Love Will Ferrell <3

Whatever he does...

...but for Fire Saga (sorry Will).


Also we could try to help the person who is literally working for the community as a dedicated volunteer, or at least try not to make their task innecesarily more difficult.

I'd argue that the person made the task unnecessarily more difficult by himself in first place by changing the approach to expiring freebies instead of simply doing what was done in the past. And which seemingly no one minded in previous iterations but now suddenly became big deal.

If someone disagrees with the captain's policy, that is not an excuse for being obnoxius. But to each their own.

@BenKii
Just wanted to stop by and say thank you for the lighting fast responses lately. Your efforts are appreciated.

You're welcome and your thanks are most appreciated. :)

On that note, think 10 days is a bit much unless there really are many keys. And this probably shouldn't be a rule set in stone anyway, but depending on number of keys and how desirable the game seems to be. Sometimes three days may be enough, other times you may take a long look at the pile of keys and say requirements should be set aside as soon as the giveaway that produces said keys ends.

Hello Goglodytes! I have an idea for the CG that I'd like to get your feedback on.

It's come to my attention that many of you find the current system of the Community Giveaway to be unfair when certain titles get donated and then quickly snatched up within seconds. In the beginning of the Community Giveaway, there were far more donators than we had giftees. Sadly, this has now been inversed. With more giftees, the competition to get there first is very strong even to an unhealthy level of just pure stalking the giveaway. So in an effort to stave this competition and to keep more games on the CG list longer, I propose to add a 3rd category of games to the CG called the Starred ★ category. Much like how the Daggered † category was created to offload some of the low demand freebie titles that most people already have, the Starred category will contain high demand games but it won't be "first come, first served". Instead, anyone who requests a Starred game will be entered into a drawing that ends in 24 hours (I will have the exact date and time the drawing ends listed in parenthesis next to each Starred game). Active Forum members can enter in the short drawing as long as they haven't received a game for that month already. If the person wins then that will be their game for the month. If you lose, you are still eligible for more Star drawings or anything from the regular list which will still be "first come, first served" but now you will have to decide what to do. Do you take your chance in a drawing for Starred game "Skyrim" or do you grab one of the regular games like "Deus Ex", "Diablo", "Baldur's Gate", etc. and exclude yourself from the drawing. How I decide what gets labeled as a Starred game will generally be by average price and how recent it was released. If for some reason no one enters the drawing for a Starred game then it will get added to the "first come, first served" list.

This is an effort to not only give people a shot at the higher demand games but to also offload the demand from the regular category of games. Questions? Comments? What does everyone think of this? If folks like this change then I plan to enact this in the beginning of July.

I like it, a lot.

One minor suggestion: In deciding what to label as starred, you might also want to take into account how fast a game has previously been grabbed. If you notice that a regular game is requested within seconds of posting, perhaps it should be starred next time it is donated.

I like the idea.
will the drawing be random as in most users-run giveaways? guess, it's the most "fair" way.

Yes, that was the last point I forgot to mention. It will be random but I don't want to use a computer like "random.org" to choose a winner. Instead, I'll use a 12-sided die and roll it for each person to determine the winner. Person with the highest roll wins. If there is a tie for highest number then I roll again for those tied people until there is a winner.
Indeed. Good suggestion as always mrkgnao. :)

I like the idea.
Fun and fair randomness.

sounds fun (I'd use d20 just fur the heck of it, but I'm not you).
once again, I support your idea.

I actually wanted to use a 20-sided die just like in a DnD game but, alas, I do not own one. The 12-sided die was the highest die I could find in storage. :(

I'd say: go for it!

I've been thinking about ways this could go wrong, and the 'worst' I've come up with is a rush near the end of the 24 hour period, where several people would be switching back and forth between the pools of different starred games, to sit in the one where they have the highest chance. But the worst that'll do is create some noise in the thread.

There will of course be many people who won't read the updated rules, and will ask why the starred game which they asked for hasn't been granted yet, and if only they'd known, then they'd have asked for something else, and... But I figure if you include a one line explanation in the header of the starred games section, most of that can be avoided, and what's then still left will be entirely on them.