+1 for the captcha and cooldown ideas. Not sure about changing the points ballance. Running out of points is still very much possible even if you're a selective user. There just need to be a high number of good GAs on a given day, and occasionally there are.
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So what is the big problem with running out of points anyway? I really don't get why so many seem so fearful of this
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Isn't it obvious? Not being able to enter good GAs.
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When one of your wishlist games floods the site, and each entry costs you 50 points to enter, you will gain understanding.
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So you assume everyone will react like you, that's a wee bit amusing to be honest :P
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Well, I would expect you to feel some sort of dismay at not being able to enter (and therefore missing) giveaways for the game you want, but as you just pointed out, that is an assumption. I could be quite wrong.
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Even if I would feel some sort of dismay the rules and amount of points would be equal for everyone so it wouldn't really affect my chance of winning. Also, with your initial statement you sound dead certain about how I would react if I had your clarity :)
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Also, with your initial statement you sound dead certain about how I would react if I had your clarity :)
As I said, it was an assumption on my part. However, I wasn't talking about "chances of winning." You have zero chance of winning a giveaway you cannot enter. Rather, I was talking about being denied entry to a giveaway you would otherwise be able to enter.
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I'm still not following this logic. Everyone would be denied entry on the same terms, it's just possibly less entries for everyone which in turn would be beneficial for people not willing or able to use all of their points all the time, like bots.
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It sounds as if you have a different point of view than I do, and there's nothing wrong with that. For myself, I get a twinge of dismay when I see that I am going to miss out on a lot of possible wins due to not having enough points. Such is life.
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According to my log, I entered 48 giveaways for The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendonça & Pizzaboy within a single day. That is 720 points in like 16 hours and I entered also any Frostrune giveaways which hit the site pretty much around the same day.
So, no, sorry, from this empirical evidence I can state that even with a flood, the point generation is so ridiculously high that you cannot miss out on anything. The thing was balanced when there were about 10k giveaways made a month, not 120-150k.
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Do we have a 10% point gain nowadays? It doesn't sound too bad that one can join only 10% of the giveaways (point-wise) at max, but considering one can not enter for games already owned but still getting points after it, and how many games can be uninteresting, it's really generous. Like HB Monthly comes out, I want two games, I immediately blow 300P away and I can repeat it in one or max 2 hours. If someone enters for the most actual giveaways and know what they want to win, points are indeed aplenty.
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How can it be less balanced, when points are generated by games and their value, multiplied by 0.1? You could enter 10% back then, you can enter 10% now.
You certainly can enter more giveaways today, but you also have more competition. I don't see how the summed up balance should really have shifted.
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sigh
When this system was developed, it was the start of 2015. By that time, around 10-12k giveaways were made a month and Steam had around 6000 games to choose from, forming the pool of potential games one could enter for.
Now, at the end of the first third of 2017, monthly giveaways exceed 100k. Steam's library reached 13k.
In the past nearly two and a half years, the potential games one could enter for reached a little over double amount, and the potential points they could spend on them quadrupled at worst. Meaning, now, even at the most unoptimal conditions, you have twice as many points to blow on a random game, meaning the value of points for any random user have halved.
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Apparently this is a very unpopular opinion,even to the extent that you'll get blacklisted for even mentioning that you don't understand the big fuss about running out of points. I've not gained this many blacklists in quite some time :P
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There seem to be some factors missing in that description. Not everyone is able to be on SteamGifts 24 hours a day. Not everyone is able to spend all of their points all of the time. Not everyone's wishlist game costs a measly five points. Leaving aside the entire discussion about bots, my impression is that the current system still provides enough points to the average user while being restrictive. I say that despite the fact that I regularly run out of points and cannot enter all of the giveaways for the games I desire. Even when pulling entries for giveaways that will expire later, I simply don't have enough points "banked" to cover the flood of short-term giveaways that comes from a bundle (especially an HB bundle).
You apparently do not have this problem. Good on you.
While the numbers have gone up, and with them (probably) the number of games in which you have no interest, we are still talking 10%, here, and the cap is still 300. Due to that cap, countless points are lost by everyone who doesn't "bank" or use a bot. Since I do neither, I miss a lot of giveaways. That's life. I am pretty sure your experience with SteamGifts is different than mine, but I would argue that neither yours nor mine is any "better" or "worse" than the other. Simply different. This conversation started with my assumption that other people felt dismay at missing giveaways for games they desired simply because they lacked the points. Some people always have enough points, and other people don't regret missing such giveaways. I do not know if you fall into either of those two groups, but please understand that people such as myself actually do run out of points.
