For me it was a good place to give some games I won't play myself.
I won't make a giveaway topic every time I get a spare key. There are already so much giveaway threads.
I'll just save them and dump them all at once when I can now.

I never used it but when I saw it was locked I checked it out, holy crap, I was really surprised at the posts there.

As someone who never used the Ninja thread for anything, I'll say that the fallout and drama it spread across the forum is definitely something I can do without. The fact of the matter is that if you leave honey lying around, you'll attract flies, and a thread with random free game codes dropping regularly is apparently a magnet for douchebags from around the world. That's definitely something this community can do without.

That Ninja thread attracted cockroaches and the mods decided to eliminate the infestation at the source of the problem.

I never participated in the Ninja thread, but I looked into it out of curiosity once in a while since it was "on top" quite often. I don't know what happened in there (but I can imagine). For me it was a miracle that this thread had been working at all and for quite some time. Shows how great this community is (was?).
But like you said - leaving honey around. A handful of douchebags (sometimes a single on) can ruin it for hundreds of people. I guess that can't be helped. Just like griefers are part of nearly every MP game out there.

Considering the drama it was causing, good riddance.

To be perfectly honest, I kind of feel the same way. I've dropped a few codes there, but other than that, haven't been too involved in discussions. And that was because of all the drama, which I prefer to stay out of most of the time.

Anyways, I don't care what happens with the Ninja Giveaway thing, because if I want to do a giveaway, I feel I could just create a regular giveaway thread.

I see people that I find nice and interesting leave the forum while at the same time I see people who try to get hold of as many free games as they can complain when there's a giveaway they cannot enter (and generally be whiny).
If that is somehow caused by having a Ninja Giveaway thread then I'm against having one.

Edit: Spelling. I'm tired and grumpy.

Best decision gog staff made IN A LONG TIME :p That thread was full of people bitching about rep and trolls trying to piss people off. Also some people abused the GA by taking everything, trading the free items or taking things without thanking anyone. Since that thread has been locked the arguing seems to be stopped. Well done!!!

There are 1000 other ways to give stuff to people who actually PLAY the game instead of shelving it or trading it or taking it without thanking anyone.

FYI guys,

I believe the thread was locked at the request of a forum member, rather than that of the staff. To my knowledge they are not passing judgement on the thread at the present time, nor suggesting it has been permanently locked (obviously I cannot speak for the GOG staff, this is just my understanding of the situation). It may be unlocked in the future, I believe that this thread was started to gauge opinion on that matter.

My opinion:

Well it's certainly not the thread I started. That was quite light hearted and intended to only last 1 month. However it did have some nice times, and for a long time was a positive element to GOG (depending on if you like people giving things away at all). I was quite pleased at one point that people had tried to carry on the spirit of the original thread.

However it does appear to have become a bit of a "forum dive bar" where people feel the volume of posts makes it ok to be different to the rest of the threads on here. The problem comes in how to distill the positive from the negative. There will still be people wanting to do giveaways, and while it was a mammoth thread, it hoovered up a lot of that. It doesn't look like we're getting a giveaway forum or any kind of solution to this any time soon, so you may just find that general discussion becomes flooded to the point that you can't actually discuss anything.

I'm not sure if i'd personally like to see it open up again, however the activity on it suggests that others do. In any event I wonder if it should be more carefully diffused.

The Ninja thread was a great idea, and great fun. Unfortunately the key word here is "was", and I'm referring to the time a year or so ago, when the thread had a healthy community of people who posted riddles for codes, and others who tried to solve the riddles in a general atmosphere of sportsmanship.

I hadn't checked the Ninja thread for a while, and when I did, I saw people that I've never seen elsewhere on GOG being deadlocked in ugly flame wars. Apparently the prospect of "FREE STUFF!!" attracted too many greedy non-Goglodytes, so the veterans in the thread were unable to socialize the newcomers to the generally friendly behavior in these forums. It seems that many of the newcomers weren't particularly open to advice either.

It's sad to see a good idea go down, but perhaps there was indeed no other viable option any more.

I'm agree with you. I never participated to the Ninja thread because it wasn't the vision I have of the GOG Forum, a bit like the Dark Side of the Force !

So it got closed? Interesting.

I'm not against it generally, at least as long as people don't post the codes directly, so the bots can snatch them up.

With all the negative rep trolls arguing over free games, good choice.