Oh Steam…

Kubrick twist: Searching Steam aliases is notoriously broken! This seems to be a known issue that’s been causing consternation for half a decade. Specifically, aliases with trailing numbers (e.g. spacetoast123) are unfindable with the exact string, and usually with a partial string.

So, while I’ve been able to send a friend request to the Second Prize raffle winner ($25 USD), who has no trailing numbers, nothing I’ve tried has brought up profiles for the First and Third Prize winners ($75 and $25, respectively).

If you entered the raffle, and your Steam alias ends in numbers, please friend me via my public profile page: https://steamcommunity.com/id/rhinocrate/ Over 300 hours of Civilization VI? Yes, it’s a problem. Regardless, you may have already won! I promised not to post handles publicly (and creating a duplicate with the same alias seems quite easy) so winners can’t be directly announced.

Bottom line: If you ever run a stunt like this yourself, even though it might make you look spammy, get an email too.

Raffle Code

As promised, I’ll be raffling off one $75USD Steam digital gift cards, and two $25 cards shortly. Just to be super transparent, here’s the raffle code.

And no, I’m sure mathematically this wouldn’t hold up in a real lottery–but for a raffle with fewer than 20 valid entrants, I think we can call it good.

function rankRaffleEntrants(){
        var entrants = "Prima Secunda Tertia Quarta Quinta Sexta Septima Octavia Nina Decima"; //Steam handles
        entrants = entrants.split(" ");
        ol = document.getElementById("orderedList");
        //print function
        function addToList(entrant){
          var li = document.createElement('li');
          var nextInList = document.createTextNode(entrant);
          li.appendChild(nextInList);
          ol.appendChild(li);
        }
        while (entrants.length>1){
          var pick = Math.round(Math.random()*(entrants.length-1));
          var entrant = entrants.splice(pick,1);
          addToList(entrant);
        }
        addToList(entrants[0]);
      }

Basilicum on Reddit – Raffle Extended!

Within the hour, I’ll be posting a Unity WebGL game to Reddit, in hopes of collecting a statistically meaningful sample of responses to a questionnaire. In addition, through Tuesday, June 8 at 22:00 CET I’m conducting a raffle to encourage participation. This could go wrong in so many ways, and only right in one.

The characters’ anxious hand-wringing is my own.

Edit: The raffle is open! Click here to play the test app.

Performs best in Firefox and Chrome. Feel free to play the game as much as you’d like, but please only submit one survey form.

Terms and Conditions:

Persons over 18 who submit the survey between Friday, June 4 at 22:00 CET and 22:00 CET Tuesday, June 8, and enter a valid Steam profile name will be eligible for a raffle, to be conducted by June 20th, 2021.

-One first-place winner will receive a $75 USD digital gift card, sent through Steam.
-Two runners up will receive $25 USD digital gift cards, also sent through Steam.

The winners will receive a friend request from my Steam account, “rhinocrate” and receive their digital gift cards as a friend-to-friend gift.

I wish it weren’t necessary to say, but I must reserve the right to disqualify participants based on evidence of ballot-stuffing or other forms of inauthentic or abusive behavior. There is a limit of one entry per person. Steam accounts must have at least one purchased game to be eligible for the raffle. If fewer than 20 valid responses are received, the raffle will be cancelled. No data collected will be used by me or anyone else for any purpose beyond tabulating results and completing the one-time raffle, nor will personally-identifying information (including IP addresses and Steam account handles) be distributed.