https://www.steamgifts.com/about/faq
What are "No Value", "Reduced Value", and "Full Value" giveaways? How do they affect my overall contributor value?
Games typically receive no value or reduced value when they're featured in bundles, heavily discounted, or available for free in online promotions. Their values are adjusted this way to better represent their true value. Keep in mind, the asterisk icons are just for reference, and the value of a game can be backdated if we need to make retroactive changes.
Afaik the threshold for a game to be considered as given away for free is 1,000 keys or more. So AWA game vault doesn't qualify per se as there aren't enough keys given away same rules apply for lootboy or any other giveaway site...
If a game is sold 99% off from regular Steam price it should also give 0 CV.
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I wonder how many V Rising keys lootboy gave away. It was relatively hard to get. Tbh I would have put that one on the reduced value list and not the no value one. The lootboy keys given away were a drop in the ocean and the game's price on the grey market haven't budged at all. It's a popular and highly sought after game and now there will be no incentive at all to give it away here.
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V Rising from Alienware? I don't remember that happening.
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Yes, it is disheartening to get zero CV for brilliant games while overpriced game shaped objects acquired in shady outlets get full CV and pump up levels of exploiters.
But hey, why shouldn't SG be the same shithole in a nutshell as the world as a whole? There's no obvious solution satisfying everybody probably and we shouldn't forget: the emphasis lies on gifts not on wins.
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I think there needs to be some flexibility. Sure, it's great that multiaccounters couldn't build CV with their giveaway copies but honestly I wouldn't care if they got 3 CV for each copy if it meant others would be more likely to gift this game in the future. When they could have sold their copies for 10+ EUR each then 3 CV wouldn't exactly feel like a win for them.
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I would wish more flexibility too.
In the way that each one that clearly exploit/abuse the cv system, repeatly, should be perma suspended.
It give people that are level 10 with only giving freebies out, faster as the mods can add them to the right category or other ones that buy all their keys (for trash/fake games) in shady ru shops for a few cents and give the gifter than a lot of cv -and they do it with hundreds of games/copies-.
After 20-50 sacrificed users the rest wouldn't do such stuff anymore.
That would lower the workload for the mods, after a very short time, a lot and it would allow the mods to take a closer look into other stuff, like the suggestion to handle games different.
But i assume both will not happen because cg don't give them the possibility.
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I think it's far less than 1000. I've seen 0 CV on giveaways of only a few hundred if there was no requirement beyond clicking claim key or creating an account.
I don't think there's an absolute rule, it's case by case and how many matches on a checklist of qualifications for 0 CV. Or it's whimsy. Or artisanal process.
As for the original question about Lootboy keys, most of them are from previous giveaways and bundles and are already 0 CV or reduced CV. The full CV games are rare and the bait for buying premium lootpacks.
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This is more of a general question about what is considered as a bundled game (reduced CV).
Anything reduced to 85% or more [after conversion to US currency values], hence the bundle list CV value association of 15%. In the past, the bundler adjusted their determinations to be relative to liklihood of abuse (with quantity of availability in the promotion serving as an initial indicator of that), meaning that you needed a certain number of copies in the 85-90% discount range, with 90%+ being the range where bundle listing was more of a concern, requiring relatively few copies. Bundled games calculated their percentage for bundle list determination by bundle tier (the cost of the tier relative to the the total value of all games up to that tier, including previous tiers, and divided by number of games).
These days, anything 85% or more seems to be effectively guaranteed to be bundle listed regardless of quantity, though sometimes there are some significant delays in them getting around to getting the game properly flagged.
Free games held to a similar premise in being determined off of liklihood of abuse, and anything 98% or more in discount (roughly -85% by -85%) was in threat of being free listed (though in practice, games were rarely added to the free list unless they'd gone fully free or down to just a couple of cents in cost). Free games that required effort equivalent to financial value [eg, being part of a paid subscription or purchased through a site where credits were earned through completing surveys or similar] weren't historically considered free, though one current staff member has insisted that "free means free", regardless of whether someone actually paid or not, making that a confusing consideration at present.
