exploitable, let it be but I will get my precious function :>
Comment has been collapsed.
Seems you missed everything about how it can be made without abuse. Lets stop on this, i dont want talk more about it.
Comment has been collapsed.
You missed the part when I countered every of your ideas how to defeat abuse. But yeah, let's stop this. Hopefully as it was mentioned many times before and always dropped it will be the same this time :>
Comment has been collapsed.
A small contribution to the CV farming issue:
I don't think removing the winner entry on a reroll is a good idea. It solves one problem but causes new ones. Maybe a better way would be to allow auto rerolls on giveaways with more than lets say 100 50(@1) entries? This makes the chances for rerolling to a specific user quite low.
To further complicate things for potential abusers If a giveaway gets rerolled more than x times it's an automatic candidate for manual check.
It's not a complete solution but still it should be enough to handle most of the rerolls.
For giveaways with lower number of entries a possibilty to create a reroll ticek as a winner would be a good addition, but still it can be handled withoud a dedicated ticket category.
1 I took the number from the avarage entries per giveaway stat. Higher values are safer, but will affect a lower percentage of giveaways. It would probably require some balancing between risk of abuse and automation level
Comment has been collapsed.
To further complicate things for potential abusers If a giveaway gets rerolled more than x times it's an automatic candidate for manual check.
It's not a complete solution but still it should be enough to handle most of the rerolls.
That's what I meant here in:
"...constantly get re-rolled the exploits becomes apparent... a support ticket can be automatically created to alert support"
But you've explained it better than I did.
For giveaways with lower number of entries a possibilty to create a reroll ticek as a winner would be a good addition, but still it can be handled withoud a dedicated ticket category.
1 I took the number from the avarage entries per giveaway stat. Higher values are safer, but will affect a lower percentage of giveaways. It would probably require some balancing between risk of abuse and automation level
Agreed. Maybe this whole suggestion can be tested for a small number of GAs every week, to see its impact, before it's implemented completely. There's no necessity for a full blown utilization of automation ideas (or any kind of ideas really) right from the start.
Comment has been collapsed.
One more thought. The reroll option could be available only if you own the game. In case of a double win user would have to sync after activating the first copy and only than would be able to request a reroll. CV farming is than limited to bundle games(or other with multiple keys available) as for every reroll attempt the participants of the plot would have to have an extra key prepared and really activate the game in case of winning to be able to perform the automatic reroll.
Similar scenario is possible even with the manual system. Consider 6 friends buying a bundle and creating private/group GA for a game and rerolling till every one of them gets a key back(requested based on multiple wins cause). Unless a single moderator takes care of all the tickets from the group and remembers all the participants nobody would notice.An even easier way would be to invite the targeted friend who is supposed to get the game and 4 other people who already bought the bundle but didn't sync. Every one of them in case of winning could simply write that he bought the bundle after joining the GA(requested based on the already owns the game cause). Regardless of the cause the GA becomes suspicious only when it is rerolled multiple times as there's a valid reason for every reroll request. A low limit of automatic rerolls does the same thing in terms of preventing this kind of fraud.
Generally all giveaways with small number of participants can be easily abused and as it was stated by other users granting rerolls manually only rises the chance of catching somebody, but it's still a case of luck and how much time the moderator spends on the ticket.
Edit: Looking at it from a wider perspective all the groups requiring to create GA can be considered as a CV farm as long as all the participants create giveaways of similar value. The only thing which changes from the extreme case described earlier is that not all the participants get each title, but depending on the number of buyers it's a lower percentage. Still as long as the group is closed , high percentage of members buy the bundles and the number of participants doesn't change it's generally a way to exchange CV. As far as I know group giveaways are still here and there are no special requirements for them to give CV. So what's the difference? From what chance of winning a game is a closed group considered a CV farm?