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Leaving aside the entire discussion about bots
You can't. Bot/script gave you very little advantage 3 years ago, when, on average, it took over 24h to replenish 300P bank. Now it takes few hours at worst. If site would be growing as it was, in near future only the bots will be able to use all the points generated when HB monthly hits. Factor in many people entering everything in sight because otherwise "points would be wasted" and we slowly come to todays state of public GA space. The trashcan, where all GA creator cares about is "mark as received", because he feels winner doesn't care whether he wins bad rats or tyranny. +1 is +1, cardz are profitz and gifter is game dispenser machine open for business 24h/day.
I'll be captain obvious saying that users inclined to giveaway tyranny instead of 60 copies of bad rats leave public space hiding in closed groups, but that's irrelevant. All is well in Rome as long as number of giveaways rises each month.
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It happen to me about once a year (well, exactly once a year) that I run out of points, but I still wouldn't change the points balance. I think it's fine as it is and there are plenty of better ways to block bots.
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Then why not get rid of it completly. Since it doesn't do what it is supposed to...
Captcha? Good joke. It may only help mitigate somewhat bot problem, but doesn't address cause of bot infestation. And comes with a price of annoyed human users, feeding Google with more of your browsing habits (you didn't expected Google would provide anything for really free now?).
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I wouldn't get rid of it because it would increase the number of entries in each giveaway, as many would enter (manually) every GA in sight. The way it is now it at least encourages people to enter GAs for games they have some interest in.
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It did that good enough. Notice the past tense. It's not the case anymore. Site simply outgrew it's usability limits.
Another thing to think about: it doesn't matter anymore if I have to enter 1000, 2000 or 10'000 GAs to win what I want. After about 300-500 it becomes irrelevant. One has to be extremly patient or use script/bot.
tbh if I joined today, in a month I'd be either level 0 scripter feeding my card-farm or would abandon the site (if I were too lazy to make a script)
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There's also the third option - read a bit about how the site works, then focus on leveling up a bit, joining groups and entering forum GAs. With this combination you'd be winning games in no-time, and without using scripts.
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Sure, getting involved in the community, becoming recognizable face will help. One question remains tho. What would compel me to do that in the first place? Certainly not the selection of GAs visible on the main page, nor chances to win one. The rational conclusion is set up a bot, don't level-up but multi-accout and reap cardz profits or don't bother and forget about the site.
On personal level, if SG public space turned into steamtrades-kind of cesspool wouldn't hurt me at all. Sometimes I wonder why I don't shut up minding my own best interest instead I discuss all those meaningless crap like blacklists or CV. Guess I'm too old-fashioned or plainly stupid )
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Notice I didn't mention becoming a recognizable face / getting whitelisted. The three things I did mention don't require getting involved in the community (some groups do, but not all).
Personally, I enjoy my time here, including discussions about the subjects you mentioned. It's been a long while since someone really annoyed me on these forums (Edit: exactly 6 months). Hopefully it stays this way :-)
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90%+ groups recruit on the friend-of-friend basis. Until you get to know people, you won't possibly even notice their existence.
Those visible in recruitment subforum are (roughly) "grab as many dead-souls as possible" with little to no GAs, directed to narrow audience (ie APG) or P2W (aka ratio/mandatory gibs) ones with oddball one now and then.
Ehh, I still do enjoy it more than I have to "pay" for it. But I'm here for quite some time now, learned the ropes and carved my own little niche. I just get little tired of the same subjects discussed for the n-th time and little annoyed by suspicion that bugs-and-suggestions category is what in communist Poland was "book of complaints and suggestions" in shops. (I'll leave it to you to guess what it's purpose was)
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You made that assumption with a 15p gane as example... Say that again when you ever experiwnced the same with a 30p or 40p game.
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I remember how I couldn't join every One Piece giveaway when it was in Humble Monthly - 50 points * around 20 giveaways made to end in 2-3 hours, fun times.
Kinda expect similar thing to happen with Stellaris in those around 20 days...
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Traders are already paying 10-12 dollars for those Stellaris gift links, as much as the entire monthly costs. I expect a lot more of them ending up traded and on the grey market, rather than here.
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Actually happened a lot this month. The Witness(40P) my top wish-listed game and Dirt Rally (60P) on my top 10 wish-list game. Missed many GA because of no points. It shouldn't be reduced. I think it should be as it is.
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Don't worry, from my admittedly limited experience stuff doesn't get changed very frequently :)
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A short cooldown is fine, but a captcha on every giveaway seems a bit excessive imo.
