Hi there!
Let me use this opportunity to start a discussion on a rising annoyance I have been having with steamgifts. I really like the philosophy steamgifts embodies. You can bring joy to other gamers by giving them a game that you like, you can share your duplicate keys or even promote your own indie project. Whilst also having a chance to win some cool games or discovering hidden gems that you would not have encountered in any other way. Obviously I’ve spread the word and shared my enthusiasm among my gaming friends. Most of them liked this idea, joined steamgifts and started sharing some of their cool games, oddly enough, none of them ever won anything. By now they have all left steamgifts and that is not just because they weren’t patient enough to wait for a win. For some reason it is kind of stomach turning when gifting games to people that have already harvested hundreds of titles, but only gifted a hand full of games 3 years ago. Ok, you increase the minimum contributor level to avoid this type of users, but as soon as you do the second type appears: the kind of user that has received hundreds of public giveaways, but have created all of their own giveaways for closed steam groups with a very limited amount of members.
I fully emphasize with people that do not have the means to give back to the community. Yet in most cases people just seem to stuff as many games in their backlog of which 95% remains un-played anyway. When too many people do this, more and more people who are actually willing to give back to the community get annoyed and will abandon the platform. Which in turn will lead to a further imbalance of the community and thus strengthen the effect until the community collapses and no one who is willing to give remains on the platform. This is actually a well-studied process known from social science, ecology and economics also known as the tragedy of the commons. Any community can only handle a limited amount of social cheaters and will collapse (tragedy of the commons) unless the community has sufficient means to protect itself against this behavior.
I’d like to ask you some questions to initiate the discussion. What are your experiences, did you notice this type of user to? Are you bothered/annoyed by this type of winners? Have you considered stopping with steamgifts or did you change what games you give because of this? Would you give more games back if you would win more often? Should we have more means to select against people that are not willing to give back to the community? And finally how would you reward or promote philanthropic sg users?
edit: I just created a poll (https://www.steamgifts.com/discussion/7L88U/tragedy-of-the-commons#SpUcjVU) for those who'd like to voice their opinion without having to type a message ;)
Friendly suggestion: please do not make an example out of yourself by joining this giveaway with a greatly imbalanced won/send ratio.
Lara Croft I love you forever !!! ...
masterpiece game Tomb Raider
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Thanks
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Well I personally can't give away much on the site as I do not really earn money myself yet, being a student. I do understand your annoyance though, I also find it quite unbalanced for people to win hundreds of games but only give away a few or none. I for my part try to have my ratio as balanced as possible by using Tremor. I do not feel good winning games without doing anything in return for the community. Still even when I properly earn money, I surely wouln't be nice and philanthropic enough to give high quality games away on here to mostly random people.. and I can imagine that someone who does would like the winner to contribute to this site and also play the won games.
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I've joined to steamgifts with hope to win one game per week and make a gameplay from them. Later I win near one game daily, mostly low tier games. Later I've decided to enter only into games I want to play. There are still too much of them and I getting also games from other sources.
Now I usually give a lot more than I win.
I'm against the situation when people join here only to win and don't give back anything. There are many of them when they're won here 400 games, gave 50 and have a library of 3.000 games on Steam. They can give ever cheap games, from selling cards or earn any games from many services like chrono or tremor etc. Many only getting without giving away anything.
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thx
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no matter how many giveaways i entered for Tomb Rider every time no win :) this site never let me win.
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In that case I hope you are lucky enough to win this one =)
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In level 0 are thousands of users. Try to raise your level to increase chances.
There are currently 800 users inside and will be more.
You will be able to enter into giveaways where are less users joined..
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Im sorry but i'm not ready to giveaway anything for may be.
The part with donation I have eaten it already if you understand what i mean :) .
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I love this game, ty
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I guess I just realize that you're bound to get these kinds of users among the ones that legitimately look that way by happenstance. You can never truly distinguish between the two so it's tough to really have an appropriate reaction to the assumption one way or another. I'm also annoyed with people making giveaways and telling people not to say thank you as if it's such an inconvenience to be appreciative and polite. I don't know. The best solutions are either to ignore it or leave because I don't know what else can be implemented beyond what is here, and how well more changes will be received. Too many alterations can cause a frustration and burnout on the site that drives people away too. Then again, my opinion probably doesn't mean much to you since I've won a bunch and hacen't given much away at all. I still entered, though, because obviously you can't create a restriction against people based on your level of annoyance with them, much to your dismay. You best bet to stay and stop giving to those people is to start blacklisting them. Ideal? No. But it's a tool already in place for such a specific task as you're requesting. Also, I'm sorry if I sound like a dick... but... I mean, I am so... that'd explain it.