The above edit is in reply to all the people talking about the chance to successfully cheat the system based on the number of entries and the number of automated rerolls allowed. 20% to bypass the system is equivalent to participating in a group where the average number of copies given away oscillates at 20% of the number of group members(which may even mean only few % of members need to buy each bundle taking into account happy hours etc.If somebody gives away a game and than wins it back it's also a way to cheat the CV system).
Edit 2 I'm only trying to show that there are many other issues with the CV system and that bringing up the CV farm issue is like saying that knives should be banned cause they can be used in a crime. If the possibility of automatic rerolls abuse is low compared to other ways of farming CV than it cannot be used as an argument against the system.
Comment has been collapsed.
I posted this above, but just to put it here so it's seen:
A simpler fix for the CV farming issue is to disable automatic rerolls if the giveaway has fewer than a certain number of entries (say, 50? Although it could be as low as 10 or something.) The assumption is that giveaways with few entries that want rerolls probably require more moderator scrutiny, whereas if you have 50 entries, it's unlikely they're going to be able to pull anything, so you can just automate it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Unless you add a button to reveal the key which disables this, it'll be abused to oblivion.
Not to mention that if someone doesn't want the game, why do they even enter in the first place? Double wins or "just got from trade" events shouldn't be that common to warrant an entire new feature.
Comment has been collapsed.
You'd be surprised how common double wins are - especially in groups and for bundle games. When new bundle gets released there are tens if not hundreds of GAs available for games from it. It's not that uncomon to win 2 or even more GAs for a bundle game in this period. For example - I so far had 22 Reroll requests because of double wins out of total 58 rerolls. that means over 1/3 of my rerolls are because of double wins. And now consider the fact that quite a few of my rerolls are from times when we had preaproved rules which we don't anymore and users not meeting them. So nowadays over 50% of my rerols are because of double wins. Not that uncommon, is it?
Comment has been collapsed.
Holy fuck. When I unleashed my pages worth of HOG keys on the public a while back, I only had three double wins, way under 10%. Are we sure the RNG on this site is as random as it should be?
Comment has been collapsed.
well, you unleashed your bundle keys to public. I unleashed a lot of them into bundle-dedicated group where GAs rarely get more than 10-20 entries and there are a lot of people creating GAs when new bundle is released ;) If you enter 10 GAs for XYZ each with 250 entries your chances for double win are significantly lower than when entering 10 GAs each with 25 entries ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
In this case, the low number of possible entries kinda attracts multiple wins.
I wonder though, how often would this function be used. I mean, how many times people dump a large number of same games on small groups?
Comment has been collapsed.
all the time :D:
http://www.steamgifts.com/group/90YAp/bundleliciousv2hd
We restarted group 4 months ago and already had 6k GAs, including many multicopies (because IG happy hours). It's not so uncommon with bundle games - because these games can be aquired cheaply in big quantities thus can be cheaply dumped in big numbers as well ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh, wow. And I thought the BAA was crazy for bundle games. 0.0
Comment has been collapsed.
now take into consideration that that's not even full list of GAs ;P A lot of GAs are private only because they are for group events and tournamentas, then there's additional "Platinum" part of the group for top users with even more GAs ;) So yeah - in such environment believe me - rerolls happen very often and mostly because of double-win reasons ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
looks at small list of bundle keys given away
hides in corner
Okay then… so, winner reroll button? :D
Comment has been collapsed.
Would be fine as long as it's not instant/automatic like OP suggested. Plus adding "Reveal Key" option, so revealed keys cannot be rerolled.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'd like a reveal key button, with a feedback. This way I know when to request a reroll and when to start digging into user account history to maybe ask for forced received. And this regardless of winner reroll or not.
Comment has been collapsed.
yeah - if "Reveal Key" button then ofc with feedback for contributor as well. Kinda goes without saying :>
Comment has been collapsed.
It's happened to me twice -- winning two giveaways by the same user at the same time, and I'm not counting events or level 7 GAs. Saw it the other way around as well -- the winner got two of my GAs simultaneously, one with 71 and the other 124 entrants.