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It doesn't need to be on every giveaway, but frequent enough to make auto-entry undependable. Maybe once every 20 GAs?
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Yeah I wouldn't mind that. Sadly I have no idea how bots operate and can't think of any other solutions.
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what about an option that gives you, as the creater, the option to choose if you want to protect your GA with a captcha (as we talk about the "i am not a robot" captcha, google even has a invisible captcha where you don't have to do anything.
https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/12/06/are-you-human-or-a-bot-googles-invisible-recaptcha-will-decide/
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High level users also use auto-entry scripts, so I don't think it should be too level-dependent. Maybe increase the frequency for Level 0 users, where the percentage of such users is higher.
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Then they'll just give away one game from a very cheap bundle and continue using auto-join. You're assuming here that no higher level users use auto-join, which is just not the case (unfortunatly).
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I've always been in favour of captcha - but not for every giveaway. Maybe every 10 or 20 or whatever would be enough to weed out bots.
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I wouldn't mind any of your suggestions, but I also don't exactly see why bot users are perceived as such a big problem. Public level 0 GAs are used to dump mostly unwanted bundlegames (at least for most of us, and personally I never make them (rarely go under level 2 myself in public gibs) and wouldn't even with those changes in place), so I don't really care who wins my public giveaways and/or what people are doing with their wins.
If I want to gift a nice game to nice people I do whitelist/invite only/group giveaways.
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Wouldn't you still prefer that this public GA be won by someone who will actually try to play the game (and maybe even enjoy it), than a winner who would just use it to feed one of his 10 card-farming bots?
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Honestly, when I look at the level 0 userbase and then take a close look at the amount of bundlegames and their quality which are sold nowadays on Steam next, well, seriously, I couldn't care less if a winner of said games only gets his/her enjoyment out of seeing the spacecat and feeling good about having won something or maybe earning a few cents from the trading cards they get out of this win to buy them something they really desire or feeding their game count and feel good about boasting towards their friends and never even looking at what exactly they have won - who am I to judge or determine which kind of pleasure winners are to experience out of their winnings?
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Well, then we have a very different opinion. I much prefer my winners to have at least some interest in playing the game. I'm pretty sure that among the hundreds who enter GAs of cheap bundle games there are at least a few who do it primarily for playing and not for farming. Preventing auto-entry would increase their chance significantly. To me this is a good thing.
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There are so many ways for people to acquire those bundle games if they have a real and passionate deep interest in them: Tremorgames, GroupBuys, the trading market where they can be bought for a few cards - if someone's passionate about a game and really wants to play it and is active enough to have found this site, then they are not relying on my or anyone's giveaways to get their hands on those games.
The case is different when we're looking at highly sought after non-bundled titles of course.
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The case is different when we're looking at highly sought after non-bundled titles of course.
Which also get low level giveaways which some people auto-join. So those would ideally have less entries and more "would play" entries.
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Interest doesn't need to be "passionate deep interest".
You really think 100% of people who enter such GAs are only doing it for the cards? I'm sure there are at least a few who don't, and I don't need more than a few. In fact, I'd prefer the GA to end with only 1 entry, but one from a user who will play the game, than have it end with 800 "card farmers".
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No, I don't think people only enter for the cards, but I think I got that covered in my initial reply to you.
Maybe a winner of said games only gets his/her enjoyment out of seeing the spacecat and feeling good about having won something or maybe earning a few cents from the trading cards they get out of this win to buy them something they really desire or feeding their game count and feel good about boasting towards their friends and never even looking at what exactly they have won - who am I to judge or determine which kind of pleasure winners are to experience out of their winnings?
There are many reasons why people participate in raffles, there might be even as many reasons as there are people. I tend to grant people the fun they wish for, not the fun I think they should have. And when doing public giveaways on this site I'm fully aware that I have no control over what happens with my donations and I'm fine with it. There are enough measures at hand for me if I want it otherwise, as pointed out above.
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I guess I didn't phrase my question accurately enough. Do you agree that at least some of the people who enter these GAs do it because they want to play these games? Knowing that such people exist (and I'm sure they do) is all I need to want to block people who auto-enter out of my GAs.
I also don't see anything wrong wanting the games to be played. The way you're presenting this, it's almost as if I'm a complete party pooper by not wanting to "grant people the fun they wish for". The responses to this thread make me think I'm not the only party pooper who doesn't want to grant people every type of fun they wish for, and I doubt you do if you think about it some more (how about the joy of re-gifting for example? why deprive people from that fun?)
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Eh, it almost feels now like my words were twisted in my mouth.
