Is it rigged? FAQ: Why the scoreboard is like this & what to do about it.

[Colonel Panic]

People claiming it's rigged by valve, it's not. It's the community members and reddit. The serious players are all either in on it, or jumping teams daily, and it doesn't take a lot... it's all laid out in the plan that has been circulating everywhere on the internet for the last few days. Here's one example of the post that's been circulating, but everywhere it's the same: http://www.reddit.com/r/SteamTeamRed/comments/28qtao/operation_everyone_work_as_a_team_red_wednesday/

day 1 19th - PURPLE - Thursday
day 2 20th - RED - Friday
day 3 21st - GREEN - Saturday
day 4 22nd - PINK - Sunday
day 5 23rd - BLUE - Monday
day 6 24th - PURPLE - Tuesday
day 7 25th - RED - Wednesday
day 8 26th - GREEN - Thursday
day 9 27th - PINK - Friday
day 10 28th - BLUE - Saturday

This is not 'prediction' of valve 'rigging the game.' It is the plan put in place and executed by members of the community on places like Reddit and Steam Community. People are working together to make it happen, and it does not require any more coordination than looking at that above list of days and understanding what it's telling you to do.

FAQ:


1
Q) What's reddit?

A) It's a link sharing community that spreads memes and other culture on the internet. It has 113 million active users, which is almost twice the active users of Steam.

2
Q) How can a few people from reddit skew the competition?

A) It's not a few people. 113 million people is a lot of people, and it's not just Reddit. Reddit is just a medium for helping spread the word. There's also word of mouth and various other communities including the steam forum itself. Word travels fast.

3
Q) but it's just a few people! they don't have the power to skew the competition!

A) First off, that's not a question, second off... Look, we've been over this. It's not a few people. But it doesn't take a lot, either. The team rankings have momentum. They only need to establish a solid lead in the first hour or two of the sale, and after that momentum takes over. People on the winning team will continue to craft in order to get their name in the drawing as part of the prize, while people on the losing teams will realize they can't win that day and so save their cards for when they have a better shot at it later. It's common sense. You're not wasting money and effort competing right now when you're on the losing team, are you? No? See, Everyone else is just doing the same thing you are, and that's why we have this result.

4
Q) But all the losing teams are perfectly even! It has to be rigged! The internet doesn't have the coordination to pull that off!

A) That's still not a question. And it doesn't take coordination. The reason is simple: point stealing tokens. Since the leading team is so far ahead they're the only one in the running, and they're using their point stealing tokens to keep stealing points from whichever team is in second place. This naturally evens the field between the other teams, as any team that earns more points than the others and ends up in second place just gets more points stolen from them until they're no longer in second place. See? It's just a simple strategy, no coordination between team members required.

5
Q) But Valve is just in this for the money! you can't expect them to play fair!

A) You're right! They're in it to make money. That's a very good point. Take a look at this chart: it's the market value of the purple team switch tokens throughout the duration of the sale event, for which Valve gets a 15% cut of every transaction: http://i.imgur.com/Jp7Kaem.png The prices were hugely inflated just as Valve had wanted and intended right up until the users started to organize and it no longer became a free-for-all competition. It's not just the purple team tokens, either. Here's red team tokens (a team that was in last place until day 2): http://i.imgur.com/YwY7Nea.png Note that the prices tanked while red was still in the lead, once people realized what was happening. Here's the one for the 1000 point stealing tokens: http://imgur.com/sD77zv5 and one of the summer adventure trading cards: http://imgur.com/pl0zzDz . Neck-and-neck competition drove up prices and inflated the values of virtual goods. Valve was printing money. Then the market tanked because people realized the winner each day was predetermined. Card values plummeted, and with it, valve's cut. Don't get me wrong, valve is still printing money--just a lot less of it. Why would they rig a game in such a way that it took away from their bottom line? It wouldn't be a sound business move, so they wouldn't do that. If they were rigging it, they would be keeping the teams neck and neck to drive up firce competition and inflate the value of what they were selling. They're not Hewlett-Packard--they're smarter than that.

6
Q) What if they're doing it because people complained that purple was going to keep winning, and they wanted to appease their users?

A) When have you ever known Valve to rescind on a marketing decision because people complained?

