Indiegala Giveaway Section Problems

Baffi

New member
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21
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1
So, since I'm finally able to get to this forum (yay!) I'll add my 2 cents regarding some problems.
  • First of all, fake giveaways. These are just everywhere and nothing really is being done against them. People either enter those giveaways with their alt accounts, hoping to win and get themselves positive feedback, or hope that someone who wins is dumb enough not to give any feedback at all, and thus they will get auto-feedback later and get higher level.
    It is very easy to understand that the giveaway is fake, usually those people have fresh accounts, or it's their first giveaways being Giver lvl 0 with zero feedback. Moreover, you can find their steam profiles and simply see that they own none of those games.
    I know that after they get certain ammount of negative feedback they get blocked, BUT. Sometimes, like I said, they get lucky with auto-feedback. Also, that's just a waste of other people's time and points and even though the points are free, I don't think that's the reason of letting those giveaways on their own.
    I understand that it takes some time to track them all and ban, so I'm asking to give us ability to blacklist certain users. Thus, they won't be able to enter our giveaways even if they are lucky to get that auto-feedback.
  • Secondly, it's false negative feedback. I'm pretty sure a lot of givers faced this problem when you giveaway a legit key (even if it's "not guaranteed") and the user just gives you negative feedback. As I see, the reasons of doing that are as follows: some of those users are simply trolls, some of them don't want other people to get exp points for leveling because then they are "competitors" to them, some of them do it just because they can . I mean, seriously, I understand this all is based on trust and stuff, but come on, if users know that they get no punishment for leaving false feedbacks, then they can easily be assholes to others and, may I remind you, when you reach certain threshold of negative feedbacks, your account will be banned. So this means, by doing so, they can even make some good accounts banned. Maybe this can also happen due to some bug when users can see other user's profile like if it's theirs and thus activate those keys, but I think it happens way more rarely than due to the reasons I mentioned above.
  • Thirdly, and lastly, I noticed several bugs in how Indiegala system counts points for certain giveaways. The 1st bug is when the games are in some expensive bundles with discount on steam, for some reason, Indiegala system thinks as if the bundle price is the game price thus making that game worth much more points than it should be. For example, we could see it with such games as Atonement: Scourge of Time, Elements: Soul of Fire, Incitement 3, Deponia and so on. Usually they cost 2-4 points, but at that moment they cost 10 times more. (40 points etc). And since nothing is being done about it, people abuse it as hell. The 2nd bug is that people are linking the sub-page of the game in steam store instead of an actual game link, it gives them double ammount of points as well.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I really hope that Indiegala staff will notice this and hopefully will do something about these problems.

Thanks :)
 

Alamar

Member
Messages
36
Points
8
Hello

After months when I couldn't log in to forum (and numerous mails to support) today is a first day ever forum logged me in and I can write my first post. ;]

First of all if we talk about problems there are many, some of which wasn't happening in a giveaway section at start or beginning, for example I got all the time loading of some random pages/giveaways instead of those I clicked, i don't know what technicans made to database of this site or cache.. let say i set sorting to show me lev1 giveaways and it show few of them and then start to load lev0 again or change the sort to expire. If i click on giveaway to "read more" often i see other giveaways info but site adress is still ok so reloading one or two times helps to load correct page. There are numerous other design problems of this site others already wrote on other topics, that are wasting more of our time.
 

Baffi

New member
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21
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1
Originally posted by: Alamar said:
Hello

After months when I couldn't log in to forum (and numerous mails to support) today is a first day ever forum logged me in and I can write my first post. ;]

First of all if we talk about problems there are many, some of which wasn't happening in a giveaway section at start or beginning, for example I got all the time loading of some random pages/giveaways instead of those I clicked, i don't know what technicans made to database of this site or cache.. let say i set sorting to show me lev1 giveaways and it show few of them and then start to load lev0 again or change the sort to expire. If i click on giveaway to "read more" often i see other giveaways info but site adress is still ok so reloading one or two times helps to load correct page. There are numerous other design problems of this site others already wrote on other topics, that are wasting more of our time.
yes, I also experience same problems with the mess of the pages and redirecting onto totally different giveaways. but these problems occured just recently and hopefully are temporary. though the problems that I stated in my post are long-term ones and have a much bigger impact on the GA section imho.
 