No, of coure I see some people entering for games they wish to play. I'm just wildly assuming that most don't for the low quality bundle games most public giveaways consist of. And of course I am not supportive of people not following rules and guidelines of this site, I'm just saying that if it makes someones day because he/she saw the spacecat because they won a little game from me I'm fine with this, wether there is an intent to play it or not.
I think the current fad of "play your won games" is totally overrated. This is a gambling site in its core and we're all more or less here for the metagame it provides, even those with the loudest voice for said mantra. Why would they be here if they were not? They could just buy the games they want to play instead of buying gifts for others and be happily everafter playing all the games their heart desires, no?
If I want to make sure a game I gift gets played I'd rather gift it directly to a person I know wishes for it. And no, I'm not one to enter for games I don't intend to play, but this is simply because I don't find it joyful to win something I have no use for. Ymmv. As do other's.
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Please read my reply to Yirg. Essentially you can scratch what I said about level 0 and put public gibs there instead.
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Monday I made public level 5 giveaway, in the description it said something like "thanks for reading, here is another giveaway" with a link to a second invite-only copy of the same game. Public GA had 278 entries, invite GA had only 15... Now I am sure they are not all auto-join bots, but also people who use userscripts or mobile apps which allow entry without actually opening the GA page. And maybe people who can't read English or perhaps they just don't have the curiosity to click on big obvious blue links to giveaways on a giveaway site while they are entering giveaways... :P
And even in my own whitelist giveaway, only 1 out of 6 people entered the giveaway in the description... sigh...
edit: I will add that I don't blacklist anybody because of this... I just find it as a curiosity. And in my own personal feelings, once I decide to give away a game, it does not belong to me anymore and I don't care what happens with it.
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Has it ever been different in all the years of SG? I don't think so. I've always gotten and seen similar results. I don't think it comes from auto-join bots but it comes from like you said lots of people that can't speak English -- clicking random links you can't read in descriptions is I'd hope probably not on the top of anyone's list (your logic is based in understanding this English-speaking community whereas different non-English cultures don't think like that especially when not familiar with the site in the way you are being a native speaker). That and people just not reading descriptions I think is the largest portion of entries.
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The goal, as MachinesAreHuman said it, is to make public giveaways less of a dumping ground, because people will know that they're not giving to bots. The fact that you don't give nice games publicly strengthens the argument that it would be a good move.
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I don't see "I am not a robot" as classic captcha systems. I mean, it's not like you have to go blind reading a skewed message or click unknown number of pics that contain street signs, it's just one click. So it shouldn't be a problem for regular users in all giveaways, let alone public ones.
How exactly to implement it is beyond me. Maybe to require user to click in order to show "enter" button? Or to add it as a redirect/forwarder when you click the link and before giveaway page is shown at all? I'm not sure which protection would be helpful and which one "easy to avoid".
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I think the show enter button option would be best so you still can read the comments in the GA.
It's easy to add to the page. there are a loooot of tutorials out there and you only need to register one time at the google page without any cost
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Yes, sometimes I solve a puzzle or enter a forum giveaway just to leave a comment for the creator, and don't even plan to enter. So not having to click would spare me some time, but if I decide to enter, I can always do 1 click more in order to reveal the button. Really think that's not a problem and wouldn't confuse/stop "human" users.
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I denounced the massive use of bots last year and only get 13 blacklist for reward. The same people were winning over and over with proofs.The only useful suggestion in the post back then was: use them too.
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captcha would be good. other solutions you proposed, not so much. reducing point cap would hurt only normal users. bots can just autojoin as soon as more point appear on their acc and human beeing cannot always spend 8 hours straight refreshing the page so they could enter this 100p pack they want so badly. as for cooldown it's similar story. bot will work - just slower. humans will be annoyed.
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humans will be annoyed.
I doubt it. You shouldn't be commenting faster than once every 3 seconds. Many forums have a 30 second wait time.
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maybe I'm exaggerating a little here, after all for a human beeing typing a comment or entering the giveaway will indeed take more time than that. yet, it's still 100% pointless against bots.
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I really think that SGTools provides enough methods to weed out bots if you don't want them (or users just quickly entering and pasting the same generic 'thanks' message) in your giveaways.
- I personally hate reCAPTCHA with a passion. Granted it has been vastly improved lately, but it's still pretty bad. It might help to decrease the number of bot entries though.
- The points required to enter a giveaway can be increased, but the same problem still exists. Maybe you get less bots entering each giveaway, but it doesn't help with bots entering giveaways.
