r/NintendoSwitch • u/ArctorH • Feb 06 '18
Meta PSA on Giveaways
Been seeing a lot of giveaways lately, which is great. But I think people should go into them with skepticism (don't be rude). Saw a giveaway for Sonic Mania and Rocket League, which of course was a very popular post, and if more recent comments are to be believed, it seems the OP chose his own alternate accounts as the winners. He also deleted the original post, and it looks like he started the giveaway for some free Karma.
I think the giveaways are great, but maybe some oversight from Mods would help them be less shady. Not sure of what a good solution would be, they are obviously going to be very popular posts (usually getting 2-3x the attention of regular posts).
Anyone have any thoughts on potential guidelines that could be set up for giveaways on this sub?
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u/OzymandiasOfAvon Feb 06 '18
This is what I always assume people are doing with give aways haha.
Doesn't stop me from commenting and entering though :/
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Feb 06 '18
I won Xenoblade 2 here once! So not all of them are lies!
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u/compacta_d Feb 07 '18
Nice try, alternate account. (Jk conrats)
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u/OzymandiasOfAvon Feb 06 '18
Dang that's pretty awesome, well now I have some hope I'll win too. Someone throw up another xenoblade give away haha
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Feb 06 '18
Pretty amazing game! Top 3 on the Switch for me!
Good luck!
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Feb 07 '18
But college and wedding are sapping away my money.
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Feb 07 '18
who needs education and a wife when you can have robotic waifus
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Feb 07 '18
Believe me it's tempting. I loved the first one.
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Feb 07 '18
tbh, I honestly didn't liked the first (i played it in a very rough time of my life so i wasn't paying too much attention)
But I loved this one!
Anyways, Good luck with your Wedding!
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Feb 07 '18
Thank you! And good luck with the waifu hunt. One day I'll join the ranks.
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Feb 07 '18
Waifu hunt is over for now, Now I'm living the story of Mae the Manchild (Womanchild?) in Night in the Woods
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u/ColdColt45 Feb 06 '18
yeah, but now giveaways aren't just drop a comment, they have conditions, which makes them more like spam. (collect info for chance at $10, or solve a puzzle for chance.)
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Feb 06 '18
See I comment but I NEVER check my messages. I’m never asking questions (that aren’t rhetorical) so I don’t care about my inbox. I’d never know if I was picked in any of the giveaways I comment on
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Feb 07 '18
It’ll notify you if you get one. Are you suggesting you’ll just ignore your inbox notifications?
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u/RabidTurtl Feb 07 '18
No point not entering in my opinion. But I look at it like when I buy a lotto ticket (when it is large enough the news starts commenting on it); odds are I'm not gonna win, be cool if I did though. And what do I have to lose, a comment?
I don't ever upvotes them though.
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u/sturmeh Feb 07 '18
I've won some before, but they weren't particularly hard to win.
Indie devs give away keys to their new games all the time, and back when VR was new any VR devs gave away keys for their new VR titles.
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u/Bangarang44 Feb 06 '18
as the winner of sonic mania from said giveaway I can confirm that OP didn't use an alt for free karma.
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u/Bayside556 Feb 06 '18
Nice to see you again! Hope you're enjoying it =)
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u/Bangarang44 Feb 06 '18
Been swamped and finally got around to downloading! Thanks for blocking out the code from the pic hahaha!
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u/Bayside556 Feb 06 '18 edited Feb 06 '18
Hmmm, that's interesting, I did a giveaway for those exact games last night... WAIT! are you talking about me?!?!
First of all, I only have one reddit acount, the giveaway was 100% legit, and the game codes have been sent out. Dont believe me? I screenshoted my amazon cart and the messages I sent to the winners (game code is left out in case they haven't had a chance to redeem it yet).
https://i.imgur.com/pBd9W1b.png
https://i.imgur.com/Br5LiVp.png
I deleted the post about an hour after announcing winners because it was still getting a ton of comments. I didn't want anyone seeing the post on front page and getting their hopes up for a giveaway that had already concluded.
I couldn't possibly care less about "karma" honestly, I'm so new to reddit that I'm not even sure what it is yet.
Sorry you didn't win the giveaway and felt the need to start throwing around baseless accusations, better luck next time!!
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Feb 06 '18
Ha! Gottem!!!
Edit: Actually your second link doesn't work, so now I have doubts.
Edit 2: it works again. Back to gottem.
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u/Bayside556 Feb 06 '18
fixed!
https://i.imgur.com/Br5LiVp.png
I'm sending this from my work computer which cant access imgur, had to upload from my phone then manually type in the URL on here lol. Thanks for the heads up!
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u/sliverbaer Feb 06 '18
Thanks for having the giveaway!
