ResetEra's GiftBot 2.0 Launch Giveaway Extravaganza (Now Concluded)!

[Cerium]

We have deployed our first GiftBot patch! These are the urgent issues we felt needed to get fixed ASAP -- another patch with lower priority bugs will soon follow.

Patch 1 Notes:

• Cancelled giveaways will no longer continue to pick winners and distribute prizes. Cancellations should now work as intended.
• Raffles should no longer produce any duplicate winners, nor distribute multiple copies of the same prize to them.

 

[Cerium]

As you might have inferred from GiftBot going rogue for a moment there, we've applied another patch with a few more improvements:

• Platform and region information will now appear next to each prize on the Enter Giveaway dialogue
• Alerts for raffles you don't win will now tell you whose raffle it was, rather than just naming GiftBot for all of them
• First-come first-serve giveaways should no longer erroneously display an end time on your giveaways list
• New raffles will now correctly trigger post notifications
• Receiving prizes will now correctly trigger conversation notifications

The most obvious and most serious bugs should now all be fixed. The bot should be nice and stable now. There will be more updates and new features -- we're not done by a long shot!

 

[Gevin]

It's done, instructions can be found here: https://github.com/fcostantini/resetera-gifthelper

Off to bed now but feel free to report bugs and post suggestions.

Here's how it should like:

 

[Cerium]

Another bugfix patch has been applied. We believe this takes care of all the reported issues that were ongoing.

1. Fixed an issue where the "Limit to givers" option (restricting giveaways to members who have created a giveaway in the past 30 days) was incorrectly excluding some members.

2. First-come first-serve giveaways should "end" correctly and have an added fallback end date to ensure proper sorting.

3. Various pagination issues for giveaway history should now be fixed.

On the previous Threadmark you'll find that Gevin has adapted his browser extension for use with GiftBot 2.0. This nifty feature will compare lists of Steam games in giveaways and automatically tell you which ones are already in your library or on your wishlist.

We're already drawing up plans for new GiftBot features that we think you'll really like!

 

[Cerium]

We're very pleased to report that we've been blessed with additional prizes to keep this party going longer!

First of all, Ubisoft continues their fabulous generosity with some love for strategy fans:

Anno 1800 - Gold Edition (Uplay) x3

Urishizu has been an angel throughout the thread. You can thank him and Dead Drop Studios for offering these prizes:

Outbreak Epidemic (Steam) x10
Outbreak: The New Nightmare (Steam) x5
Outbreak: The Nightmare Chronicles (Steam) x10

And from anonymous donors:

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch US) x1
$20 PlayStation Store Gift Card (PS4 US) x2

 

[Cerium]

Hello everyone,

I have some exciting news! To celebrate the release of Ori and the Blind Forest on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Games Studios has generously provided 8 copies of the game to be raffled via GiftBot. These include 3 US region copies and 5 EU region copies, all of them for Switch! The first raffle including Ori will go up within an hour.

Please give your thanks to Xbox Games Studios for these Switch codes, and to Moon Studios for the fantastic game and port!

Update: Giveaway for the first two codes is up! More will follow. Stay tuned!
Update: Second batch of Ori codes is up!
Update: Third and last chance to win a US Ori code!
Update: There is an EU code in this giveaway!
Update: Last chance to win an EU code! Don't miss it!

 

[Cerium]

Did you think we were finished? No! Today we have our biggest update yet, so let's get right to it. First, here are some of the fixes and tweaks we've made since the last update:

• The "Won Giveaways" page has been adjusted so that it is now possible to select the text to conveniently copy Keys or Links.
• The "Allow Juniors" option is now off by default. Giveaway creators are still free to toggle it as they please.
• Most reported bugs should now be fixed.

And now some new features we think are going to knock your socks off. We're taking GiftBot's evolution to a whole new level:

• Cancel Your Entry: Perhaps our most requested feature! If you've entered a giveaway by mistake, or have changed your mind, you now have the option to cancel your entry into that giveaway by pressing the same button.
• GiftBot Alerts Options: On the Preferences page users now have the option to enable or disable Alerts and Push Notifications for GiftBot related functions.
• Entered Giveaways Tab: You can now track which giveaways you're currently entered into by checking the new "Entered Giveaways" tab on the giveaways page.
• Captcha Protection: An advanced captcha has now been added to the giveaway entry dialogue to further deter exploitation by scripts or bots.
• Display Number of Entrants for Each Prize: New giveaways from now on will display the total number of current entrants next to each prize on offer. That number will update automatically with each refresh. Giveaway creators have the option to disable this if they so choose.
• Threadmarks Integration: We've proven how much generosity there is on ResetEra -- so much that we need a better way to organize and track it! From now on, by default, all giveaways will be automatically threadmarked and sorted into a unique threadmark category (Giveaways) located in the same place that Staff Posts and normal Threadmarks are found. Select "Reader Mode" from that dropdown and you can view all of the giveaways at once! Giveaway creators can choose to opt out of this.

This thread has shown why you guys deserve the best, and we've done all we can to deliver.