Putting aside such counterintuitive sites, more grey sites like Alienware used to be considered free or not based on the core principle of likelihood of exploitation, meaning that lower levels and higher quantities were always considered free, and anything that strayed from that was given an individual assessment. Nowadays, it seems as though any site that has effort-based membership levels counts as free, regardless of the level or quantity of the giveaways, going off the impressions and staff comments I've seen on the matter. If there are deliberate exceptions to that, then I rather don't believe even staff would know what those are, given their past statements on the matter.
While there are a lot of uncertainties as to how current staff members are handling lists (due to several extremely problematic issues with some newer staff members), the core fundamentals are mostly unchanged, though not quite as reliably firm in their cut-offs and expectations.
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These days, anything 85% or more is effectively guaranteed to be bundle listed, though sometimes there are some significant delays in getting around to getting the game properly flagged.
Are you sure about that? Others claim that the threshold is most likely around 95% off. Games at 85% off might become a candidate only because of regional pricing dropping them down to 95% off compared to the full US price. Technically because of the extremely steep regional discounts for countries like Argentina and Russia lots of games could be put on the list that never reached higher than say 70% discount. But I don't see regional pricing putting games on the bundle list happening much. The mods have enough on their plate without having to monitor regional Steam prices on steamdb.
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Are you sure about that? Others claim that the threshold is most likely around 95% off.
TL;DR version, I'm definitely more confident in it being tied to the underlying foundation of 85% than I am about it still being based on being 95% off, given the substantial evidence indicating that the past association of a cutoff range of 92-95% is no longer being utilized.
Long version:
95% historically was the cut-off where quantity no longer much mattered, and games were bundle listed by default. Underlying 85/15% premise aside, Shobo never really bundle listed anything worse than 92% off [after conversion to US currency], so the 95% consideration was very relevant for quite some time (though 85% did have a sort of association even then- back before Steam introduced the current, much more restrictive gifting framework- given that games in the Steam store that discounted below 85% in US currency were only very rarely not below 95% after conversion from the lowest value currencies).
I've seen no indication that that cut-off is still being held to any significance by staff. Humble Choice [and I believe even the lattermost Monthlies], for example- and this before the nonstop barrage of erratic offers that made bundle listing them as a default entirely understandable- was set to bundled by default, even when the best discount for such bundles was still only in the 85-88% range.
I've also seen several individual instances of such inclusions hitting the bundle list, though I can't really say if they're indicative of, or exceptions to an overall trend. Keep in mind also how very rarely regional conversion factors come into play these days (in the sense of being a major determinative factor for listing purposes), between Steam Store gifting locks and most major sites only selling in US currency to begin with.
Thus, what we can conclude, is that even if 85% isn't the actual cut-off that's being used, 95% is nevertheless still seemingly even less relevant as a guideline. Keep in mind also, however, that each current staff member seems to be doing their own thing, with one even going so far as to openly declare an intent to undermine the cohesive functioning of the lists, so there's certainly a lot of room for contradictions in how things are handled staff member to staff member.
But I don't see regional pricing putting games on the bundle list happening much. The mods have enough on their plate without having to monitor regional Steam prices on steamdb.
From the interpretation I'm getting from that, you're stating that staff members are intentionally not performing their roles correctly? Calculating off regional factors is a strict part of the process of determining listing, so any staff member choosing to go through the process of determining the listing of a game (versus, say, leaving the game unlisted until enough time can be set aside to assess it, as is the usual approach) would deliberately be sabotaging the task they're taking on.
Given Steam Store's built-in filter, you'd have to be over a 85.5% discount in USD to even have a chance of reaching 95% off in any other currency. Further, SteamDB auto-lists relative currency conversions when you go to the page for a specific game. Between those two facts, it's remarkably straightforward for staff to check against regional pricing- and since SteamDB offers relative percents, even if the sale in question has ended, there's only a small window of error when simply basing off the percents as-listed at any given time, barring following known price glitches, meaning you can simply apply the listed relative percentage against the USD discount percentage to determine if the game needs to be bundle listed or not.
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From the interpretation I'm getting from that, you're stating that staff members are intentionally not performing their roles correctly?
No. Staff members are working off of tickets except for the most obvious stuff (bundles and mass giveaways from the usual sources). I doubt anyone is doing rounds checking Steam games' regional prices just out of a sense of duty. And I also doubt that they get many tickets based on Steam regional prices.
Given Steam Store's built-in filter, you'd have to be over a 85.5% discount to reach 95% off in any currency.