7
Q) So how does it work, anyway?

A) Each team is assigned a day to win in alternating order. On the day they're not assigned to win, the people who are participating in the plan do not craft any badges or spend any tokens to win points for their team. Instead, they save them for their assigned day. By the time their assigned day rolls around, they have 5 days worth of badges to cash in on, and they do it as soon as the competition opens in the morning. It's basically shock and awe. All they have to do is secure a solid lead right away, and after that the momentum of other players takes over. If every player on the winning team earns just one point to enter for the drawing as a member of the winning team from then on, well, that's a lot of points... while the losing teams--even the people not in on it--can see it's better to wait and try again on another day, and save their cards for now.

8
Q) Why would people do that though? it takes away from the spirit of the game.

A) Yes, it does... however, I wouldn't think it could be any more obvious: they want to save money and not have to spend tons on cards and tokens trying to fight over a chance at winning every day, and ultimately feed into a system in which the only winners are the ones with deep pockets and a willingness to spend a lot of money on this pointless game. It was fairly obvious where things were going after purple's landslide victory on day 1, and their immediate lead on day 2. Valve had broken the fairness of the game from the start by allowing people to buy the privilage of switching teams. If one team was seen as more favorable to win, the people who were "in it to win it" would buy tokens to switch to that team. These are people with deep pockets and no qualms with spending a lot of money to win. With all of the heavy point-earners/buyers on one team together, all it did was ensure that nobody who couldn't afford to buy their way onto that team could win. With reddit's plan in action, every team gets a chance to win the daily competition, every player can be on the winning team twice without spending $$ on jumping between teams, and they still all have an even chance of winning on day 11 to take the overall sale competition win. It puts everyone on much more even footing, and fixes some the brokenness of the system valve thought up in designing this contest in the first place.

9
Q) but people are selfish! They'd never work together like that! What's in it for them?

A) I think you underestimate people.
It's not all selfless, though. A more level playing field and lower market prices by undermining inflation just means that it's easier for everyone involved to participate without feeling left out--not just the winners. Everyone spends less and saves money, so it helps everyone... except Valve.

10
Q) What is Valve going to do about this? Isn't this illegal?

A) For 1, See question 6. It's very unlikely Valve will do anything. For 2, no. Technically, Valve's competition is only legal to begin with because it doesn't involve any real money, or credit that that can be exchanged for real money, otherwise it would fall afoul of gambling laws. By this same virtue, it's completely unregulated, so legally, players can do whatever they want. Consequently, Valve can do whatever they want about players doing what they want, but now we're just back to question 6 again.

11
Q) What should I do about this?

A) Go with the flow. Save your cards, don't spend on the competition in the market, and just focus on buying games from the sale, the way [deity] intended. Loosen up, and realize it's just a pointless game, and the real spirit of Gabemas is in the games. Take a step back, and stop missing the forest for the trees. It's not 'rigged.' It's just a plan in motion, and you can either waste time and money getting worked up over it and trying to go against the flow, or you can look at the bigger picture, understand what's going on, and use it to your advantage by being a part of it.

12
A) but I want to be competitive! This isn't fun!

B) On day 11, all teams will have won twice, and the plan will have ended. All bets will be off, all that money you saved during the first 10 days of the sale thanks to reddit will be at your disposal, and all the teams will have an equal number of wins under their belt, and therefore a reason to fight for the last day and the chance to be the grand champion. Go nuts. And just a little tip from me: buy your cards and team switch tokens before then, because the market will skyrocket. You're welcome.

13
Q) But what if Valve masterminded the reddit threads to make it -look- like it was the users doing it? They can't fool me! I've outwitted them! Or maybe reddit figured out time travel and went back and posted those predictions so people would believe it was them and they could take credit! You're a communist anyway! nobody should believe you!

A) Look, now you're just grasping at straws. Why are we even having this discussion? This is a video game distribution channel sale event. Go back to doing something -important- like convincing people the moon landing was a hoax or the government did 9/11 or whatever it is you people do.

14
Q) Why do you care so much?

A) I like people to be informed and I hate seeing people spread misinformed rumors or raising confirmation bias and other fallacies to an art form. It's unhealthy for society to fall into that kind of behavior, even in something trivial.


EDIT 2014-06-24 19:45 PST:

It sems Valve actually DID end up changing the rules to shake things up. Now they've added second and third place winners each day, and the reddit community is reflecting a pretty major disagreement among players about how to proceed, as some want to continue with or modify the original plan, while others are breaking off to go back to just a free-for-all. This is possibly compounded by the people who wanted to disrupt purple day initially in retribution for their attempted disruption of red day... in any case, it seems to have completely thrown things off for now as purple is no longe in the lead. I kinda doubt at this point that they'll get a second chance at cooperating since breaking the plan threw off the pattern and destroyed trust between the different teams.

