Hi all,

I wanted to make a post regarding the current status of this group and flag an upcoming change to the approval process for new members for thoughts and feedback.

Thanks to some prolific new members ( and some old ones!) we currently have a good number of giveaways flowing through the Steamgifts group at any one time. I wanted to say how much I appreciate the activity by the giveaway creators and users alike as it really speaks to the usefulness of a group like this, just for Linux gamers. Ultimately, I feel like we as mods can do more to grow the group and see a wider audience exposed to these great giveaways.

To that end, I wanted to put forward a new mechanism for approving members to the group by mods, and see what our current members think in order to gauge the usefulness of such a change.

Currently, the rules are a bit opaque, so I want to clarify things first and foremostly, but the basic requirement is that a new member must post a screenshot of their Linux desktop in order to verify their status as a Linux gamer. This is a useful mechanism to weed out non-Linux users, but we have consistently found that people, even obvious Linux users, fail to perform this step upon applying. This then either necessitates an automatic rejection, or a time-consuming back and forth to get the potential new user to upload the required evidence. What if there was an easier way??

Fortunately, such a way exists - and it's hidden in your Steam profile. Your playtimes on the various operating systems Steam supports (Linux, MacOS, Windows) has been logged by Valve since September 2019 and is able to be viewed for example, here[steamdb.info]. We are now able to quantify exactly how much of a "Linux user" someone on Steam is (provided their profile is public), and can use that as an aid to quickly determine someone's eligibility for this group.

Great! But what about the drawbacks of such a method? There's an obvious one as far as I can see - dual booters and people gaming in VFIO setups will still register playtime in Windows, despite perhaps considering themselves Linux users. My feeling on this is that it should still be obvious from looking at playtime stats to see that someone uses Linux most of the time, and that the relative amounts of playtime between Linux and Windows is what is important. Remember we have confirmation from Valve that Proton gaming is counted as Linux in their stats. I think we should be aiming to admit people into this group whose playtime vastly favours Linux - something in the order of 90% or more. This is a bit vague and open to interpretation, sure, but as mods we have experience in trusting our gut instincts in this area.

Thanks for taking the time to read this wall of text, and I am very interested in hearing your thoughts on this potential change, as well as any other comments or thoughts you may have on other areas of the group.

As always, GL (goodluck)

Brad

Ends Feb 15. Good luck


PS: If you're new and applying for group membership, add a screenshot of your Linux desktop as detailed above, and make it easy for me to find. Your request won't be approved without it. Cheers.

Head over to steamgifts to check some fresh humble-monthly-driven GAs :-)