- A cooldown can be easily coded into a bot, so it's 100% ineffective.
CG implemented a behaviour check and it seems that it just needs to be adjusted to catch more cases. That way you won't have to 'punish' normal users.
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I don't think that we should have the need to use a different service (sgtools) to stop the bots.
I know you can use groupe-, whitelist- or invite GAs but the autojoin-problem is more in the public corner and goes through all levels.
Sometimes I would love to create good GAs for the people that don't use the forum but are active in the GA corner. But the chance to get some real people and not just a bot is low (tbh i think in publics you have more than 50% autojoin. made a test with a invite only GA for a better game in a public lvl 0 one for a bad game.
public: >600 entries
invite only: <20 entries
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You want a specific thing (a low level giveaway without bots entering), so I don't think asking to use SGTools in this case is a bad idea. I now understand that you don't want to make a puzzle or something similar, but quite frankly that would work a lot better than all the methods you suggested.
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I don't want a specific thing. It's more like Yirg said in a post above.
I just want public GAs with an option to avoid bots (that would also help people, that don't understand english or people that don't use the forum)
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I hate the Google captchas! So a definite no, no, no no NO to those! SG is hard enough to use on mobile as it stands now, with that it'd be near impossible. Some "I'm not a robot" captcha would be okay, maybe every X amount of time or X entries. Or only on those GAs that the creator asks for it.
But the cooldown sounds great.
Also, I see no reason for lowering the point balances. When there's a good Humble with a 30 P+ previously bundled item you want, you run out really quickly.
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I didn't mean these "chose a picture that shows a pig" thing but the I'm not a robot captcha.
also in near future google will release an invisible captcha ( https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/12/06/are-you-human-or-a-bot-googles-invisible-recaptcha-will-decide/ )
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Easy solution: Let users pick their preferred type of captcha :-)
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What the site needs are honeypot giveaways, leading to pages with a massive overlay saying "THIS IS A HONEYPOT TO CATCH AUTOJOIN SCRIPTS, DO NOT ENTER THIS OR YOU WILL RISK BEING BANNED". Then, make them for really hot games people won't be able to resist, and start punishing. There are measures out there that can easily weed out the problem people without impacting the real user experience.
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Put it in a bunch of languages, and even if the autojoin scripts adapt, you have suddenly purged huge swaths of problem users and cut down on it drastically.
Like, any counter-measure is going to be adapted to, that's not really a point against it. The measure can still cut through a whole bunch of people in that time frame.
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How will you prevent the bot from skipping these giveaways? How will you ensure that non-English speakers read and understand the text?
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At this stage I'm not even sure if more bots would read and understand the text than users.
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That's interesting.
Do I have the right to do one of these (deleting it one hour before it ends) or would it be against the rules (fake giveaway) ?
EDIT: yeah language is a problem, you'd have to be careful
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My method was to start some level 0 GAs and put a kind of "Don't give thanks in the comments" in the description to give me a list of autoposting bots to blacklist. If they're humans and make the mistake of not reading the description, that's still pretty disappointing.
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I like to desobey the rules when I can and I sometime say thanks anyway.
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Blacklist caps at 1000, and auto-joiners are presumably in the 10s of thousands. Even if the cap was removed, it'd be an exhausting effort that few users would bother with.
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Honestly, blacklisting the entire site and just removing users from it may in fact be the most feasible approach to dealing with low level public giveaways, given the statistics involved. :X
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Man, I'd would rather have bots out the ass than ever have to deal with recaptcha.
I'm sick to death of clicking signs, and cars, and gas stations to get anywhere. Actually, I'm convinced it's part of some mass mental manipulation technique--cause I don't know how anyone can do those things every 10 minutes without feeling like the robot here. Fuck that noise.
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you can already reigster on the google page and they beta testing this
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A good indication, just not worth bringing to table until there's (at least) some sort of release schedule. As long as any discussion of using "recaptcha" practically would involve even the smallest timeframe relying on "all those shitty city pictures," then it's important to make the shitnyess of the shitty cities clear as can be.
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I never minded the "old school" captchas where you had to just enter the numbers or letters, but these new ones with the pictures are ridiculous. "Click all the squares that show a storefront" -- I can't see a damn thing in that picture, I have no idea if it's a storefront or not!
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You can't beat robots with your methods. Everything you listed is easily overcome within a few minutes of scripting and won't stop the bots.
If you make level 0 public giveaways it's your choice to be giving to bots.
If you are trying to avoid bots you make group giveaways or at least put level requirements on your giveaways.
