Please only join if you'll play the game if you win :-)
I recently checked the 444 games that I gave away over the 1.5 years I've been on sg and found that only 5% of them got played to a satisfactory degree (>25% achievement completion or slightly less if play time was substantial).
For public giveaways, the rate was a pitiful 1.6%. The rate for invite-only GAs was significantly better at 12%. For instance, 3 of the 27 giveaways that I made for the Sep 2022 community train were played. The most pleasant surprise was the one user who got 222 hours of enjoyment out of Cryofall! It made my day :)
It's likely that my stats are a bit skewed because I've made my fair share of trashy giveaways that are not worth playing and because a significant % of my giveaways were to ratio groups that are dominated by "collectors", but still, the low play rate for public GAs that I observed attests to the fact that the general sg population is more interested in collecting games than in playing them.
I know that you do a lot of invite-only GAs and share high-quality stuff regularly, so your stats are probably much less depressing than mine, but if you'd like more assurance that your games get played, you might want to consider groups like Playing Appreciate (PA) or Playing Matters (PM) or a handpicked whitelist of users that you trust. A statement urging users not to join if they won't play will not dissuade many since a lot of sg users disregard descriptions or don't even understand English, not to mention the countless faceless accounts that use autojoiner scripts...
Just my 2 cents since this subject has been on my mind lately.
damn, really interesting to hear your stats. i should look into joining one of those groups one of these days :-))
It's a shame that games go to people who won't appreciate them. i'm guilty of this myself, i have lots of games I've won nad nt played yet (going to work on them, though, over the summer when i have more time to game).
i should look into joining one of those groups one of these days
Another good option is to make giveaways for the Play A Game You Won on Steamgifts monthly event. At least you'll know that those games go to people who play games and aren't just hoarding/farming them.
I think anyone can donate games (you don't have to take part in the event), but I'm not sure what the process is. You probably need to contact samwise84.
I'm glad you found the stats interesting. If you want more details, check out these snapshots.
I created this spreadsheet last week. I used a couple of handy scripts to facilitate the process, but I still had to do a lot of manual work in Notepad++/Excel. I wish there was a script that could produce the data with a single click.
+1000. I would also add that increasing level requirement doesn't increase the likelihood of the game getting played. Some of the most egregious win collectors are high SG levels.
I checked some of my whitelist GA's recently and was pretty disappointed to find many of the games hadn't been played at all. To be fair I haven't played all my wins either, but it's still more than 5%.
Unfortunately Playing Appreciated is currently closed to new members, I'll have to check out Playing Matters.
I think you have a good point, the bots or collector types that join giveaways with no actual intention to play hurt the chances of the ones that would enjoy the games a lot. though at least for myself, I can say that I only join the giveaways for the games I want to play, though I managed to build a huge backlog over the years so it would be impossible for me to play all the games right away. even for some games I buy myself and want to play a lot it sometimes takes a few years for me to get to play it. Again, your point is valid but I just wanted to say that there could be people like me who don't have enough time or a huge backlog that prevent them to play a game in the same year they win it.
I hear you. I didn't mean to generalize. There are many reasons why people can't play new games quickly, backlog being a major one. I'm not concluding that anyone who doesn't play an SG win within a year is a "collector", just that the likelihood of a game won on SG being played is low - probably in the 5-15% range. I'd be curious to see what my stats look like if I gather the same data again 6 months or a year from now. I imagine only a handful of additional games will be played, but I could be wrong.
By the way, your collection is far from "huge" by SG standards. I regularly see users with 3k+ steam libraries with thousands of games won on SG over a decade and less than 2% ever played.
I know you weren't generalizing, just wanted to state that for me the games I won here I will get to play eventually but sometimes it can take a few years. For example right now I am playing Deus Ex GOTY for the first time, even if the game is now almost 25 years old, I only just managed to find time for it. I do tend to 100% the games I play so when I start a new one sometimes it can take more than a month to just finish that. And combining steam, gog, epic, EA app, amazon app and such I maybe need like 10 years of regular play to finish all my games if I stop buying games as of today. in short, the amount of good games that piled up over the years is overwhelming so playing all is impossible. but of course, I totally agree that joining giveaways for just collecting is a bad practice and might be the case for maybe more than half of the people here
I recently checked the 444 games that I gave away over the 1.5 years I've been on sg and found that only 5% of them got played to a satisfactory degree (>25% achievement completion or slightly less if play time was substantial).