Hate Coach

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1
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1
Hell , I'd like to actually be able to contact someone in the giveaways that gave negative feedback, just so I can try to rectify it. I've had a couple people smart enough to look me up on Steam, and at least my name is a bit more uncommon plus I use the same icon, some of the folks that gave me negative feedback have extremely common names, and it's not worth me trying to find a person in a list of 20,000+ on steam.


I love the idea of giveaways, I've given away almost 500 games but reaching a point now where I'm unsure it's worth the bother if you can get your account banned because folks give negative reviews and there's no way to rectify it easily.
 

Baffi

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21
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1
Originally posted by: hatecoach said:
Hell , I'd like to actually be able to contact someone in the giveaways that gave negative feedback, just so I can try to rectify it. I've had a couple people smart enough to look me up on Steam, and at least my name is a bit more uncommon plus I use the same icon, some of the folks that gave me negative feedback have extremely common names, and it's not worth me trying to find a person in a list of 20,000+ on steam.


I love the idea of giveaways, I've given away almost 500 games but reaching a point now where I'm unsure it's worth the bother if you can get your account banned because folks give negative reviews and there's no way to rectify it easily.
exactly what I'm talking about, I'm pretty sure people had your legit key and activated the game and gave you a negative just because they are asshats, trolls or whatever stupid reason they had, just, like I said, because they can, because there is no punishment for that. Even if you contacted them, I don't think anything would have changed, and I'm more than sure they wouldn't write to IG support about changing the feedback. Something must be done about this. v:-(
 

ZxC

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12
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0
On a degree, I totally agree with you. Speaking for the first and second case, IG staff must definitely implement a kind of "report feature" system which it'll be displayed in giveaways thrown by people and users' profiles. If (speaking for the second case), for example a troll won the giveaway, got the legitimate key and puts a negative feedback then you just simply fill up a report and the global moderators will take an investigation onto it.

Obviously, the report information has to be VERY detailed if the investigation needs to take a short time. In this way, the trolls wouldn't be able to access the Giveaway functions anymore. Of course this needs a work around in IG Giveaways in order that this idea to be completely implemented. This is solely my humble opinion, though.
 

Tiredofitall

Active member
Messages
186
Points
28
well You will need to email support with your Idea's The whole site is in beta and being updated daily. this is why you sometimes get errors and lag .. you might have to clear your cache to access it again if you log in in between Updates
 

Baffi

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Originally posted by: Mseals said:
well You will need to email support with your Idea's The whole site is in beta and being updated daily. this is why you sometimes get errors and lag .. you might have to clear your cache to access it again if you log in in between Updates
I did email the support, according to the false negative feedback, they said "all is based on trust so we can't change the feedback unless that user writes to us". It's very hard to contact the user, who won the giveaway, and if he is a simple troll, contacting him will not bring anything since he won't be bothered to write an email to support for obvious reasons. This "trust system" is kinda bs to me since it doesn't solve the problem at all and only worsens it because obviously not everyone is a nice thankful person who has no reasons for giving the false feedback if he got the game. That's a perfection but people are not perfect, so obviously it doesn't work like it should and it never will =\ As for the problem about fake giveaways, they just ignored it, without commenting it at all, so...
 
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67
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8
Everything is falling in place. The site was completely revamped from the old way things were done. Hopefully soon they give us the tools to deal with fake and/or free game giveaways. But the only way we get anything done is by yours and other users inputs to support.
 