Comment has been collapsed.
I see one specific case in which this would be an excellent idea, not to re-roll, but to cancel the GA altogether -- when it does not reach 5 entries. I find it very unfair to activate the gift if the giveaway creator is not getting any CV.
Comment has been collapsed.
GA can be deleted by support if both creator and winner agree upon deletion. If you feel bad just contact creator, write comment in GA saying you agree on GA deletion and have him wtite a support ticket to delete GA :>
Comment has been collapsed.
Sure, but most of those situations happen in closed groups, and the creator won't accept it...
Comment has been collapsed.
then it's his right to do so ;) Generally - he paid for the game, he has bigger right to decide what to do with it than you being just an entrant ;) Also if he doesn't accept then you should no longer feel bad for activating it and him not getting any CV - it was his decision that he doesn't want CV, why would you care then? :>
Comment has been collapsed.
You actually make a lot of sense. With an argument I've used before...
Comment has been collapsed.
honestly, I think all the possible exploits can be fixed.
Comment has been collapsed.
By adding another confirmation pop up? It's kind of simple.
Comment has been collapsed.
that doesn't work for people that hit all the buttons and barely understand english. check bobo's reply below.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sometimes reading your answers, i think you not reading what exactly talk about in this branch of topic and you just answer something for opponents.
Captcha helps for fix an accidental reroll, main word accidental. If someone not reading what he doing, no need to help him. He learn on misstakes in future.
Comment has been collapsed.
It's not your call, it's site staff call, and staff already stated that they don't virew it as you do. It's obvious you vie it this way because it's not concerning you, you operate english on level good enough to use site and understand everything on it. If someone doesn't -- you don't care, it will affect him, but as long as it doesn't affect you you are fine with it. Well - the staff perspective is different. Obviously they want most of the population to have the best and easiest experience possible, no matter if they are fluent in english or not. From their perspective it's a bad idea and you have to deal with it. Singling out big chunk of community - community that view adds and thus helps to fund the site because they don't know english and because Bazilus said "screw them, if they don't understand english it's their problem" is bad for the site thus won't happen.
Comment has been collapsed.
Even you and I have a problem in communication. I meant something else entirely.
Comment has been collapsed.
how about make it like giveaway incrase if you reroll it give you another 1 reroll or if you abuse you can't use reroll anymore (like reroll 3 in row)
Comment has been collapsed.
and what if 3 winners in a row happen to own the game and request rightful reroll? you cannot reroll any other GAs because of that.
Comment has been collapsed.
the creator can use reroll request i just say that because i had a probleme http://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/tWD65zW
Comment has been collapsed.
your actual problem is that you decided not to do anything with this matter, while you could have contacted support and get it sorted wven with GA creator not being active on a site anymore ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
maybe because it's now really long after that happened. You multiwon 7 months ago - decided to do anything about it 5 days ago?
Comment has been collapsed.
no i always try to contact him but nothing no answer for him i try gmail steam everything he dont answer and i creat topic 1 month ago i was discuss with support about that and the final answer was that as you see in picture
Comment has been collapsed.
then not 5 days ago but 1 month ago. Still means that you waited 6 months with wrongfully marked GA before you decided to do anything about it.
Comment has been collapsed.
no i didn't wait i have been always trying to contact but nothing throug steam
Comment has been collapsed.
you don't get me - you waited 6 months before contacting support. And in this time you had game wrongfully marked on SG. When you encounter a problem you are supposed to contact support, not actoi on your own for 6 months and only when you realize "hey, I cannot enter SGT GAs" creating support ticket.