In my opinion making it harder or more cumbersome for actual valid contributing users of the site is the suggestion of someone who either doesn't actually use the site or doesn't care about the user experience of others.
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Not sure what your problem is tbh. I'm not a idiot or anything and the most bots used on this page are pretty simple (scan the new GAs page and enter them).
I try to suggest something, you can say no or yes like eeev did in this topic and that's fine. But this post is not "pointless" because this is what this category is for.
As far as i know the google recaptcha is not official hacked by now. Most services that counter this are using real people that solve the captures.
I'll ignore the last two parts of the post.
have a nice day.
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Thank you for your reply. I don't have a problem, what do you mean? I'm just stating my views on the substantiality of this threads views on bot defense. I never said you were an idiot, and yes -- most bots used to enter giveaways here are [at the moment] very simple.
Sorry if by me being blunt you misunderstood my comment as a personal attack or something. I'm just trying to point out without educated foresight the methods of bot defense someone will use are easily overcome. Heuristics are perhaps the best yet most cycle intensive processes and SteamGifts is already using them to a degree, yet obviously cg isn't publicly announcing what specific heuristic analysis he already has in place and perhaps he needs to buff them. This type of defense doesn't bother normal users. The defense you're speaking of have collateral damage of destroying the user experience of all users not just bots. I think the already instituted CV system indirectly defends users from bot entries if they utilize it correctly. You still might find bots at higher levels but they'll no doubt be less. Even then there's a silver lining to higher leveled bots in that they are still contributing to the site in giving away games in order to get those higher levels. I think adding anything else on top of the systems already in place on the front-end would only make the site less user friendly.
And about Google reCAPTCHA (cracked publicly last year and again last month), or any CAPTCHA service that uses image recognition, there are ways to automate them using OCR software or even as simple as like you mention using solving services, so that's not really a defense.
I don't know why you'd ignore any part of my post, but okay.
Hope I helped you understand what I was trying to say.
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I mean, maybe, but it's not like leveled or private giveaways are without a significant risk still. It's probably true that most bots are lower levels and focus on public giveaways, but a lot of people seem more concerned about the bots that scan the forums for easy, better giveaways. And considering it probably takes less effort to get a bot to level 2/3 than it took buying an alt however many unbundled games needed to register, I wonder how many bots even get left at level 0.
And all of those things are talking about alternate account bots. There are plenty of users from every level, including all the way up to 10, that were in that autojoin script steam group. So we do know for a fact that the autojoin bots aren't just a lowlevel issue--and just the fact they they exist at those high level ones still likely makes things all the more worrisome for gifters.
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If you think levels doesn't help filter out bots, maybe we make a Steam group where you have to prove you're a real person on video cam and then we only do group giveaways? :P I think people exaggerate the amount of what they think are bots at high levels. Even someone using an autojoin script isn't a bot, what needs to be stopped are like you said 'alternate account bots' but that also involves someone using proxies/VPNs to have different IPs and that infers a lot more investment into the scheme which more than likely can be defended better by using heuristic methods, like I mentioned in my other reply to OP above, of collecting and analyzing the data of suspected offenders and finding the correct robotic patterns and banning the users, blocking IP ranges, and using the pattern analysis to prevent further botting.
These things need to take place on the back-end, where users don't see anything but the bots disappearing, instead of on the front-end where users will be dealing with things they didn't bring upon themselves. Just my opinion. Thanks for the reply, take care. :D
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That's... not even what I said. Either way, you left with the wrong takeaway. That entire post is directed at fully refuting the absurd implication that bots are only a concern when making level 0, public giveaways. I was politely attempting to point out the issue by refuting the central premises, as bots obviously still exist at levels above zero and often comb the forums and their group page for giveaways as well. The (intended) underlying realization was that your comment lacks any value in this discussion since it isn't actually even an attempted solution--at best only decreasing the chances by some totally unknown and unknowable amount, making it all the more meaningless an observation. It's not my intent to be a total dick, just to drive that realization home: basically the suggestion is so blatantly obvious that it manages to be less useful than just flat out suggesting to not make any giveaways, as that would actually eliminate bots entirely, though both are such meaningless observations here that asserting either as some unrealized solution actually comes off pretty insulting.
Also I'm pretty sure in this context that anybody using some script that enters giveaways when they're not around is indeed considered a bot.
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no captcha please
but, 5 seconds delay? people would just add a timer to the bots.
just make ga lvl1-2
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The captcha could kick in after the fifth entry in less than 1minute or something and you wouldn't have to see it much,
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I'm not sure I can side with this observation on your part:
If you check these Accounts you see that they entred a lot(!) of GAs and it's clear that they don't enter them by themself.