Also, there's a well written Kotaku article on the subject now which actually references this thread. Go ahead and give it a read:
http://tmi.kotaku.com/the-community-broke-the-steam-sale-so-valve-changed-th-1595087682

[neat]

Thanks for this, explains a lot

[silqu3r]

thx

[The Rainmaker]

uhm reddit is huge there is no question, but your logic is so flawed its ridiculous. where is the proof that even a small fraction of reddit is participating in this? One small ass subreddit that no one goes to doesn't count.

I realize there are people who are spending tons of money on badges but they are few and far between. There is no reason for one of them to switch teams everyday for no reason other than to add fairness to a contest.

Assuming that riigging the contest is all by reddit ok lets say that was possible, however it costs a lot of money for all those cards/badges and here is the most important part... if you look at the margins of victory it has been lately its absolutely ridiculous to think that a group of people ANY group of people would collectively spend that much money on a stupid contest THAT FAR BEYOND what it takes to win. No one would run up the score that much if it was costing them to do so... furthermore they could just save the cards/tokens for the next day and save money. Why spend all that extra for no reason at all? This is why you argument fails more than any other reason.

IE they would stop crafting so many badges when the day has already been won... doubling and tripling the next teams point level is just an utter waste of time and money.

Lastly if you look at the other teams being so close in point value that makes no sense at all. It would imply that teams were crafting badges fairly evenly which would imply that teams are extremely well balanced everyday. I highly doubt that to be the case as even if the teams are balanced there is no way in hell to balance them everyday that closely... we are talking about 3-4 teams that are within 1000 points of each other in a contest where there are 150K + points scored by these teams.

Even by the absolute worst racing game standards that level of rubber banding is retarded.

As is the assertion that 113 million reddit users are all manipulating some ultimately pointless steam contest.

WHICH is what this is... a pointless contest.

Which is why I dont buy that level of participation... not to mention the 113 million user count is also pointless because there are so many reddit pages that dont get used.

I use reddit and I only ever go to one page. I really doubt even 10K users go to the steam contest reddit and far less than that would go along with a badge crafting schedule that serves them no benefit.

[Vulpe]

thumbs up

[MarcoCav]

If that's true... why to spend all this time, energies and money on this competition? To win the price to be one of the 30 lucky persons (among millions of users) to receive for free 3 games?

Perhaps Reddit users are crazy?

[Zeraxen Sar'athin]

Rainmaker is right in this case. When you look at the point values, especially for the past few days, they make no sense. One team each day getting a lead so huge before anyone else, then proceeding to go to the excess of over seven hundred THOUSAND points over the next highest team? Come on. Anyone with just a little common sense should look at that and say "Hmm, that doesn't look right.". Especially when (as Rainmaker pointed out) every team that's not in the lead is always so even with each other. The other point is that any badge only earns you one point. The only badges that earn you more than that are the Steam Summer Sale badges, and those only earn you ten points or fifteen. In other words, there is no way that people are spending such ridiculous amounts of money to craft badges such as would be required to have leads to the point of seven hundred thousand or more above anyone else.

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by The Rainmaker:

uhm reddit is huge there is no question, but your logic is so flawed its ridiculous. where is the proof that even a small fraction of reddit is participating in this? One small ass subreddit that no one goes to doesn't count.

<snip>

As is the assertion that 113 million reddit users are all manipulating some ultimately pointless steam contest.

WHICH is what this is... a pointless contest.

Which is why I dont buy that level of participation... not to mention the 113 million user count is also pointless because there are so many reddit pages that get used.

I use reddit and I only ever go to one page. I really doubt even 10K users go to the steam contest reddit and far less than that would go along with a badge crafting schedule that serves them no benefit.

See questions 2 and 3. It's not just reddit. Reddit is a vehicle of spreading news. Saying it's one small subreddit is a thoroughly discredited strawman argument.

Firstly, there are 6 subreddits alone which are dedicated specifically to gaming the system, and there are front page mentions of it on some oft he most popular subreddits such as /r/steam and /r/pcmasterrace etc... not to mention on the front page of reddit itself, where the steam sale took the 4th slot for top headlines of the day.

Secondly, that's not how reddit works. Reddit is like an RSS feed for following news from other sites. It's a link sharing site. It doesn't generate these ideas, only helps spread them. The fact that it's on reddit only shows that it's a popular idea in the mind of the internet.