 

[Cerium]

...But that's not all: For the occasion, we've got a raft of new official prizes courtesy of Focus Home Interactive! This includes 6 Steam copies each of A Plague Tale: Innocence, GreedFall, and The Surge 2. A total of 18 new, acclaimed prizes! Please thank them for their generosity. We're starting this October off with a bang.

Update: Our first Focus Home giveaway is up!
Update: Another trifecta included in this giveaway!
Update: Third giveaway is here with all three titles!
Update: More!
Update: Last one until the new thread!

 

[Cerium]

The issues preventing users from entering some giveaways should now be fixed -- thanks for your patience.

We've also updated how the captcha works. It should now only appear when a user has entered 2 giveaways within the past 12 hours.

 

[Cerium]

Now that the major patch is out and bugs are squashed, I've finally had time to put this together. Here's the Giveaway Restrictions Guide:

Past Winner Restriction

This restriction prevents users from entering the giveaway if they have already won a prize within a set period of time. The length of time can vary according to the preference of the giveaway creator: Past Hour, Past Day, Past Week, and This Calendar Month. The monthly option is unique in that it is not based on a fixed period of time, but rather the month in which the giveaway was created.

No Juniors

This restriction disallows users who have less than 100 posts, or accounts that are less than one month old. It is intended to ensure that the prizes go to members who are real people and active contributors.

No Lurkers

This restriction only allows members who have made 5 or more posts in the thread in which the giveaway is created. This is intended for community threads and OTs where some giveaway creators might want to make sure that their prizes go to folks who are actually part of that community. It is not generally intended for threads dedicated solely to giveaways or threads where there isn't a central topic of discussion. Please be aware that while you are welcome and encouraged to join and participate in new communities, blatantly spamming a community thread for the sole purpose of circumventing this restriction will get you banned.

Givers Only

This restriction requires that users have created a giveaway of their own within the past 30 days in order to enter. It is straightforward and ensures that anyone who wins a prize will have given something back fairly recently.

Pay Forward Only

This restriction requires that if a user has already won a prize, they must have created a giveaway of their own since their last win, otherwise they cannot enter the giveaway. There is no time limit on this. It encourages members to keep paying the generosity forward.

Everything Must Go

Unlike the others, this is not a restriction. In fact, it is the opposite. This indicates that the giveaway creator has decided to allow any and every registered member to be eligible to win a prize. As opposed to simply turning the other restrictions off, this setting even overrides global restrictions set by the staff. It is intended for giveaway creators who want to dump codes and make sure they're gone.

Additionally...

There are some hidden global restrictions that are controlled and set by the staff. These settings are intended to prevent members from racking up an unreasonable amount of wins versus everyone else. One of them is a brief cooldown that prevents you from entering too quickly after a win. Another applies a much longer cooldown if you win too many prizes in too short a time. If you are among the top winners of all time, you will face additional (and increasingly severe) limitations. The specific numbers involved are subject to change, and we will not disclose exact values in order to discourage attempts at exploitation.

 

[Cerium]

Hello everyone,

By any measure, this Giveaway Extravaganza has been a bigger success than anyone could have expected! However the thread is getting long in the tooth, and so we will be closing it this upcoming Sunday the 13th.

Don't worry though! We're well aware that an amazing community has sprung up around GiftBot already, and we're taking steps to ensure that the giving will continue. We've already reached out to the creator of the Free to a Good Home thread, and with his blessing we'll be creating a new GiftBot |OT| to serve as a successor to both threads.

Not only do we expect that there will still be "official" prizes leftover for the new thread, we have also secured additional prizes on all the major platforms which we will begin giving away at that time. We'll also be giving away Steam keys to the PC Gaming Era community in accordance with longstanding custom.

Thank you all for making the GiftBot 2.0 debut such a stunning success!

 

[Cerium]

Well folks this thread has been a wild ride. When we were dreaming up GiftBot 2.0 we knew it would be something special, but we had no idea just how far you all would take it.

8073 prizes won.
1602 giveaways held in total.
696 unique and generous givers.
1385 lucky unique winners.

Your outpouring of generosity and kindness to your fellow members has illustrated exactly why this community is so special. The support and enthusiasm from publishers and developers has also exceeded our wildest expectations -- I can tell you with confidence that there will be more of that to come, perhaps sooner than you'd think!

Big thanks again to Ubisoft, SNK, Xbox Games Studios, and Focus Home Interactive for contributing such a vast and tasty spread of games. Thanks also to Dead Drop Studios, Sekai Games, Studio Coattails, and the other publishers and developers who dropped by to run their own giveaways via GiftBot -- apologies to anyone we missed.

This is not the end though, but a new beginning! The party continues in the new Gaming Giveaways |OT|, with new official prizes on all consoles! You are also welcome to join the PC Gaming Era community, the birthplace of GiftBot, where Steam and Humble Bundle gifting is a longstanding tradition.

We also encourage you to use GiftBot to run giveaways for any and all of your favorite community threads. If you've got something big in mind, you can even create a new thread. Take the incredible momentum from this launch and spread good vibes to every corner of the site!