To 2026… and beyond?

It’s been a complicated year.

It all started back in October 2024, with the sad news of icaio’s passing. It’s something that still affects me personally. I think about him a lot, and his absence is still very much felt in this community. Not seeing his giveaways, his recommendations of hidden gems buried among all the DIG bundle trash, or simply his jokes and his opinions about this and that on several topics… it still feels strange even today.

Around the same time, Lilly announced she was stepping back from creating and maintaining the bundle threads. Fortunately, she guided and advised other users who decided to carry the torch and continue that great work of creating the bundle threads. And she’s still around, helping with many details for each bundle, answering questions, completing data, and also adding the bundles to Barter.

For quite a while now, I’ve had the idea of starting a “small” personal project rattling around in my head: a giveaway train. The concept is simple: one giveaway per day, as long as I can manage it. And this train will always be a tribute to icaio, a person who left such a mark on SteamGifts and Lilly, a pillar of this community. For personal reasons I’ve been putting it off for almost a year because… "real life comes first". I kept waiting for a “special date” to begin: a cake day, a birthday… but I always ended up postponing it for one reason or another.

Today is my birthday, so I guess it’s as good a day as any to finally start. So… let’s go!

A few (not set in stone) rules for this ride:

• At least one giveaway per day. Quality may vary (0% CV FTW!). There may be side cars, I might drop a puzzle or two (depends on how much time I have), but that will be the bare minimum.

• Each giveaway will last at least 48 hours, so everyone has time to join, despite time zones. If a giveaway is special, it may run for up to a week, we’ll see how it goes (suggestions welcome).

• Minimum level to enter will be 1, but it might vary depending on the giveaway. It’s basically impossible to join SteamGifts and stay at level 0 (or even 1) without meeting the minimum requirements to climb a couple of levels. Icaio knew this well, as he often gifted games to new users so they could reach level 1. And really, there’s no excuse not to do giveaways every now and then: free games, DIG bundles for pennies… Not every giveaway needs to be an amazing AAA game.

• Whenever possible, giveaways will be region-free, but with all the region-lock chaos lately, if there’s any doubt I may restrict entries according to known information (again, suggestions welcome).

• Likewise, due to the sheer number of trigger-happy developers and publishers mass-revoking Steam keys, I can’t guarantee that 100% of the keys will work. I’ll try to use keys that are presumed safe, and if one doesn’t work, I’ll do my best to replace it. But if that’s not possible, I’d appreciate it if the winner agrees to let the giveaway be deleted.

• I also want to use this opportunity to clean up my blacklist. If anyone finds out they’re on it, feel free to leave a comment and ’ll probably remove you from my BL.

Any improvements or suggestions that help make this train smoother, comfier or easier to run will be more than welcome.

And that’s pretty much it, otherwise I’ll end up overthinking (again) and the engine will never start…

So there’s only one thing left to say: Thank you, icaio. Thank you, Lilly. And… Choo-Choo!! All aboard!! 🚂

No, I did not suddenly got my english grammar better, I wrote this in Spanish and asked ChatGPT to translate it to English keeping the tone and style and only making small corrections that were really needed. I'll still have to make some edits 😊