Baffi

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Originally posted by: Jason said:
Everything is falling in place. The site was completely revamped from the old way things were done. Hopefully soon they give us the tools to deal with fake and/or free game giveaways. But the only way we get anything done is by yours and other users inputs to support.
glad to hear that :) just give us ability to blacklist certain people and to report giveaways, then fake giveaways won't be a problem anymore.
 

Vorshin

Member
Messages
34
Points
8
Originally posted by: Alamar said:
Hello

After months when I couldn't log in to forum (and numerous mails to support) today is a first day ever forum logged me in and I can write my first post. ;]

First of all if we talk about problems there are many, some of which wasn't happening in a giveaway section at start or beginning, for example I got all the time loading of some random pages/giveaways instead of those I clicked, i don't know what technicans made to database of this site or cache.. let say i set sorting to show me lev1 giveaways and it show few of them and then start to load lev0 again or change the sort to expire. If i click on giveaway to "read more" often i see other giveaways info but site adress is still ok so reloading one or two times helps to load correct page. There are numerous other design problems of this site others already wrote on other topics, that are wasting more of our time.

Yes exactly same thing here, was unable to log into the forums, was always gettign told to link my steam account, which it was. Anyways 1 issue (i hope) is fully solved, now they can conc3entrate on fixing the giveaways section.
Anyone else had next page or click page number and end up on a completly differant page, same when clicking to enter a giveaway to have a page load up with a completly differant giveaway or to have it saying you must log in first? (a quick back to previous page and forwards or back and then reload several times before getting the correct thing to load up, man talk about stressing ones servers out (let alone the users) LOL

Have to agree with what was posted by the OP as well on teh giveaways. I have only negative thumbs down duplicate/used keys and thumbs up'ed any others i have won
 

Orlygift

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4
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how to feedback? i have won a giveaway,but i cant find where to thanks. i am not good at english,
and i am a newbee.
Sorry, I finally find it , there is a ! but no tips. I have finished that giveaway feedback.
 
Messages
15
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Originally posted by: Baffi said:
So, since I'm finally able to get to this forum (yay!) I'll add my 2 cents regarding some problems.
  • First of all, fake giveaways.
  • Secondly, it's false negative feedback.
    I did email the support, according to the false negative feedback, they said "all is based on trust so we can't change the feedback unless that user writes to us". It's very hard to contact the user, who won the giveaway, and if he is a simple troll, contacting him will not bring anything since he won't be bothered to write an email to support for obvious reasons. This "trust system" is kinda bs to me since it doesn't solve the problem at all and only worsens it because obviously not everyone is a nice thankful person who has no reasons for giving the false feedback if he got the game. That's a perfection but people are not perfect, so obviously it doesn't work like it should and it never will =\ As for the problem about fake giveaways, they just ignored it, without commenting it at all, so...
auto-feedback is good for givers. In other site you also can get good feedback if winer not feedback over 7days.
It believe most givers is good men.
Check the "Completed" and feedback it is winner's job. What's resons they not check it over 7days?

False negative feedback is a big problem.
I also get two False negative feedback from same user three days before.
I record my every keys to sure it not used and he easy give negative feedback to me. :/
I am trying connect him first to give new keys.
I will create all GA level1+ if he don't reply me.
Support just say:connect him yourself. :)

BTW he has a strange group.
103 members with 100 low level and 3 high level.
98 low level members online and their games most free games.
maybe you can find low level members in indiegala and use ASF? :/
 

Baffi

New member
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21
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Originally posted by: nightwind said:
auto-feedback is good for givers. In other site you also can get good feedback if winer not feedback over 7days.
It believe most givers is good men.
Check the "Completed" and feedback it is winner's job. What's resons they not check it over 7days?