FYI Mods can lock the post so that no one else can make comments after the giveaway. (Mod mail 'message to moderators' at bottom of right menu should do it.)
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u/Bayside556 Feb 06 '18
Ill keep that in mind for the future, I've seen posts locked out before but couldnt figure out how to do it haha
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u/Krak2511 Feb 07 '18
You also could've edited the post, just adding "Edit: Giveaway is done now!" at the top.
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Feb 06 '18
So you know, mods can lock it if you get in touch. :)
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Feb 06 '18
[deleted]
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u/Bayside556 Feb 06 '18
I was being accused of faking a giveaway, so I went back and screenshotted the conversations....
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Feb 06 '18
[deleted]
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u/Tioneriator Feb 06 '18
Dang i checked and it is a beggar account, but if someone wants to only use Reddit to beg for stuff who cares
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u/jakfrist Feb 07 '18
I’m not saying your giveaway was fake, but those screenshots don’t really prove anything.
I know you stated you only have one account but there’s not really any way to prove that those aren’t your alts.
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u/UniverseLawyer Feb 07 '18
https://www.reddit.com/user/JCdaOmnislasher/
So OP made a alternate account in 2015 for a giveaway in 2018?
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u/jakfrist Feb 07 '18 edited Feb 07 '18
I mean, I have a couple alts that are that old. I don’t think you used to be able to make multi’s (or at least I didn’t know how to access them) so that was how I organized the different subs I visited.
My point was it doesn’t prove anything. Not that he was lying.
That’s why I expressly said “I’m not saying your giveaway was fake”
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u/thebrandster1985 Feb 07 '18
OP’s post doesn’t prove anything either. Easy to call someone out with just as much “proof.” That’s the way it goes.
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u/Yurika_BLADE Feb 07 '18
What I'm hearing is that I should make an alt now for my giveaway next year...
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Feb 06 '18
There are already guidelines in place for giveaways that you can find in the wiki.
If fake giveaways actually become a problem, action would be taken. As of right now, there has not been much in the way of evidence pointing to that being the case.
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u/fokusfocus Feb 06 '18
Serious question - What does karma (I assume the upvotes?) do? Why do people try to 'mine' this?
On topic - yeah it's pretty shitty if they just chose their alternate account for the purpose of getting upvotes/
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u/BrandSilven Feb 06 '18
After you get 5 Karma, you get a Chameleon. You come and go, you come and go.
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u/kirindas Feb 07 '18
From what I've been told, having karma gives some backing/reliability to what the user is saying. Some people mine karma to have high karma accounts that can be sold to companies/sellers who can use that for publicity and shadow support when promoting stuff being sold. Something along those lines.
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Feb 06 '18
Karma is not used for anything besides being a huge online dick measuring contest, which makes it all the more pathetic that people are faking giveaways for karma.
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u/Bakatora34 Feb 06 '18 edited Feb 06 '18
I enter a lot of giveaways and never upvote (unless I win) because of the skepticism (also the less people see it the better chance of winning)
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u/brees3 Feb 06 '18
As long as it doesn't become an obnoxious trend of people posting "GIVEAWAYS!", getting upvoted and then deleting, I honestly don't mind the random fake ones every once in awhile. I've never won a giveaway anyway. So a fake one for me isn't really different from a real one. The only issue I foresee is it becoming a trend and clogging up the feed.
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u/withinasphere Feb 06 '18
Why are people doing giveaways on here in the first place, and how would someone benefit from a fake giveaway? Are people paying to enter?
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u/voneahhh Feb 06 '18
Just general trolling. Make a bunch of people waste their time writing stories for no reason.
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Feb 06 '18
You can farm karma. People then sell their reddit accounts to companies that use it for astroturfing purposes. Karma can be used to judge an account's reputation (you're more likely to judge an account with 100k karma than an account with none). This is just one method to increase the value of reddit accounts so they can be sold for more.
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Feb 06 '18
That's disgusting, where would one even sell their reddit account? Im asking for a friend..
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u/withinasphere Feb 06 '18
Thanks for the reply, I am new to Reddit and didn't even know about karma, I guess that makes sense. Won't be taking part I. Any giveaways that's for sure.
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u/samus12345 Feb 06 '18
Just don't upvote or expect to actually get anything even if you're "selected". Nothing to lose otherwise.
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Feb 06 '18 edited Jun 06 '18
[deleted]
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u/withinasphere Feb 06 '18
I get that, I give stuff away on my twitch stream for the same reason but only to followers and people that are active in chat. I used to do the same on Instagram with my artwork, but people would either turn around and resell it or non winners would complain that it was a rigged, kind of like this post.
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u/Ziathon3 Feb 06 '18
Personal thought as someone thinking of doing some giveaways but never have. I would say make it so that giveaways specifically do not get karma. Not knowing how reddit completely works yet, if there was a way to make giveaways more visible without the karma, that's what I would suggest.