I myself have entered ~35,000 GAs in ~1 year. I swear, on my honor, that I have never used a script to enter any. How would you differentiate me from a bot account? I'd like to think that the number of games I've given would be indicative, but there's no guarantee I do or don't use a script.
To your suggestions:
- I would be more than happy to work with a captcha (not a bot, see!!!). Among other suggestions, maybe make this a requirement for all level 0/level 1 GAs? I expect MOST bot accounts haven't given much away.
- I don't think changing the point system would do anything except hurt real users (see Yirg's and Khalaq's discussion above.
- I'd be fine with a cooldown in most cases, but 1) 5 seconds seems like it would actually not do anything to curb auto-joining, and 2) there have been a few occasions where I log in to see a number of GAs I want to enter, all about to end (<1 min). If we were rate limited, I'd maybe miss out on those opportunities. That's REALLY a minor/uncommon issue, so overall I'm still ok with a cooldown.
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that's 100 GAs a Day. No problem with that. I was talking about people that enter ~250 GAs a day and that 24/7
Didn't want to insult someone directly.
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Not insulted. :D Just not sure what qualifies in your mind.
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For example: i created ~70 GAs some time ago and in the same minute one guy entred around 50 of these GAs and postet the same "thanks" message on all of them. In nearly the same second. Maybe he was "flash" but I'm not so sure about this. ;)
I also saw a User with >65k entred GAs in 7 Months.
And last:
"made a test with a invite only GA for a better game in a public lvl 0 one for a bad game.
public: >600 entries
invite only: <20 entries"
I just posted the Link to the GA. Not any other Text or a hidden Link, just the plain link and the (unbundled) game was waaaay better than the "trash" one. (I don't say these other 580 users used bots but some of them did)
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I'm with ya. :)
EDIT: I just caught your username. Apropos.
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+1 for an "i'm not a robot" button, I think it will help a lot against bots and scripts. Cooldown is worthless, tbh. They'll just add it to the bots/scripts. Less points might help, but some people will complain a lot about it.
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If a majority of the SteamGifts community believes it's important to preclude bots, and some kind of Captcha/reCaptcha would be truly effective at eliminating their use, then I am more than willing to do my part, including having to click a Captcha/reCaptcha on every single giveaway entry. It is a small price to pay for the privilege of using this site, which brings me so much enjoyment every day.
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I have always been for Captchas. Or increasing the blacklist size... 100k should be good start
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My few thoughts about the topic.
- Captcha
- As long as it's not added to every GA it's a good proposition. Like other people mentioned with proper frequency it wouldn't affect human users that much, but would help with scripts/bots. At the same time placing it on every GA would be an overkill in my opinion
- Point generation balancing
- I'm neither against nor in favour of the change in general, however in this case I will say no. It affects all users so it doesn't make any difference in terms of preventing autojoining scripts. At the same time I would say that it's even in favour of bots(unless the point cap is set to a much higher level).
- When a big bundle starts bots can use all generated points while many users may miss it(due to many reasons) and be left with only as many points as the cap allows.
- Furthermore I also believe that bot users are more likely to stash points in long running GAs . If somebody adds few AAA titles on some occasion it's more likely that a bot will have enough points stashed to enter all of them compared to a human user
- I'm neither against nor in favour of the change in general, however in this case I will say no. It affects all users so it doesn't make any difference in terms of preventing autojoining scripts. At the same time I would say that it's even in favour of bots(unless the point cap is set to a much higher level).
- Cooldown
- Once again I'll ask the question how does this affect scripts/bots?
- It's good to balance the load and prevent request spikes, but nothing more. Once again a bot won't be affected, but a human user logging in for few minutes during a break may. A script would only need a delay between steps and would run longer but still could make all those entries. They would simply be distributed in time
Ps It's worth distinguishing between scripts joining every GA for a given game after an user runs them and real bots running constantly and fully automated.. Some ideas may have the opposite effect for bots and script or only address one of the cases
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+1 for captcha
or any advanced improvement against bots
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Don't like the idea of a cool down. I go to my wishlist page. Open all the un-entered giveaways in new tabs, then go along and click join on them closing the tabs as I go...
I think optional captcha would work well (setable by giveaway creator).
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This idea will prevent a great deal of legitimate people from joining. Cant tell you how many times I've been unable to register for a site because their not a robot shit was garbage, or broken, or didn't like my browser.