Comment has been collapsed.
i know its my fault, it was summer and i forgot about it, at least the creator should answer for all my msg and he didn't
Comment has been collapsed.
read the rest of the thread above.
they cover many possible exploits.
that's why i didn't bother listing them. ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
Another issue is language barrier. Many users, unsure of how the site actually works and lacking in english communication, click on anything they can when they win to "retrieve" their key (like marking as "received" thinking that gives them the gift). I can see many cases of unknowing users selecting this option without knowing what it actually does.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yep that was I was thinking too, there regularly are reroll tickets from users who think it's a way to contact the winner so that would most likely happen too, and the tickets that will follow will be a bigger pain to deal with than simple reroll tickets where you just need to check the winner's comment then approve.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, that's an overarching issue in almost anything I can think of in Steamgifts. Why not have another role - "Translator" - that just like any role has some access to the back end of any textual content. I've seen this utilized very successfully in a boardgame site I frequent (and also contributed my own share of translation to some of the games) - http://en.boardgamearena.com/
Comment has been collapsed.
Steam itself also has a community translation system.
I like the idea, but it would (probably) be quite a bit of work to implement something like that.
Oh well, maybe we'll see something like this for SteamGifts at some point in the future.
Comment has been collapsed.
You'll be amazed at how fast some things get translated when there are enough passionate people (boardgamers are passionate folks I guess - just see the amount of languages that site has, but with 900K members here I'm sure it won't pose a problem).
The thing is that BGA was built from the ground up to support community involvement which I'm not sure is the case with SG. You need the infrastructure before you invite the translators if you want efficiency and quality.
Comment has been collapsed.
It took me 5 months to get approved to be an STS member.
Eventually an employee of Valve has to check all the new applicants and translations in order to keep the quality, since it's a commercial company.
As long as SG is run by a voluntary team, it can apply more casual way of translation, if they are eager enough to do it.
boardgamearena.com is better to compare now since they don't sell things.
Comment has been collapsed.
problem raised by cg in SGv2 beta regarding this issue is that if we have different language official version a lot of users will conclude that it means they can communicate in this language on SG but more problematic - will start contacting support in this language. and while having community translators is fine, having to pick native speakers for every language into Support team is not so fine anymore.
Comment has been collapsed.
Didn't think about it, but yeah - besides possible exploitation which have been disscussed a lot of times in many topics already it's a very valid point.
Comment has been collapsed.
Or, if the giveaway was for a region locked game, but wasn't marked as so. I bet people would just reroll without realizing that the giveaway is supposed to be deleted, until it hits someone who just accepts the game without being able to activate it. Then they get smacked with a suspension that could have been prevented with some oversight.
Comment has been collapsed.
i vote for it cause i had win 2 giveaway of same game but the creator was using alt account i couldn't contact him for 5 month ago now i cant join sgtool privet giveaway because of double win
Comment has been collapsed.
Why did you even marked the second one as recieved? If you have not used the key, you should have just contacted support after being not able to contact the GA creator.
Edit: saw your answer above. hm... guess I would just not have marked it as recieved then (but did not used the key as well)
Comment has been collapsed.
There is not perfect solution for this, but maybe can be done on different way. new notifactions should be added
Winner can ask gifter for reroll. when winner click on reroll option, gifter will get notification about reroll. because of this is new notification for gifter will be easier to spot.
Not perfect, but can't be exploited
Comment has been collapsed.
if people have the game already they shouldn't be given it imho-we don't win games to trade do we
Comment has been collapsed.
it's not the cvase we're discussing here. People cannot win the same game multiple times (well, they can but it is already against the rules) - if you win the same game 2nd time you're supposed to ask for reroll and it's already in place. We're discussing automated rerolls here - aka you as winner click "reroll this GA" - doesn't matter if you own it already or not, and this can be heavilly exploited.
Comment has been collapsed.
If someone won the game/got they then s/he should remove all the entries for the other giveaways - it can happen that someone won two copies of the game in a shorter amount of time, but the chance of that site-wise is so low that I don't think it's even worth mentioning. Most of the multiple wins come from people being lazy to remove entries/sync, I think the behaviour should improve before we want a new feature.