For public giveaways, the rate was a pitiful 1.6%. The rate for invite-only GAs was significantly better at 12%. For instance, 3 of the 27 giveaways that I made for the Sep 2022 community train were played. The most pleasant surprise was the one user who got 222 hours of enjoyment out of Cryofall! It made my day :)
It's likely that my stats are a bit skewed because I've made my fair share of trashy giveaways that are not worth playing and because a significant % of my giveaways were to ratio groups that are dominated by "collectors", but still, the low play rate for public GAs that I observed attests to the fact that the general sg population is more interested in collecting games than in playing them.
I know that you do a lot of invite-only GAs and share high-quality stuff regularly, so your stats are probably much less depressing than mine, but if you'd like more assurance that your games get played, you might want to consider groups like Playing Appreciate (PA) or Playing Matters (PM) or a handpicked whitelist of users that you trust. A statement urging users not to join if they won't play will not dissuade many since a lot of sg users disregard descriptions or don't even understand English, not to mention the countless faceless accounts that use autojoiner scripts...
Just my 2 cents since this subject has been on my mind lately.
Comment has been collapsed.
damn, really interesting to hear your stats. i should look into joining one of those groups one of these days :-))
It's a shame that games go to people who won't appreciate them. i'm guilty of this myself, i have lots of games I've won nad nt played yet (going to work on them, though, over the summer when i have more time to game).
Comment has been collapsed.
Another good option is to make giveaways for the Play A Game You Won on Steamgifts monthly event. At least you'll know that those games go to people who play games and aren't just hoarding/farming them.
I think anyone can donate games (you don't have to take part in the event), but I'm not sure what the process is. You probably need to contact samwise84.
I'm glad you found the stats interesting. If you want more details, check out these snapshots.
Stats by GA type: https://i.imgur.com/lNGo6ph.png
Top 10 played games: https://i.imgur.com/i23MGCy.png
I created this spreadsheet last week. I used a couple of handy scripts to facilitate the process, but I still had to do a lot of manual work in Notepad++/Excel. I wish there was a script that could produce the data with a single click.
Comment has been collapsed.
+1000. I would also add that increasing level requirement doesn't increase the likelihood of the game getting played. Some of the most egregious win collectors are high SG levels.
Comment has been collapsed.
I checked some of my whitelist GA's recently and was pretty disappointed to find many of the games hadn't been played at all. To be fair I haven't played all my wins either, but it's still more than 5%.
Unfortunately Playing Appreciated is currently closed to new members, I'll have to check out Playing Matters.
Comment has been collapsed.
I think you have a good point, the bots or collector types that join giveaways with no actual intention to play hurt the chances of the ones that would enjoy the games a lot. though at least for myself, I can say that I only join the giveaways for the games I want to play, though I managed to build a huge backlog over the years so it would be impossible for me to play all the games right away. even for some games I buy myself and want to play a lot it sometimes takes a few years for me to get to play it. Again, your point is valid but I just wanted to say that there could be people like me who don't have enough time or a huge backlog that prevent them to play a game in the same year they win it.
Comment has been collapsed.
I hear you. I didn't mean to generalize. There are many reasons why people can't play new games quickly, backlog being a major one. I'm not concluding that anyone who doesn't play an SG win within a year is a "collector", just that the likelihood of a game won on SG being played is low - probably in the 5-15% range. I'd be curious to see what my stats look like if I gather the same data again 6 months or a year from now. I imagine only a handful of additional games will be played, but I could be wrong.
By the way, your collection is far from "huge" by SG standards. I regularly see users with 3k+ steam libraries with thousands of games won on SG over a decade and less than 2% ever played.
Comment has been collapsed.
I know you weren't generalizing, just wanted to state that for me the games I won here I will get to play eventually but sometimes it can take a few years. For example right now I am playing Deus Ex GOTY for the first time, even if the game is now almost 25 years old, I only just managed to find time for it. I do tend to 100% the games I play so when I start a new one sometimes it can take more than a month to just finish that. And combining steam, gog, epic, EA app, amazon app and such I maybe need like 10 years of regular play to finish all my games if I stop buying games as of today. in short, the amount of good games that piled up over the years is overwhelming so playing all is impossible. but of course, I totally agree that joining giveaways for just collecting is a bad practice and might be the case for maybe more than half of the people here
Comment has been collapsed.
𝓣𝓱𝓪𝓷𝓴𝓼
Comment has been collapsed.
Thanks!!!
Comment has been collapsed.