I honestly don't get why people care how someone joins. If the person is joining hundreds at once causing lag to the site, they get caught quickly, and are dealt with, that's a problem. People who autojoin at a reasonable humanoid rate, especially if it was only for wishlist giveaways, who cares? No one is hurt by it.
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The day entering giveaway requires re/captcha the day i quit sg
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I agree. I think it would make the SG experience quite a bit worse, or at least way more tedious. Even a simple captcha is a bad idea, to me. Considering entering giveaways is the primary activity on this site, you spend a lot of time doing it. It's a lot of clicks, when summed altogether. If you had to double or triple the time it takes to enter giveaways (an extra click, plus the time waiting for the thing to recognize you and the 'enter giveaway' button to load...), or even increase it by more than 3x... that's going to significantly increase the time to enter each GA, which means wasted time. Just... tedious, and makes it not worth it as much. I can't imagine having to sit and wait for the captcha every single time I wanted to join a GA. So, I would not like to see this implemented.
The cooldown idea of not allowing people to post comments (or enter giveaways?) more quickly than every 5 seconds seems like a less bad idea, but I don't know how fast bots do it. Do they do all their work simultaneously, or is it at about the same speed as a human (which can be fairly quick, if you're just going through your wishlist at the start of the day, entering everything... about 5-10 sec apart, conceivably)? Can bot speed be slowed down a bit to match human speed and pass the cooldown? It doesn't seem like a fool-proof method. Maybe the honey pot ideas would be better.
I don't agree with reducing the number of points at all, for the same reasons stated by Khalaq and Yirg and others above. Doesn't actually solve the bot issue or any issue, in my opinion. I still run out of points regularly; I don't need fewer of them. I know people have different giveaway entering habits, but I think plenty of people are running out of points easily, already.
I don't mean to shit on your ideas, but I largely don't agree with them.
It would be nice to have some sort of information about the actual impact of bots.
Oh yeah, and I also wanted to add that I love the enter giveaway button as it is at the moment. It's just very pleasing to click on it. Shape, how it changes... I dunno.
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I would honestly make something to a form of an official API to allow features. Can also look into blocking scripts from running on portions of the site.
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Scripts are easier to make bots with, but macros are not at all hard to set up completely outside the sites control.
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I love this idea
Granted, we need a reCAPTCHA that would be really hard to bypass. It would suck to spend the resources to create one, only for a bot to appear next week that found a loophole around it.
But, yes, amazing idea. I wonder how hard it would be to implement.
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reCAPTCHA by google is just some few lines of code that you need to add and by now there is no official loophole.
https://developers.google.com/recaptcha/intro
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If you agree to have captcha at every GA entry, very easy.
But,
are you ready for consequences?....
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Maybe not every giveaway, but maybe after a certain amount of points have been spent, like Archi had suggested.
Maybe, 100P? Or 200P?
That would, in my mind, deter the bots.
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More like 10k, 20k points. Otherwise it would piss off legit users (that are majority afterall, or at least it's what I want to belive)
Captchas would only weed out most primitive ones that can't achieve high success rates at cracking the test presented. As mentioned above/below researchers managed to achieve 70% success rate cracking google captcha. True, google claims it's now improved, but it's neverending arms race and collateral damage are us - simple users of web services.
What needs to be done in the first place, is reducing the advantage one gets from bot/script use. Like cutting down point generation rate and at the same time upping the max points you can accumulate. (I refuse to throw any values, bc they would be imaginary)
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I've left countless sites for using captcha garbage. Especially when it's a consistent thing I need to do on a site, like giveaways are here. They are a horrible part of the modern internet that I'd love to see as little of as possible. I would never log into this site if they added captcha, even if it was just once a day, or once a week, but even once a day would be nothing for a bot user to deal with anyway, just do it at the start of the day and set up the bot, do it again the next day. The only thing captcha would do would be annoying legitimate users.
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At first: This should be a topic without any salt, insults or whatever. I just wanted to share these suggestions!
If you ever created more than one public GA at once you see a lot of people that enter a lot of GAs at the same time and prob even post a "thank" msg in all of this topics in seconds. If you check these Accounts you see that they entred a lot(!) of GAs and it's clear that they don't enter them by themself.
So ho do get rid of these autojoin/autocomment users?
I already postet this in the Archibot topic but it's closed so maybe we can talk about this here...
Some ideas for GAs:
all of this suggestions would not only stop bots but also reduce the sideload without any benefits. Maybe people would even think about entering a GA double time and we would get rid of a lot of rerolls and people would back public GAs more often (I formyself would do more publics if I would knew, that no bot is entering).
AGAIN: please don't fight to each other in this topic.
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