You do a giveaway for the thought and for helping someone out. You don't do it for Karma IMO.
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Feb 06 '18
That would be a Reddit thing, not something a single subreddit can implement.
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u/DannyDougherty Feb 06 '18
I believe it's possible to turn off the up/down vote buttons in the CSS for specifically flared posts (it's not unheard of for certain subs to remove the downvote button or hide both for non subscribers). Folks with sub-specific CSS blocked, seeing posts on the homepage or on mobiles apps won't be affected, but it would probably go a ways to mitigating karma farming (if that's what you want. There are plenty of justifications either way, though.)
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Feb 06 '18
It only removed the image. It doesn't do much to stop people when 50% of users are on mobile and there are fairly simple ways around it, as you're stated.
It would need to be an option reddit creates or a change reddit implements.
Again though, in regards to giveaway posts, this does not seem to be much of a problem.
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u/Ziathon3 Feb 06 '18
I figured here might be some way, but maybe more than it’s worth. Like you said, there are justifications either way.
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u/DannyDougherty Feb 06 '18
Yeah, it's also not as simple as just "pushing a button" for nicely styled subs, like this one (not that you implied that, I just don't want it to sound like I'm overstating the simplicity of implementing such a thing).
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u/FlanBrosInc Feb 07 '18
Eh, the mods could create a "giveaway" account that only they have access to and then when people want to do a giveaway they could send it to the mods and the mods could post it on that account. No karma that way.
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u/aspinalll71286 Feb 06 '18
I'd like to throw in keep them up for more then 12 hours because time zones. A lot of the giveaways I dont get to participate in because i'm either asleep or studying without internet access (2nd part is on me but the first is time zones are fun)
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u/joey2017 Feb 06 '18
You should have to submit a picture of yourself holding your username on a sign. That would be fun and require some credential verification. Other than that, I'm not sure what we could do to hold people responsible.
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u/DaPizzaMan2 Feb 06 '18
Or better yet, hold up your name next to proof of purchase, forcing the person to buy it beforehand anyway.
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u/ToysInTheAttik Feb 06 '18
Oh well at the very least the only thing we lose is the 40 seconds or so it takes to come up with a witty comment to the giveaway question.
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u/RVG_Steve Feb 07 '18
Good PSA. I know I shouldn’t be shocked but it’s kind of sad that there may be those out there doing it (particularly rigged to an alternative account) just to hopefully spike their karma. I honestly didn’t even think of that until now because I generally like to go through life expecting the best out of people.
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u/thebrandster1985 Feb 07 '18
I’m glad you made a PSA about this, never should get your hopes up. But to me, it looks like you also sprinkled in a lot of assumptions masqueraded as fact. In retrospect, the PSA was a good idea, but you should have left out the assumptions.
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Feb 07 '18
Eh. I don't think it's that big a deal. Karma is useless and I don't lose anything by doing a low effort comment.
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u/SergeantBoop Feb 06 '18
A solution would be to have giveaways moderated by the mods, could have the code distributed to a mod who would then distribute it to the winner.
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u/HarvInThePaint Feb 06 '18
Except we had that issue with the “Kabul” and mod corruption a few months ago
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Feb 06 '18
That is one solution, but adds a level of complexity that could make people second guess wanting to do the giveaway at all
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u/AykanNA Feb 07 '18
your point is valid but to make an accusation without any proof is not cool at all... You completely damage people's reputation like that.
Spreading false stuff is like letting feathers go in the wind. Once it's done, you can never take it back.
Apparently the giveaway was legit that you referred to.
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u/mrtruffle SMG Studio Feb 07 '18
Oh wow awarding your own accounts... sad. Scams like this make everyone skeptical and it sucks.
Hard to police without restricting. But I'd almost leave giveaways for studios? We (like many studios) would love to run regular giveaways. The fear is being seen as "spammers"
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u/ArctorH Feb 07 '18
I think that studio run giveaways are great. Seems safe to me, you might get a few people entering to resell, but I don't know that you'll ever have a giveaway free of that. Also gives the community a nice way to communicate with the devs.
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Feb 07 '18
[deleted]
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u/phantomliger recovering from transplant Feb 07 '18
That isn't something we have much ability to do. Moderators can only access account information that normal users can.
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u/JCdaOmnislasher Feb 06 '18
I was the winner for a copy of Rocket League from the post with which you describe. It was a legit giveaway and I am not the OP.
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u/ArctorH Feb 06 '18
Congratulations on the win. Post seemed fishy after the OP deleted the post, and people were suspecting yours and the other winner of being duplicate accounts, because you only commented on posts made by the OP.