Originally posted by The Rainmaker:

I realize there are people who are spending tons of money on badges but they are few and far between. There is no reason for one of them to switch teams everyday for no reason other than to add fairness to a contest.

See question 7. That's not how their plan works. They're not switching teams. They're just picking and choosing which days they craft and which days they bide their time. It's very efficient and couldn't be much simpler. It actually costs them less money overall to sway the competition than it takes regular players to participate.

Originally posted by The Rainmaker:

Lastly rigging the contest is all well and good by reddit, however it costs a lot of money for all those cards/badges and here is the most important part... if you look at the margins of victory it has been lately its absolutely ridiculous to think that a group of people ANY group of people would collectively spend that much money on a stupid contest BEYOND what it takes to win.

IE they would stop crafting so many badges when the day has already been won... doubling and tripling the next teams point level is just an utter waste of time and money.

See question 7 again. players on the winning team need to craft at least one point to qualify for the prize that day which is awarded to the winning team. Let's say it takes only 350k points to have a guaranteed win. The people participating in the plan will sotp crafting and using tokens en-masse at that point, however, what of the other ~100,000+ people on the team? each of them needs at least one point, and a summer adventure card badge nets you ten. If they average 2-3 points each in their efforts to qualify, that adds up to the numbers you're seeing.

Originally posted by The Rainmaker:

Lastly if you look at the other teams being so close in point value that makes no sense at all. It would imply that teams were crafting badges fairly evenly which would imply that teams are extremely well balanced everyday. I highly doubt that to be the case as even if the teams are balanced there is no way in hell to balance them everyday that closely... we are talking about 3-4 teams that are within 1000 points of each other in a contest where there are 150K + points scored by these teams.

Even by the absolute worst racing game standards that level of rubber banding is retarded.

See question 4. I can't refute this any more thoroughly than I already have in my post above.


It really looks to me like you didn't read or just ignored my post above in its entirety. Please read it before posting more comments I've already discredited.

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by Zeraxen Sar'athin:

Rainmaker is right in this case. When you look at the point values, especially for the past few days, they make no sense. One team each day getting a lead so huge before anyone else, then proceeding to go to the excess of over seven hundred THOUSAND points over the next highest team? Come on. Anyone with just a little common sense should look at that and say "Hmm, that doesn't look right.". Especially when (as Rainmaker pointed out) every team that's not in the lead is always so even with each other. The other point is that any badge only earns you one point. The only badges that earn you more than that are the Steam Summer Sale badges, and those only earn you ten points or fifteen. In other words, there is no way that people are spending such ridiculous amounts of money to craft badges such as would be required to have leads to the point of seven hundred thousand or more above anyone else.

See question 4 and also my reply directly below yours.

[bu11etpr00f]

Great post!

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by MarcoCav:

If that's true... why to spend all this time, energies and money on this competition? To win the price to be one of the 30 lucky persons (among millions of users) to receive for free 3 games?

Perhaps Reddit users are crazy?

I could go into a long explanation on the psychological study of predisposition to gambling addiction and how it relates to the behavioral patterns in this sort of microtransactional collect-and-win sort of thing, and how the sort of positive reinforcement and feeling of ownership from collecting things and earning rewards for a team relates to dopamine levels, etc... but I really don't want to. In short, let me just say that playing the powerball doesn't make any statistical sense either, but millions of people still do it every day.

I believe the bigger point in undermining the competition--not in participating, mind you, but just in gaming it--is that people really DON'T like the sort of pointless spending and behaviors the competition was causing, and wanted to break the cycle.

As I said in question 11, I encourage just enjoying the sale for the games and recognizing that this is all just a pointless game not worth fighting over.

[shane3x]

This is bullpoo (replace poo with a word starting with s) and you know it.

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by shane3x:

This is bullpoo (replace poo with a word starting with s) and you know it.

See question 13.

[...]

Colonel Panic - Which question do I see to get info on how much you believe in the easter bunny?

[Colonel Panic]

Originally posted by ...:

Colonel Panic - Which question do I see to get info on how much you believe in the easter bunny?

13.

[Zeraxen Sar'athin]

Gonna go ahead and restate this: Even with point stealing tokens, it's not possible for a team to get such huge leads. They steal what, 1000 points at a time? Yeah. Unless people have a metric ton of money to waste on those tokens, that's still not enough. No offense, but please try to use some common sense.