Comment has been collapsed.
actually the chance for that with bundle games in bundle dedicated groups is quite high ;) When new bundle shows up you get 10-20-30 GAs for the same game, and all with 10-20-30 entries in each. It's very possible to win the same game twice (I've rerolled because of double-win 22 times already). Also there's been several cases with featured GAs (people using cheap games to promote stuff, making 10 50-copies GAs at the same time to promote different things in each GAs) which resulted in multi-wins. So user-requested reroll is a good idea. Automaed reroll is not thou because it can be exploited ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
Sounds like a good idea and isn't even that hard to add
just add a second button "reroll" and wenn you win a GA you have to options: "show key" or "show link" or whatever and "reroll"
If you click reroll, you can't click on show key anymore and if you click on show key, you can't click on reroll anymore...
ofc there should be a popup like "do you really want to reroll? NOTE: YOU ARE NOT GET THE GAME ANYMORE"
The Gifter should then get the normal notification that he has a new winner.
Comment has been collapsed.
Sounds like a good idea but it is not. If the system is automated it can be exploited to get fake CV. 5 people joins GA, 1 is designated to win (because he paid 50% of game price for winning GA or sth), if someone else than this person wins he request auto-reroll, if rerolled person is not the one designated to win he does the same and so on until designated person wins. In small group of exploiters you can basically sell games this way (aka basically making 1 entry GAs, because all other 4 users will reroll) and still get CV for it and rise your level.
Ability for winner to request a reroll is a good idea. Ability for auto-reroll is exploitable, thus a bad idea.
Comment has been collapsed.
the topic is not about ability for winner to request a reroll (which is a good idea) but for ability for winner to request automatic/instant reroll, which is bad idea.
Comment has been collapsed.
That's already covered in previous comments. It should work something like removing yourself from the GA after it has ended. So if the one who paid will not win, the GA will have only 4 entries and no CV if someone rerolls.
At this point I don't see anything wrong or exploitable in that idea...
Comment has been collapsed.
and it was already covered that this system can be exploitable another way. If winner has grudge with creator he may remove his win just to make sure creator gets 0$ CV.
Comment has been collapsed.
And how often will it happen that:
- A giveaway will get exactly 5 entries
- Among the 5 there is a guy who hates the creator
- He actually wins it
- He's petty enough to remove his entry
But if it's still a concern, it could be done something like... automatic rerolls only allowed with >5 entries. So if it has 6 people, one can remove, but if next one doesn't want the game, he will have to tell the GA creator to reroll, or hopefully they will make it so the winner can send reroll ticket, too.
Comment has been collapsed.
hard puzzle for example. Most of my old puzzles had less than 10 solvers, quite a few have even less than 5 ;p Or private forum/train GA with high level restriction. and with 5 entries this person has 20% chance that he will actually win it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Okay, I edited my comment to add the final part.
If you do hard puzzles and have less than 5 entries anyway, why does it concern you that you may have exactly 5 but they will make it 4 after it's over? There must be very unfortunate rare coincidences happening for it to actually be a thing. Not like you'll get exactly 5 entries every day, where someone who hates you, wins it, and denies CV to you. 20% chance to win doesn't mean it will be 20% chance to not get CV, because if we take chances of a GA actually getting 5 entries (if a hard puzzle with max 10 entries, let's say 10%) and that guy hating you enough to do it (let's say 1% because there aren't that many hateful people around anyway). So it's like 1% of 20% of 10% of 100%. Do the math, I'm bad at it. Uh. 0.02%? Is 0.02% chance of losing your CV (especially since you're willing to lose it anyway by making hard puzzle) a good enough reason to deny a very good mechanic that could save lots of time?
Comment has been collapsed.
I just gave an example. I don't care about CV. Also these GAs were in time when you needed only 2 entries for GA to give you CV, not 5 like now. But I used it as example how such a GAs can happen and are not that uncommon. Most of really hard puzzles will get 1 digit entries. Private GAs for lvl 9-10 will often end up with 1 digit entry.
