Do you think providing a screenshot is necessary for region change?
How many region changes do you require that you are annoyed by it?
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Your question is irrelevant. Taking a screenshot and uploading it to IMGUR is not time-consuming doesn't prove its necessity/
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I don't think so.
If users want to cheat the system, the will find a way, no matter the required proofs.
If no screenshot would be required, some users will change their region, because they do not understand that they will not be able to activate region restricted games. In my opinion the screenshot requirement is one way to prevent such changes by mistake.
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Oh I missed your answer here.
You were saying this policy could prevent innocent people from making mistakes. Good point, I totally agree with you on this. Thanks.
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As you say below "If the policy changes, everyone would save 10s each", you kind of implying that a change of region is a common thing. What fraction of SG users have to change their region in your opinion? My guess would be less than 1% of the active users, probably much less.
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Still irrelevant. Basically what you are saying is, if you are asked to do a simple thing, you should always do it regardless of its necessity. Well, let's agree to disagree.
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What's the point of this exactly, other than telling everyone how easy is to cheat the system? :|
How is that contacting support AND writing this topic was the simpler course, instead of making a simple screenshot?
Or if this is not for you, then why is it that important that you save people the time it requires to make a screenshot of their region? (it's roughly 10 seconds to create a screenshot and upload it to imgur)
I'm baffled.
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If the policy changes, everyone would save 10s each.
Maybe you are the person who always stand by the simple way, while I am the one who always stand by the right (IMO) way
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Of course you feel yourself in the right, and the other way of not stirring stuff up is being "simple", like it's bad.
You forget about the part that having to submit a screenshot means a little work, which is proven that already has a good vetting process for people who just want to mess around. Then whoever really wants to change their region - 10 seconds is a small price for that. Whoever wants to cheat it, requires substantially more time, therefore they mess around with it less.
I personally DO think that having any kind of minimal, but easy to perform limit is beneficial, and I actually have a reason to keep it as it is.
Majority of the site's users barely care about reading even guidelines or FAQ, take no part in discussions, are here for the giveaways and some even uses autojoiner scripts. It wouldn't take much time to people from ie. Russia (currently many game keys are not activate there) would just transfer into generic European region, or US, because omg, they see many more giveaways, and they can even enter it. I don't speak for every user of the site, but I really want to be part of a Steamgifts where keys have region locks, but it's an absolutely unsupervised wild west regarding who can enter the giveaways, and I'll be the one shafted and possibly punished if they can't activate the key.
All because somebody wants to save 10 seconds (3-5 sneeze's worth of time) for some people. (I don't know how many people change regions in a year, but 10 seconds doesn't worth anything at all for a person, despite how fancy it sounds if one multiplies it by the number of people)
edit: TLDR: minimal inconveniences prevent misuse, which can have site-wide consequences and undermining the region restriction/ giveaway system
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Thanks for your detailed explanation. I got your point on the fact that 10 seconds (actually more like 30s) of extra work could possibly prevent robot accounts, but I didn't see why that is relevant to region change.
You were saying if winners cannot activate the key, giveaways creators will be possibly shafted and punished. I got lost this part. If people win a giveaway and doesn't activate it, they will get banned. The steam region screenshot doesn't prevent people from not activating keys.
Could you please elaborate more?
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According to rules it's the GA creator who's liable for delivering a working key.
If the winner says they got a used key, the creator can literally do nothing, but either accept that the winner will mark it not received, or deliver another key. After a few similar events the winner may get suspicious, but on a case by case scenario nobody can tell that you gave me an already used key, or I activated on my alt account then claimed that it's was already used.
Winners are only suspended for not activating a key if they clicked the game received button, yet they don't have the game on their account.
It sucks, but this is how Steam keys work.
If I remember correctly the support's stance on this that the giveaway creator has all the power (=the key) and they could just not deliver it at all - then lie about that they did it, with no way to disprove, getting the winner suspended / getting a reroll if they don't like the winner.
Sooo they put the burden on the creator to avoid such a convenient trolling.
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I get your point, but the kind of bad behavior you mentioned has little to do with region. The correct region doesn't prevent "bad" people stealing your keys. The wrong region couldn't turn innocent people into a thief. I believe people would understand if the key is not activatable in his region (actually that happens a lot because of incorrect setting of the giveaway, not incorrect region of the winner).
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but the kind of bad behavior you mentioned has little to do with region. The correct region doesn't prevent "bad" people stealing your keys. The wrong region couldn't turn innocent people into a thief.