I don't follow. What filter do you mean? Just picked a random game that came to my mind, Cities: Skylines. The Argentinian regional price for this is 3.26 USD which puts it at 89% off compared to the US price without any discounts. Whenever the game goes on a 55% or larger discount the Argentinian price dips below 5% of the US full price. And it's not a unique example. If the mods followed a hard line about regional pricing it would probably kill off gifting directly through Steam.
SteamDB auto-lists currency conversions when you go to the page for a specific game. Between those two facts, it's remarkably straightforward for staff to check against regional pricing
Given the sheer number of games on Steam the only way they could keep on top of regional prices reaching a certain threshold compared to the US price would be if they automated the process.
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No. Staff members are working off of tickets except for the most obvious stuff (bundles and mass giveaways from the usual sources). I doubt anyone is doing rounds checking Steam games' regional prices just out of a sense of duty. And I also doubt that they get many tickets based on Steam regional prices.
You say "No", but then you literally, without any room for argument, explain "Yes" in a bewilderingly obvious way.
Gotta assume there was a miscommunication there..
What filter do you mean?
You can't gift to any region with a currency value greater than 10% of your own, which thereby means that any USD discount below 85.5% is no longer possible to get to 95% with, as that'd exceed a 10% margin.
Just picked a random game that came to my mind, Cities: Skylines. The Argentinian regional price for this is 3.26 USD which puts it at 89% off compared to the US price without any discounts.
Cities Skylines in Argentian Peso is a whopping +817.71% to USD. It's clearly well past Steam's 10% limit, meaning you'd never be able to gift that from an Argentian purchaser to a US git receipient. Fundamentally, SG's own considerations towards regional exploitation aren't all that different to Steam's, so it's understandable that there's an overlap in utility.
Given the sheer number of games on Steam the only way they could keep on top of regional prices reaching a certain threshold compared to the US price would be if they automated the process.
As I just explained previously, it's a process that is extremely quick to do. It's a few clicks and either a bit of quick math, or a quick consultation of a premade spreadsheet. It's honestly going to be one of the quicker parts of the process of list determination. And, let me reemphasize, this is very much what lists are meant to account for in the first place [ie, the avoidance of CV exploitation], so if staff isn't addressing that properly, then they're flat out not doing things properly, and the lists have very little meaning anymore, and can in theory perhaps just be dropped entirely.
I'll certainly yield that it may not matter as much anymore for Steam Store, given the very fact that it now does restrict the cutoff and an avoidance there could be a deliberate change in policy made by SG staff after accounting for Steam's own filter against regional exploitation- but if you're saying that staff is delbierately ignoring regional pricing and price glitches overall just because it's too much effort, then that severely undermines the purpose and utility of the lists, as it's exactly those kind of things that put games onto the list in the first place. Again, the point of the lists is to limit exploitation, not to punish games for going below a certain discount.
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You can't gift to any region with a currency value greater than 10% of your own, which thereby means that any USD discount below 85.5% is no longer possible to get to 95% with, as that'd exceed a 10% margin.
Your numbers are way off (it seems you mixed up percentage with percentage points) but it doesn't matter anyhow. The hipothetical Argentinian user exploiting Steamgifts' system could simply make their giveaway region restricted and then they don't have to care about Steam's gifting limits. In fact this is one of the ways some people in these countries build their CV on the cheap.
I literally just explained that it's a process that is extremely quick to do. It's a few clicks and either a bit of quick math, or a quick consultation of a premade spreadsheet. It's honestly going to be one of the quicker parts of the process of list determination.
And I just told you how that would add up to an incredible workload unless they automated it. Sure, it's a few seconds a game but there are thousands and thousands of games to crawl through periodically. I wouldn't wish that job on anyone, and especially not an unpaid volunteer.
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Your numbers are way off (it seems you mixed up percentage with percentage points) but it doesn't matter anyhow. The hipothetical Argentinian user exploiting Steamgifts' system could simply make their giveaway region restricted and then they don't have to care about Steam's gifting limits. In fact this is one of the ways some people in these countries build their CV on the cheap.
You're right, I was in a rush to address your core point that somehow muddled up my considerations on that. Yet, ultimately, that corrected perspective just serves to emphasize how important regional price checking actually is, given how it- and especially after the Argentia reference- highlights how exploitable such things really are.