And it's not about how likely or unlikely something is. It's still possible. So we are debating adding function that is not necessary (all can be done without automation via support, reroll tickets are really quick to handle) that can possibly be exploited one way or the other. And all argument you have is that "yeah, I see it can be exploited, I have no solution for possible exploitation, but hey it will harm only a few people and it will most likely not harm me myself so it's fine". It'ds not fine. Adding a fuinctionality that you know from the start is broken is always a bad idea.
And then go tell the person who just lost 60$ CV that "sorry, you were unlucky, you were in 0.05%, tough luck, but at least I can save a few seconds of my precious time I'd have to waste to write a support ticket."
Comment has been collapsed.
And all argument you have is that "yeah, I see it can be exploited, I have no solution for possible exploitation, but hey it will harm only a few people and it will most likely not harm me myself so it's fine".
I offered a solution literally 2 comments ago. You seem to be quite upset, but try to to read more and hate less.
Comment has been collapsed.
you solution doesn't solve a thing - it just makes it less profitable to exploit ;) Let's say I try to exploit in every Ga I make. I have 10 entries in GA and 1 designated winner I want to win. Chance he win is 10%. If he lost then i have 11.(1)% he will win. Then another reroll and 12.5% chance he will win. Then another 14.29% chance he will win. And then at last 16.(6)% chance he will win. If after these all 5 rerolls he still doesn't win - bad luck - I give the game to person who got picked after last reroll. But if you combined all the chances above it means that I have 50% (actually 50.002519999%) chance that using the rerolls the designated winer will win. So I may not be able to exploit all of my GAs, but I will still be able to exploit 50% of them and earn 50% of my CV in exploited fashion. Great solution you have there indeed! :>
Comment has been collapsed.
Great solution you have there indeed! :>
Such passive-aggressive, wow.
They could make something like "one auto-reroll per GA" then, or make it 50+ entries or something. Most of the time when a GA has very few entries, it's carefully selected few people anyway, and those "hurr durr idk why I clicked the entry button" guys appear likely in more open kind of GAs.
Comment has been collapsed.
from my personal perspective (ofc cannot tell about everyone) most common cause of rerolls are not people who are "hurr durr idk why I clicked the entry button" (also who's passive-aggressive now? ;P) but people who won another GA before they were able to remove their entries. EWhen new bundle happens we are flooded with GAs from it. It's quite likely that someone may win more than one of these GAs, especially if these are group/private GAs with like 10-20 entries. 22 of my reroll tickets (1/3 overall, and if we consider SGv2 only then 50% of all my SGv2 reroll tickets) are such a cases. You enter 10-20 GAs for game XYZ which is given away alot because it's in the newest bundle. You win one when you are offline and another one before you log in and then you write to Ga creator "hey zelg, sorry I won it 3 hours before your GA, but was offline". So yeah - rerolls in groups with carefully selected few people are quite a common thing.
Ofc as I do a lot of group GAs they are more common for me, for someone making public level 0 GAs moast common will probably be rulebreaking ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
And that's why there could be either one of my two suggested things from previous comment, which you didn't mention because you got caught up talking about "hurr durr" vs. accidental double win thing.
Comment has been collapsed.
if it's for 50+ or 100+ it defeats the purpose because most common place for double-wins are groups, so the function will be useless where it would be used the most.
Comment has been collapsed.
then "only" 20% of GAs can be exploited. I can cheat 20% of my Cv instead of 100%. Yay! :>
Comment has been collapsed.
I don't get it. You can also do that with non-automatic reroll, so I don't really see why you want to dislike the idea so much. I think it has great potential and would do much more good to honest users than exploiters. Your logic seems to me like "we shouldn't have cars because sometimes car accidents can happen".