I said none of that. I said that with ease of access, misuse will rise, as it did happen with literally everything in the past years, from scalper bots to card farming bots on Steam.
(actually that happens a lot because of incorrect setting of the giveaway, not incorrect region of the winner).
You're almost getting there, it doesn't happen that often because of the incorrect region of the winner, because it's not that simple to change regions that people do that with a few clicks.
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it doesn't happen that often because of the incorrect region of the winner, because it's not that simple to change regions that people do that with a few clicks
You mean that doesn't happen often because scammers cannot change to our region? let's say there are 10 regions and each has a scammer. A perfect region lock could only allow one scammer to enter, otherwise all 10 scammers are allowed. Is this what you meant?
Well, I don't have statistics about scammers in SG. If scam frequency is limited by scammer's winning rate, I agree with you that a perfect region validation could help (I still doubt the effectiveness of the screenshot, but I see your point).
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Good to know. Maybe blacklist me on Steam also so that we would never meet again.
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Nowadays people cancels each other when they have different opinions. In contrast, blacklisting can be considered a gentle move :)
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honestly forgotten! :P
it wasn't funny the blacklist in itself, but the very few words in response to huge text above. does it changes a bit?? :D
very welcome, Chance!
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I was not here to change other's options, which would be too naive on the internet. Rather, I just collected them.
Well, at least now I know I am the minority. Blacklisted by people who cannot even listen to different options? I consider it as an achievement :)
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I didn't even know this was a thing. I see your point, but I still think it's a non-issue.
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How often does people even need this? At most a person would move countries once every few years, so taking a screenshot isn't exactly a huge or frequent effort, and for those who have to travel a lot they probably don't change their Steam region if they're only gonna be in another country for a short period of time. This seems rather pointless.
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also, it's a matter of fact that SG loves screenshots. and poll shows it.
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It's anyway much too easy to get the region changed and people abuse it clearly.
Before some users made only region restricted GAs for Argentina or RU/CIS, now a lot of them magical changed to only region restricted GAs to turkey. Plus a high mod wrote in a thread about the time intense task to change a lot of users accounts regions to turkey lately.
99% of this users should be banned for cheating....... (the majority of them not only cheat with the region exploit -but this shouldn't be a surprise, or ?-).
But nothing will happen.
So they should be happy that they can cheat so easy and the mods should be pissed that they are forced to help the cheaters without the power to do something against it.
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"a lot of users accounts regions to turkey lately".
I think they should be banned on Steam, not on SG, because they violated the Steam rule. There is nothing wrong to change SG to Turkey if their Steam account has been changed to Turkey.
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They should be banned on both IF they don't live in the country they set the steam store for (plus all their steam accounts deleted that they and other cheaters learn the lesson... -but it will not happen-).
And the sg staff see from which country someone change and when this happens 2 or 3 times or someone do other cheating stuff, then somehow they should act without to wait on a reaction of steam because steam don't care if someone cheat on sg.
At least 50%, i would say over 80%, from the user accounts that are set on sg to turkey are cheating accounts.
And that say me that it is much too easy to change the region.
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10s in years we can sacrifice. If you need to change region that fast to save 10s, you are really sus.
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One of the hardest things as a mod is how often I have to bite my tongue on certain topics. So instead, here is a picture of two cats in a bunk bed
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I would really appreciate if you can share some insights, but I understand your position here.
The only reason I hear from other mods is "This is the policy to keep people from entering giveaways they wouldn't be able to enter or win otherwise". According to the current pool result (7:3 in favour of screenshot), maybe I am the one who is too dumb to understand why anybody ever wants to win a giveway from other regions. It's not like there are infinite points to enter all giveways in one region so somebody would want more.
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Currently SG requires users to provide a screenshot of their steam accounts in order to change region, which I think is super unnecessary.
In my opinion, this policy only prevents users that:
SG would ban people not activating games anyway, why bother to check the screenshot that can be easily faked or outdated?
I really think SG region should be able to be modified by users themselves, maybe with a cooldown that is somewhat aligned with the steam policy.
I couldn't talk it through SG support, so I am here to know what you think. Maybe I am the one who is unreasonable.
Current feedback according to the comments:
Apparently when people are asked to do simple things, the majority never question its necessity and just do it. That could not convince me though. I would appreciate if you could explain the benefit of the policy, not its simplicity.
Thanks for everyone's feedback. Here are the benefits I get so far:
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