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"I'm also annoyed with people making giveaways and telling people not to say thank you"
When I create 50 giveaways on level 0 and I get 50 "thanks!" in every of it this will be a mess.
So I gracefully asking to not to "thanks" when you're entering. This is a reason.
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... and I've got 20x thanks for one person now. If you multiply this by users what entered...
So I don't want to get a "thanks" for everyone who entering. I can't find an comments for other users between 1.000 thanks.
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You are not obligated to reply to all of the comments and you can quickly see that they only said "thanks" by browsing the messages page. At this point I just don't even comment anymore unless people ask for something I have something to say about. And then people think I'm a bot that way too so there's no way to please everyone. Just have to roll with how it works and adapt as best you can. Maybe stop reading comments unless you're asking something, or browse for anything longer than "thanks" in the previews, or just don't create so many giveaways at once so you can actually manage the interactions to a level that makes you comfortable. This is why I rarely comment because nobody appreciates the genuine thank you anymore and I'm not about to write a thoughtful message on every giveaway when almost every one of those comments will get overlooked anyway.
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I just trying to answer to everyone.
I can manage all interactions. "Thanks" do not mean anything - especially when in GA description author write "do not thanks".
I bought a bundle, took 1-2 games. Rest is a duplicated for me or I'm not interested in - so I giving them away. Maybe someone wants them...
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Well if you want to manage ALL of them then thanks are still part of it whether you want to engage with them or not. This is why I barely comment. No one wants them. They always say "don't say thanks" so I never say anything unless it's specific. You also can blacklist and do higher level giveaways so you don't get so many bots like that if they even ARE bots and just generally get less of those people, or whitelist those who leave comments you deem "meaningful" and then just stick to whitelist giveaways. You have many options.
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My aim is not to BL. I just told that is boring that we get "thanks" on 20 of my GA's. If someone asks for something - we try to answer. But same "thanks" of same user post inside... it's boring.
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Same "don't thanks" from giveaways is also boring. I'm not looking to comment on every single thing anymore because no one wants real comments. I'm just telling you that you have options to fix your problem or at least help, whereas just being upset about it won't change anything. That's all. Have fun with your giveaways :)
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Thanks
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Thank You ;)
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Thanks! Let's try!
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I can understand why this bothers you so much, but u need to consider that sometimes people that don't give away games do that cuz they are not even able to buy themselves something. My library is pretty small, mostly are free games (Noone from giveaways for now, but from promotions) and some games I bought myself (that I must say, always gifted from others cuz i don't even have a credit card yet!).
I'm sure that one day I will try to share something, to gift, because I think it is beautiful to just do this.
But, the main problem is if u have the possibility or not.
Saying this, you should really try to do whatever please you, if u can't stand this policy u can leave, while if u just like to share games then continue to do it, ignoring whoever will win these.
Anyway, thanks a lot for the opportunity! :3
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jeje,esto me emociona. Thanks for the chance, bro. Wish you a great day!!
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Thank you for the giveaway baseendje! :)
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Thanks
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Thanks ^^
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thx
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SG have not changed to the better in the last 7 months.
I had that link saved, maybe to answer your question, so i do it with this short sentence and the add that your text was well written :o)
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Hey!
Thank you so much for your reply! To my surprise people were actually quite divided on this topic. I noticed a lot of people really took offense to the concern I've tried to raise, including blaming me for creating the "wrong" type of give-aways and blacklisting me for just raising a concern.
I guess it's ok, I do not have to be friends with everyone, but it is at least nice to know that I am not alone feeling that this may not be the most sustainable way to keep the platform alive.
Have a great weekend!
Bas
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Yeah, a lot at sg haven't the backbone to accept other opinions.
I got a lot of BL for saying my oppinions to different themes and because i give much more then the most of them they cut in there own flesh :-D
But sg go more down(sides?) with each month because the generous people are not more willing to feed bots, autojoiners, rulebreakers that sell wins, the extreme leechers and the cv bundle exploiter that are with 5$ at lvl 4.
I have always 990 - 1000 (1000 is maximum) people on my Blacklist and i would need more spaces for all bad people.
And yes i am too one of the people that are now demotivated to give a lot of stuff out to, too often, greedy assholes that never support this site in any way. That is the reason why i nearly only give to a few groups and my whitelist and not more at public GA's (public GA's feel like feeding the RU/CIS and brazilian bot/autojoiner army)
Take a look into the statistics for new comments, threads, GA's. You can see there how it go each month more and more down.
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