And I just told you how that would add up to an incredible workload unless they automated it. Sure, it's a few seconds a game but there are thousands and thousands of games to crawl through periodically. I wouldn't wish that job on anyone, and especially not an unpaid volunteer.
It's all workload. All workload that volunteers accepted when they took on their role, and have the freedom to put off as much as they want. And you're offering up this the weird implication that the staff members are being overworked solely due to this one task they need to do having one specific step that takes a few seconds to do, and not because of any of the other many things that take up their time, including other parts of the listing process (like quickly looking up against price glitches) that take much more time.
Put putting all that aside, you're not at all managing to justify why being sloppy and undermining the functionality of a necessary task is okay in this instance, but not in any other, or why it's ever acceptable at all for anyone, volunteer or not. I repeat, this is a core part of what the bundle listing process needs to factor in. Staff has the option not to do the listing at all, by putting it off, and there's the option to recruit additional volunteers to help with workload. But there's no justification for not doing the task correctly as, by that point, you may as well not do the task at all, and just cut down all the things that take time, and just add the game to whatever list you think it should be on, based on your purely subjective opinion.
And that's not at all hyperbole or emphasis there, I'm being very strictly precise there- once again, this is what the bundle listing process is about. There's fundamentally no different as it affects the site's functioning, between a game being bundle listed due to a price glitch, due to regional pricing, or due to being discounted to the point of being considered bundled. All of those need to be addressed equally, or you're severely undermining the benefits of addressing any of them.
(it seems you mixed up percentage with percentage points)
Que?
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Que?
I was referencing your 85.5% and 95% off numbers. Which I don't know how exactly you came up with because the difference between those two is not around 10%. The percentage point stuff was just a guess.
It's all workload. All workload that volunteers accepted when they took on their role, and have the freedom to put off as much as they want. And you're offering up this the weird implication that the staff members are being overworked solely due to this one task they need to do having one specific step that takes a few seconds to do, and not because of any of the other many things that take up their time, including other parts of the listing process (like quickly looking up against price glitches) that take much more time.
How would you trigger such a check? Would you have the mods go through the full list of unbundled games periodically? Would you tie it to some event they would have to monitor that then would trigger a check? There is no other practical solution to this than to crawl the steamdb site with a script. (If that's even allowed / possible.) What you are proposing (to keep tabs on the regional pricing of every game on Steam) is impossible to do manually.
Put putting all that aside, you're not at all managing to justify why being sloppy and undermining the functionality of a necessary task is okay in this instance, but not in any other, or why it's ever acceptable at all for anyone, volunteer or not.
If unbundled games were put on the bundle list methodically whenever their regional price reaches a threshold that would make Steamgifts worse for its users. Imagine AAA titles getting reduced CV solely because of a 55% to 80% off sale on Steam making them too cheap in Argentina. Either you ignore the CV exploitation through regional pricing and region restricted giveaways or you mess with all the other users who have no access to these regional prices but would still like to gift games directly through Steam.
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Thanks for the very detailed answer!
it seems as though any site that has effort-based membership levels counts as free
This seems pretty harsh to me but I don't make the rules. In my opinion they should definitely be reduced CV but it's not like any bot can just go there and farm the keys. The person must have invested actual effort into obtaining that key, sure that is not actual money but it's not just dumping asset-flip keys. Same for the subscribtion service keys - in which case people even paid actual money. Confusing indeed! But yet again I don't make the rules.due to several extremely problematic issues with some newer staff member
I was also not aware there was some staff drama going on! Damn.
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This is more of a general question about what is considered as a bundled game (reduced CV).
Sometimes Lootboy offers to get keys for a large amount of coins. Does that count as a bundled games? What about the ones Alienware arena gives away, where you have to actually be an active member to get them?
More generally, there is a lot of ways someone might get a key at a reduced price or even free, some are popular (such as for instance Lootboy coins), some are more obscure or limited (for instance flash sales or giveaways to members of something).
How does the team keep track of all this? What scale must a giveaway/price reduction be for the game to be considered reduced value here?
I'm really just asking out of curiosity, sorry if this has been answered somewhere else. I was also looking for a pretext for making an invite-only giveaway so here you go.
Thanks for reading and have an excellent day :)
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