Steamgifts Reviews 74

scammy awful design platform that locks actual good games between limited access groups which they give good keys to eachother (and they allow) which at this point is a trading site, the whole cv thing is a scam and ruins the whole idea of "giving" and runs by terrible outdated mods.

I had a very disappointing experience with the moderation team. Their responses lacked any self-reflection, and at times came across as disingenuous. Rather than addressing the core issues I raised, they dismissed my concerns without genuine consideration. It’s frustrating to engage with a team that refuses to question its own process or admit possible faults. Very unfortunate for a platform that claims to value transparency and fairness.

Look at the other reviews and some reddit threads online. Everything you've heard about the mods on this site is true. Several of the mods use this website as a platform to satiate their desire for power. Outdated and insane rules can swoop out of nowhere and punish you when you did absolutely nothing wrong. The moderators are a major problem with this website and the owner is completely clueless.

its gambling
most level 10s circle jerk give eachother the same games to boost levels
if you bring up steam gifts on steam you will get a community ban!!! auto report system that tags you. should tell you everything you need to know about how sketchy the site is

The people that run this site are 45 year old sad pedantic dudes that miss doing homework and no matter what will always want to be right no matter the circumstances. 12 year old account, 200:1 games gave away ratio to won, never engaged in any discussion, i get permanently suspended because 10 years ago i marked a really cheap game i won as received even though the key didn't work, but being a really cheap and shitty game i didn't bother opening a ticket demanding justice. i got suspended a year ago and got my account back explaining what happened, now all of a sudden i am permabanned by the same guy for the same reason but instead of giving me the account back they double down.

I frequently create giveaways on this site, but the abusive moderators have temporarily banned me a few times, even though I didn't clearly violate their own rules.

Edit: 13/01/2025, they banned me for another 1 week for advertising games in my own giveaway. WTF? I make giveaways and I can not share my own Steam game links there? What's kind of this stupid rule?

The mod's of the site are a joke. If you copy/paste the rule being broken, and do all their work for them they still don't do anything if it fit's the mod's personal ideology. They ignore the report's actual report target, say something snippy, and then close the ticket. No back, and forth. I'm not wasting my time opening another ticket to point out that they didn't even comprehend the actual report reason. Site's become a joke the last few years.

The site is overrun with bots and scammers. Don’t bring it up to the mods or they’ll ban you (pretty sure they’re running the bots). They stole about $200 worth of games and a few months of my time, I’m lucky that’s all I lost. If you really want to use the site I suggest joining a private group and only gifting to them (that’s what their mods do, see a pattern?) I suggest making your own small group of friends to share gifts, it’s all this site becomes unless you want to be taken advantage of.

Level 5 account permanently banned because my husband and I share a computer and apparently just one of us controls both accounts on the site. He literally goes "alright entered mine, your turn", passed computer over. Guilty before innocent, told us if we keep complaining we'll just be marked as spam and we can try again in 4 years to attempt to join the site again but no guarantees. We never created any trouble on the website, just liked sharing games. I guess our friends will benefit more now than giving back to the community. I defended this site for 10 years and now I feel like everyone talking about how toxic it feels are correct. Bots and spammers don't get banned but REAL people do who just visited the site as a hobby as a married couple. The moderators are heartless and I wouldn't want to go back now.

I have been using this site for 10 years and over 100k giveaway entries. It has small issues here and there. There are not many changes, thankfully. It makes many userscripts to work - those scripts allow easier navigation or faster entry over Giveaway.

Some rules are not good - and it's most community-driven site, so it's also dependent on who interacts with you and if you get any beef.

Moderators are worse than here only on reddit. It is impossible to resolve the issue properly through support, and if you come across a person with mental problems, he will also be rude and threaten you.

I've been using Steamgifts daily for over 5 years. I entered over 64,000 giveaways, won 219 Steam games, and gave away 368 games... This site is clearly not a scam (I say that in reaction to some negative comments I saw on Truspilot).

You can click on any Steamgifts user's avatar to see their Steamgifts stats so it's easy to see that most users are actually winning games over time. And if some people win games very often, it's probably because they are also trying to win ultra crappy games that no one wants (to increase their number of games on Steam). Personally, I've never tried to win crappy games, and lately I've even become more selective in my choices than before.

Winning Steam games is probably the most eye-catching feature on this site, but forum discussions are also a great asset of Steamgifts. First, the conversation system is very well done in my opinion (much more practical and readable than on many other forums elsewhere on the net). Also, on Steamgifts you can usually find discussions informing you about massive giveaways from other sites (Steam, GOG, Epic, etc.), or about the ongoing bundles (on Humble Bundle, Fanatical, etc.), and other various discussions mainly related to video games. You can read all these without even being a member of the site (everything is public).

If you decide to register on Steamgifts:

- Read the 2 documents in the Help sections (FAQ & Guidelines) to understand how this website works, and what you should and should not do as a user (= know and follow the rules).