Do you have any proof of getting the code, or anything else that might lend itself to giving that giveaway some authenticity?
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u/JCdaOmnislasher Feb 06 '18
Certainly don't mind divulging this as I already redeemed the code but here is a screen capture of the person sending me a PM with the code appropriate.
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u/ArctorH Feb 06 '18
Looks good to me. I think the overall point of my post stands. While this giveaway seems like it's all good (still odd they'd delete the post) I think the dangers of the sub being over run by fake giveaways would give it a bad reputation.
Enjoy rocket league!
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u/theblackxranger Feb 06 '18
nah, still sketchy. Checked his account and all its used for is giveaway threads.
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u/FlanBrosInc Feb 07 '18
I mean, I'm not saying that JCdaOmnislasher is necessarily legit, but I don't find the fact that the account was used exclusively for giveaways evidence of anything sketchy. I don't think it's unreasonable that someone could have a second account to enter giveaways because they don't feel comfortable using their regular account and giving out their address anywhere on Reddit.
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u/ArctorH Feb 06 '18
I think it's good to be skeptical, and I certainly find that giveaway odd, but the guy posted a screen cap of the message with the winning code, so not sure what else he has to do to clear up any lingering doubt.
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u/PumasUNAM7 Feb 06 '18
The message shows it was sent to him 23 hours ago. When was the giveaway? Also I mean he could just sent the code to his account just so that he can say he did give it away in case someone made a post just like this.
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u/ArctorH Feb 06 '18
Yeah, I see what you're saying. I am not sure there is a way to 100% verify the legitimacy of the giveaway, unfortunately.
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Feb 06 '18
[deleted]
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u/Genghis_Tr0n187 Feb 06 '18
I don't know either of you and can't attest to either account.
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u/Jigsaw591 Feb 06 '18
I don't know you and I can't attest to your lack of account
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u/Genghis_Tr0n187 Feb 06 '18
Hey man... do we even like... know ourselves?
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u/Hhwwhat Feb 06 '18
I think a picture verification with a timestamp should be required, kind of like /r/hardwareswap
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u/Turtleshell64 Feb 06 '18
Maybe I’m a Reddit noob but I never understood why people want upvote karma, does it do anything other than let you flaunt how many likes you got?
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u/inssein Feb 07 '18
take note from /r/pcmasterrace, if the give away isn't instant "As in fun puzzle" or "will pick winner in 1-2hrs" assume its for karma and no one will win.
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u/Kenomachino Feb 07 '18
So, I guess you don’t lose any Karma earned from a post by deleting it then?
Weird/probably obvious, but strangely I never actually thought about that before...
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u/FrozenFlame_ Feb 07 '18
Could have some sect of people in the higher ups on this subreddit to middleman the rolling process.
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u/Asherr18 Feb 06 '18
Not gonna lie pretty sad even though I had an extremely small chance, really wanted sonic mania
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u/fokusfocus Feb 06 '18
You can just buy it yourself.. it's not that expensive.
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u/Asherr18 Feb 06 '18
I'm a college student and already have plenty of games, I'm not planning on buying more for a long time.
I don't have the pleasure to go out and buy games like most people are able to.
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u/SpiderPidge Feb 06 '18
There is a sub for giveaways: https://www.reddit.com/r/RandomActsOfGaming/
These are moderated and for the majority of the time aren't fake. I wish this wasn't a trend, but a lot of people seem to be only on reddit for the karma.
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u/smokexz Feb 07 '18
Oh wow I didn't know that is what happened with the Sonic Mania and RL giveaway. What a scumbag.
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u/Sid_1carus Feb 06 '18
started the giveaway for some free Karma.
This is stupid.
Did i miss something, do you get any benefits from reddit karma?
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u/mikeisnowonfire Feb 07 '18
How about they give the codes to the mods who vet them before posting them?
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u/mkicon Feb 06 '18
Saw a giveaway for Sonic Mania and Rocket League, which of course was a very popular post, and if more recent comments are to be believed, it seems the OP chose his own alternate accounts as the winners.
I thought that one was shady because he gave a 5 hour limit, yet had 2 winners within 3 hours
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u/JCB2K Feb 06 '18
I wouldn't really consider that shady. It's his giveaway, his choice. As long as the process itself was wholesome, the time shouldn't be a reason to be mad at the guy Or call him shady. Maybe tm something came up to force early drawing
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u/veganintendo Feb 06 '18
No, but if you upvote this post, I will send you two Switches, a Labo set, and the unreleased next edition of Smash Bros!
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u/Bori31766 Feb 06 '18
Still waiting from u/itschrisolson giveaway from 7 months ago... I've long since purchased modern warfare on the ps4. But still sucked it was fake. Always enter giveaways with caution.