Comment has been collapsed.
you can, but non-automatic reroll goes through support. They see the pqttern,they ban you. Automatic reroll goes without any supervision, thus allowing for free exploitation, unnoticeable, unpunishable, thus at risk of becoming much more popular. The more likely you are to get away with your crime the more likely people are to commit it. And as for you car analogy - it's wrong, because we already have cars (aka rerolls), it's like saying "hey guys, we have this brand new car engine, it's 20 HP more powerful than us previous one, allowing you to drive faster, only downside is that on rare ocassions it will explode when you turn left" - and in this case, no I don't want new faster car that rarely can explode. I prefer my old, slightly slower but safer one.
Comment has been collapsed.
There could be some kind of detection system then. Like when someone rerolls too often, or someone's GAs get reroll too often.
Comment has been collapsed.
then only allow to get some exploited CV not a lot of exploited CV? :> If detection happen after I reroll 10 GAs, let me reroll only 9 of these 60$ AAA games and only get 540$ Value - the system is safe now because I can exploit my way only to level 6 not to level 10 ;)
Comment has been collapsed.
And how do you think they determine if someone exploits or not if asking for a reroll from them? Just banning left and right after first reroll?
Comment has been collapsed.
I think a way to remove at least the double win Problematic would be that:
a) on marking a key as recieved
b) on syncing the library
For all new entrys (in your library) or the giveaway you marked, You leave all other GAs of that game automatically.
Still a Problem if you get you won key after winning a second one.
I have often the Problematic, that I'm not sure if I should buy a bundle, and enter GAs. Later I decide to buy it never the less and now I have to find all GAs and leave them.
EDIT: Maybe make a request reroll instead of an instant reroll like:
Winner OR Gifter see a reason for reroll. Instead of making a ticket they request reroll.
the other one now gets a notification and can decline/accept reroll.
Could still be the 5 people GA exploit, but maybe only make it avaliable for GAs wth 20+ entires or public ones.
Edit2: corona88 has wrote something similar above.
Comment has been collapsed.
@a - a lot of people mark as received the moment they win, because anyway they have 7 days to activate so they do so to hide win notification.
@b - let me copy-aste as I already answered it higher in topic: Unless you sync at least once a day or preferably few times a day it's pointless. As stats state: http://www.steamgifts.com/stats/community/giveaways - Giveaways run depending on type of GA on average for 30-90 hours. You have to sync once every 168 hours. So depending on type of GA it would not work in 46.5% of the cases (for Invite only GAs) up to 82,2% cases for Public GAs. Implementing a system that in best case scenario works half of the time in worst works less than 20% of the time is kinda pointless.
Also finding all GAs you've entered is hardly a problem - you go to http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaways/entered and use Search option on the left. In a few seconds you can leave all GAs.
And possibilities for exploitation have already beedn discussed here. Even if you make it 20 people you think it would be hard to find 20 people willing toi get thousands of free CV for nothing? Not really. And if restrict it to publics only it's kinda pointless, because chance to win 2 public GAs is much much smaller than chance to win same 2 (especially bundle) games in private/group GAs. Let's say you enter 10 GAs for game XYZ. If they are public and have hundreds of entries each you're very unlikely to win 2 of them. But if they are group/private GAs having 10-20 entries each chance for double win is high. Most of rerolls happen in group/private GAs because of it, so implementing a system that excludes those is pointless because it won't help at all in 90% of reroll requests anyway, so why waste a time implementing it?
Long story short - Allowing winner to request reroll (if "reveal the key" system gets implemented) - sure, a great idea. Allowing automatic instant rerolls - bad idea. Either they are exploitable or useless for most of the cases.
Comment has been collapsed.
@a Thats kind of stupid and against the rules ^^
@b Problem is: if I buy a bundle with 12 games, I am to lazy to type every game in the search bar, so I just scroll through the (entered) pages and remove GAs, sometimes missing some ^^.The Problem is. that trough trains and puzzles with 3 weeks duration this list becomes prett long.