- Be respectful and calm in forum discussions (if you participate), those who behave badly often end up having a suspension or ban.

- Avoid systematically saying “thank you” every time you enter a giveaway (unless you have something interesting to say in addition). Otherwise it pollutes the donors' message box for no good reason. On the other hand, remember to say thank you if you win a game (this, of course, after activating the game on your Steam account).

Worst moderators ever and if you delete your account you need to wait literaly 10 years for be allow to create a new one. You will be banned because you get a fake key and didn't acted. If you will be banned if you get a +18 game and put it in private on steam for not your friends see it. And so much more...

I was a member of steamgifts for almost 10 years, when round-about a year ago I decided to delete my account. Many reasons for that, not all worth mentioning here. But the main reason is that I now honestly consider this site a cesspit. Why ? Because amongst the bots, it's just full of ungratefulness, game hoarding profiles which consider games as just a number and not an experience. And honestly joining GA's is just a waste of time, it's much easier to trade or buy what you really want to play.. but oh right, majority of people there don't care about playing games. The discussion also shows what a bunch of cheapskates most users there are. It is mind-boggling to read. Seing the community for what it is just grossed me out, you constantly see people talk like games are worth nothing, they want each game for the price of a cup of coffee, otherwise it's not "worth it" to them. So don't join this site expecting to spread the joy of gaming. I've seen year-long members do that, and ofc most burned out and left when they realized what kind of environment they are in. To end this review, of course you can join the site if you don't care about the above mentioned, not everyone has to have the same view as me. Some might say "it's not that deep".
Anyway these are my two cents and the opinion I will share with anyone asking me about the site. I won't tell anyone to not create an account there, but I will say that it is a cesspit, which sounds harsh, but it's the best way to describe it, imo.

Toxic and abusive mods. These peope should never been admins anywhere. Bans giving a false reasons ?? Getting banned for just having an opinion ? This site slowly goes into dark side of scam

Mods are just some power-users and some are clearly abusing that power.

Getting banned now for just having an opinion, not even being mean. Just banter and oh it's too much, banned.

Then getting banned for "implied trading". I'm sorry what? Implying trading, how? I said there was a bundle I wanted 2 games but not the other 4. Hence I am trying to get a trade going?

Abuse of power!

I got banned for something I didn't do. Now reading the comments here, it seems that happens quite a lot. They don't answer my support ticket (it's been over 1 year, why do you offer that option when you don't even read them?).
Just give the games to your friends or other people you know, avoid this platform. Wasted time and money.

"We prevent multiple accounts by preventing you from getting even one account". Dumbest site in existence, apparently it gifts to those who can already buy loads.

I've been a part of the community for almost a decade with 1300+ games (listed value of $16,000 USD) given away over that time. Today I got a 2 week suspension with a threat of a ban because, according to their database, I hadn't activated two games that were won between January and March. No contact, no indication of an issue from my end, not even a notification in my email telling me anything. I just log in to discover a ranking moderator caught up and threw it all at once and then logged off a couple hours later for me to discover it that evening.

All this said, I love the site. I had been gathering more Steam keys from repeat bundles than I had friends to give them to for years, so this was a great way for me to give them to MOSTLY legitimate players. I've won a large number of games as well, thanks to smaller groups I've been active with. Even met a few friends from all over the world thanks to the site.

But as other reviewers have mentioned: bots and scammers get away with too much, some vile speech gets left unmoderated, and moderators (who are volunteer so I do give them SOME slack) do nothing but press buttons rather than actual due diligence and rarely answer anything at all when there's problems. One exclusion being they are pretty on top of deleting broken giveaways due to the all too commonplace problem of keys that get revoked or go "bad" for reasons I've never had satisfactorily explained to me.

When my nonsense suspension is over, I'll be going back. But I have lost a lot of trust with its community and staff because this is far from the first time I've had to deal with issues that weren't anything on my end. Especially considering apparently I'm up for a ban the next time a moderator is in a bad mood. So if they are this unprofessional with their larger gifters, you can imagine they have no interest in helping the average user at all.

scam site full of scammers, no way to contact support, allows it's users to write ridiculous nonsense articles about streamers and maintain ridiculous debates for 8 years raising controversy where none exists for simply banning a scammer involved in steamgifts from participating in their community because they were using the streamers steam curator group to run illicit unsolicited scams and claiming to have been authorised to run competitions, and the afformentioned scammers are still running an endless thread 8 years later after being banned and a single video outing them and talking about why they had to be banned, but still the weirdo brattysnax is maintaining an endless article thread with ongoing endless conversations that should've ended then and there, they were banned for being a weird scam artist and they should have their article taken down for "open letter to X" which they don't even have the balls to talk to the streamer about, and it gets noticed today years later when they were banned and no further thoughts, but still somehow they're maintaining this drama to elevate themselves and claim they're somehow involved when they're banned and forgotten about.