You won Dredge 5 months ago. I think this problem applies only to very recent gifts. Maybe in the last week or two.
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Wow wtf, you are 1000% correct. Just got gifted a game yesterday and it's marked as private. What a moronic change. And no, no checkboxes or anything or at least i didn't see any. Just the normal UI as before.
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It seems to be a widespread problem. I know that Firewatch was given away a lot recently when it was on sale so I checked many of the recent winners; of the 14 that I looked at, 11 didn't have it in their libraries.
I hope this is just a temporary glitch or bad decision on Steam's part, but if it stays like this, SG could end up with 100s of users with "unactivated" wins that they're not even aware of. Support will have a hard time differentiating between real unactivated games and privacy setting errors.
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There is a checkbox in the Privacy Settings under Inventory to set gifts as private. This checkbox only appears if you have the Inventory setting either Public or Friends Only.
It could be that these users have that checkbox ticked or that it's ticked by default and active even if the Inventory is Private.
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This can't be the case, as mine is unchecked and the gift still became private.
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Then it has to be something else.
Sadly I couldn't find any other setting that could be related to the issue.
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You might be right, but I'm pretty sure that setting is for Steam gifts in the inventory, not for gifted games that are in a user's library.
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This. This setting is for actual gifts you can give away, not for accepted gifts.
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Yes, it should be for inventory items. I thought it could be not working correctly, but if damianea103 doesn't have it activated then it must be something else.
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hmm, I gave away Firewatch, 3 days ago and the same thing I think is going on as I don't see it in their library but it is redeemed...
Same thing with far cry 5..
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Thanks for the PSA. I guess we'll need to attach a warning every time we gift something old-fashion way.
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I just checked, Steam gifts that are accepted for the past week (at least) are defaulted to be private. Even if the receiver didn't tick the "Accept this gift privately" checkbox when accepting those gifts.
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Ah, so there IS a checkbox which is not ticked by default! That's good to know. It means it's most likely a bug. Who knows if Steam is aware of it or how long before they fix it.
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Bump, as I see this being an issue in several recent Unlucky7 giveaways ...
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This is stupid, I've just found out that my gifted win is marked as private (Steep™ (2024-01-09 08:52:00)). That's 11 days ago.
Thanks for the heads up!
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Good thread, had one gift that failed my sgtools check. Thank you very much for info!
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I just got a gift and it was marked as private. I could change it back to public by unchecking some option in the properties of the game. Now it isn't hidden anymore.
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Thanks for the PSA, had to gifts received recently, wasn't aware.
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Thanks for the PSA... just checked mine and it had me flagged for an unactivated win... no way to unprivate, restarted client... no auto update... manually check for updates... oh look a steam update... updated and was allowed to unprivate.
dear valve, bug check things please!
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I didn't recommend using the client for this reason. Different operating systems, versions, beta, etc. The webpage method with the eye icon is more reliable.
Glad you caught and resolved the issue.
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Well this is annoying, thanks valve.
The way to unprivate a game in the client is to right click the game in the client, go to the privacy tab, and uncheck "private" . Note that after you do this, the privacy tab just vanishes so in case you wanna make it private again no clue how you'd do it. I never intended to do it in the first place, it just did it on it's own, but just for your information.
This steam help page page indicates that you could mark games private from the manage section in the library or the eye in the web browser, however I see none of those options. Is it because my profile is public?
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To use this "private" feature you need to set Steam to 'beta participation" (settings->interface->steam beta)
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So wait a sec, if I get gifted a game, it goes private in my library until I unprivate it although I'm not in the steam beta, but to take advantage of the feature I have to be in the beta?
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Clever. Let's you know if a gift you got has been privated by steam.
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That's the idea :)
Honestly, I think SG should make a statement or have a pinned message about the issue. A thread like this can only achieve so much.
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Maybe cg could add a JavaScript alert box when you select "gift" as giveaway type or press "review giveaway" when the gift option is active. (At second thought, for people giving away a lot of gifts instead of keys, maybe just a note next to the "gift" option is better, as it would become annoying having to click away the same hint for the 100th time.)
And another alert box for the winner, when he selects "received" (and the giveaway is a gift).
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Good idea!
Another option would be to add a JavaScript alert box when a winner marks as received a gift that doesn't have a key attached to it.
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I'm surprised the mods of SG haven't taken notice yet, here's a bump to this important PSA!
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Yeah, this happened to me with a giveaway I won recently. Luckily I noticed the little red icon right away when I went to categorize the game in the client so I was able to undo its private state before it could turn into an actual issue.
Still, Valve needs to fix this bug. All I did was activate the gift as usual, it never even asked me if I wanted to make it private.
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Interesting. Someone else mentioned that there's an option to accept a gift as private. Maybe it only shows up if you accept the gift through the client and are using the Beta version. In any case, all we can do is wait for Steam to get their act together.
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I should probably clarify that I accepted the gift through the client but I'm not using the beta version, so when I unmarked it as private that option actually disappeared from the menu instead of being replaced by the option to make it private again.
Also my client has been super buggy since the last update, just a proper mess, so maybe it's something on my end.
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Bump.
Private function is amazing. Sad that SG doesn't support it.
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The new private games feature on Steam is already causing havoc. I've come across incidents of users with "unactivated wins" caused by games that were gifted to them on Steam and were set to private without them realizing it. The winner of one my recent giveaways had this exact problem and two other cases were mentioned in discussions recently:
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/9tyv4gq
https://www.steamgifts.com/go/comment/suuHcqE
A users has commneted that gifts recipients now have an option that says "Accept this gift privately", but gifts are getting set to private even if that box is not ticked. So, it appears to be a bug in Steam What's new?! 🤦♂️
Public Service Annoucement
If you've won a game since January 1st that was gifted through Steam:
You can also unprivate games using the Steam client if you wish. For details, refer to this comment by reigifts.
Recommendation to gifters Once a recipient has accepted a gift, make sure that it's visible in their library. If not, ask them to check the game's privacy setting.
Finally, here's a small giveaway to thank you for your time. Level 0 and no restrictions except for must have activated all the won gifts
https://www.sgtools.info/giveaways/d019db1c-7ebe-4740-8f8f-817e12d76efc
Update
I've received multiple reports since the beginning on February saying that the issue appears to be is fixed. All gifts sent are now showing up as public by default.
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