And I always sync after activating keys, so would work for me ;->
But jeha, I get your point.
Maybe doing a Userscript for leaving recently activated games would be nice. Gonna see if I find time sometimes ^^.
Comment has been collapsed.
@@a it's not ;) if you try to contact support that user XYZ marked GA as activated but don't have the game they will tell you that he has 7 days to activate it ;) Been there ;)
@@b - then just copy game name from bundle page, and paste it into search. copying 12 names is way faster than looking through multiple pages looking fo any of 12 games while also remembering all their names ;)
You always sync after win, but most users don't The fact that it would work for you doesn't change the fact that it wouldn't work for the majority of users :>
Userscript would be good, because it's optional - whoever wants to use it because he is lazy like you said you are can use it, but then cannot blame the site that it left the GA he was hoping to win just because he won/marked GA that ended up being fake :>
Comment has been collapsed.
@a indeed, it's neither in the guidlines or in the faq. Was pretty sure I somewhere read that you're not allowed to mark, if you haven't activated, but thats not the case ^^.
@b Jeha, but copying 12 games is work ^^ Clicking through a few pages while remembering the names is less work (but less reliable as well)
Comment has been collapsed.
Following Thread. -bump-
I like the idea of winner reroll request and want to see how this conversation works out the idea.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well,
i think there would be 3 Conditions that would have to be met:
- The giveaway creator should have an option to chose wheater he wants to allow the winner an instant reroll or not.
- The key should'nt be revealed for the instant reroll to take place.
- The giveaway creator should be informed about the reason the winner rerolled the gift, and maybe even reverse the reroll.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yes and No.
As a giveaway creator myself, It'll be convenient if the winner who wants to reject my giveaway can initiate a reroll at their convenience instead of waiting for me to check on them.
But the reroll should not be instant, it will have to go thru the same process of support ticket, and must only be allowed with a valid reason (duplicate win, or does not own base game etc).
Instant reroll can bring in an exploit of "creating multiple accounts to enter a single giveaway to increase the odds of winning".
Comment has been collapsed.
Just make the links/keys hidden by default and the winner has to reveal them with a warning that he will not be able to reroll after that. And maybe face the consequences of it, if he got the same game twice but still revealed both keys/links.
+1 for the idea of reroll from the winner
Was in this situation several times myself, but not just because of winning a game twice.
Comment has been collapsed.
While I don't support the idea of instant manual re-roll, since there is no need in it because of fast support, I would suggest the idea of automatic reroll if the winner has already won such a game.
Comment has been collapsed.
Staff is fast with rerolls but imagine the load of requests (that often get approved anyway) they get, any way to relieve them of that seems welcome.
There has been alot of pros and cons to this, and i imagined there would have been cons, i am not sure as to what degree implementations can be build against those cons.
And maybe not instantly, but atleast some way.
Comment has been collapsed.
As a gifter and winner (today i won the same game by the same giveaway creator) i know both sides when it comes to rerolls.
Instead of me now posting in that giveaway asking for a reroll please, the giveaway creator then has to send in a support ticket, then wait for support to grant the reroll, alot of people usually enter for the same game and have a risk of winning twice or don't realize they already had a certain DLC.
Also there are many gifters that create like 1000 copies, and they might not always have the time or notice all the message notifications they might get.
Why not allow the giveaway winner to ask instantly for a reroll (perhaps with an are you sure? message), it would save everyone time and lighten the load of support.
[Edit] Possible issues summed up by Amorphism
ambidot - activate won key and get a re-roll.
Solution: Key will be hidden, once your reveal it, your re-roll ability is revoked. But what can be done with Indiegala link / steam gifts? Still a problem. Any ideas?
•m3rc - CV farming (the example given was unclear to me, why stranger will re-roll, they're strangers, they don't give a crap. It could work by coordination with 5 friends though)
Solution: Requesting a re-roll by the user will remove it from the entry pool.
Comment has been collapsed.