False negative feedback is a big problem.
I also get two False negative feedback from same user three days before.
I record my every keys to sure it not used and he easy give negative feedback to me. :/
I am trying connect him first to give new keys.
I will create all GA level1+ if he don't reply me.
Support just say:connect him yourself. :)

BTW he has a strange group.
103 members with 100 low level and 3 high level.
98 low level members online and their games most free games.
maybe you can find low level members in indiegala and use ASF? :/
I also think that auto-feedback is a good thing, but of course it has a bad side which can be abused, for example that's what ppl making fake giveaways are hoping for and sometimes get. For me giving the feedback is not hard and is even pleasant, that's the first thing I do if I won something and I've never got any invalid keys so far. Probably because I can understand when the giveaway is fake and then I simply don't enter those.
I guess making the giveaways not lower than 1+ can help a bit in not getting false feedback, since most ppl who do it are lvl 0 users.
As for that group, I don't rly think it's connected with IG. There is a google document in it, something about Diablo stuff, those users look like bots to me.
 
Messages
15
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1
Originally posted by: Baffi said:
I also think that auto-feedback is a good thing, but of course it has a bad side which can be abused, for example that's what ppl making fake giveaways are hoping for and sometimes get. For me giving the feedback is not hard and is even pleasant, that's the first thing I do if I won something and I've never got any invalid keys so far. Probably because I can understand when the giveaway is fake and then I simply don't enter those.
I guess making the giveaways not lower than 1+ can help a bit in not getting false feedback, since most ppl who do it are lvl 0 users.
As for that group, I don't rly think it's connected with IG. There is a google document in it, something about Diablo stuff, those users look like bots to me.
I notice some gruop member's name also win my GA.
That is why I think they most connect IG to get freegame.
Think if they just win freegame and send bad feedback.
They have 100 members * 240point/day=24000 point/day
Most GA they can join and send bad feedback. It is how terrible.
BTW those is just my guess.

They just win game from IG's GA then get card loop.
I can accept they doing it except give me bad feedback
 
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16
" What's resons they not check it over 7days? "

Most people right now are deterred from checking wins by having to do it manually. I know I wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for the "check all" plugin.
 

Baffi

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Originally posted by: Hassat Hunter said:
" What's resons they not check it over 7days? "

Most people right now are deterred from checking wins by having to do it manually. I know I wouldn't have bothered if it weren't for the "check all" plugin.
I wonder why they even enter GAs then, if they can't be bothered checking ^^ or why do they enter that much :D
 
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How about if IG disables auto feedback for all new users, and it auto activates only after you receive a certain number of positive feedbacks while maintaining a good trust rate.
That way people couldn't create those high value fake giveaways to jump to higher levels with the auto feedback system.

Also, seeing that group that is full of trading card farming bots, I would bet that guy has IG accounts linked to each of those steam profiles and enters giveaways with all of those accounts, I hope IG does something against such obvious abuse.
There should be a limit to 1 account per user and it should be enforced by something like IP checks.

Another problem I notice all the time is users entering for games they already own, I have one user who won 3 games of mine and simply gave them away the next day. That is almost as bad as fake giveaways because they level up without contributing anything to the system.
Even if they don't give away the game again they kinda steal from those who are trying to win games to add them to their steam library.
And what really sucks, I cannot even think of a solution other then blocking users to enter for games that are already in their IG library. And that only covers a small amount of games. To block users from entering giveaways that are in their Steam library doesn't help much either because there are plenty of users who have their IG profile connected to some alternative Steam account.

Anyway, the current system leaves plenty of room for abuse and even if I really like the concept of a trust based community it is unarguably just a nice concept, in the end there will always be people who will abuse any loopholes they can find.
 
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Good I got banned giveaways because False negative feedback!
OOXX bots

I mailed the support.
The support reply me and I unbanned.

A my steam friend also banned.
He only give valid games and got False negative feedback.
some friends say:they don't use IG's giveaways to send gift because no way to deny the "Troll users"
 

ZxC

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@nightwind: Uh, this is indeed unfortunate you've been banned from Giveaways due to trolls. Hope IG staff must take counter measures immediately. Surely the giveaways section needs a work-around for a better experience and less malicious activities.
 
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