Here is my feedback on the new rules.
I know I might be in the minority with how I feel, but I felt it necessary to express my opinion of what a great job I think the Admins & Mods are doing in creating a bit more rules & why I feel they are necessary.
I am completely fine with the new rules.
I know that there were quite a few people that have been taken advantage of in here.
including myself, Darko, Ian, Azrael, & others. (I dont know all of the people, but I know of more, through chatting in PMs with them)
Where a member was either using this club to trade their SteamGifts on GoG Trades or other some other trading forum such as Steam, & were caught doing it, or members were not activating their games.
Or the incident with Ian, where a member won a high profile game & caused drama with him & then left the group after the fact, just out spite.
It leaves a bad taste in veterans & people that have gifted to the group & really care about the success of the group.
For myself, I stopped gifting games for the group for awhile, & felt uncomfortable with it, & paranoid of being fucked over again.
I gift to this group because I enjoy this forum & the GoG members in it.
I only have 1 main group where I gift games to on SteamGifts.
This is that group.
I gift to in hopes that people truly enter b/c they want the game & want to play the game, & don't abuse the rules & use the game elsewhere or not activate the game at all in their account.
That they don't fuck over the members that truly want to play the game.
I also have a pet peeve where I don't see how hard it is to say thank you to the person who made the giveaway.
It doesn't take very long.
If your not fast in typing, people can even copy & past another persons Thank you above them. lol!
Its just lazy & rude, when people dont thank or acknowledge the gifter.
Even after the game is given to them, its not hard to acknowledge them with a Thank you so the gifter knows that you received the game.
But that is my own personal opinion.
Just like it isn't hard to spend some time in this forum to chat a little, which is what this club was made for.
To be active in GoG forums by chatting with others in them.
The Giveaways just seemed like an incentive for activity, which is quite nice if you think about it because nobody forced anyone to enter the GoG Gift Club & become a member in here.
Everyone did this of their own free will.
In any other group/club on Steam, that is giving away games, this is what is expected in active, private, Gift Clubs:
1) Activity
2) Contributing
3) Participation
When people have taken advantage of the members in here & are only in here for themselves & not for the success of the group or caring for the members in it.
Then the group will slowly deteriorate, due to gifters feeling resentful & unappreciated for working hard at keeping the group strong & thriving.
Things were not working & morale was low with some of the gifters, which led to them being paranoid about people entering their giveaways, due to past bad experiences.
I'm not saying this just for myself but for others that have also expressed to me in private that they have also felt this exact same way.
Paying it forward helps also keep this group active & thriving & should be a requirement.
I don't think we need to watch people like a hawk where they should only enter X amount of giveaways for the same price point that they also giveaway so that it is evened out.
The group isn't asking people to even out their giveaway ratio & the Admins. hold a list of what people have given in giveaways & call out others when they haven't evened out their ratio.
This is pretty standard procedure in what is expected in other private groups to make it fair, so people win & give back the exact same point percentage as received.
If you compare this Club to other active, private groups on Steam, then, these new rules are actually not that heavy in restriction.
It sucks that these rules had to start being incorporated into the Club, due to others being taken advantage of. But I firmly believe that they will help the Club in the long run & that the group will start becoming more closer with each other & more active in GoG forums, b/c it pushes people to make more of an effort.
That is my two cents on the subject.
Post edited June 13, 2013 by Death2Videodrome