Steam community group automatic invite

[groupgator]

Honestly I don't understand why Steam frowns upon this sort of thing especially when the GATOR was developed to be so thoughtful of Steams resources. I can see if a program spammed and more or less attacked their network, but otherwise if it's not harming their system then what is the big deal? If you think about it, when you invite manually you send/receive quite a few requests per invite. I can invite probably 50 people every 5 min's manually by opening up a bunch of tabs in Firefox, each tab with a different user, then going to each one and inviting to the group I want to invite to. So that's 50 pages open all requesting images, information, and sending the invite requests. Why is that ok to do, but it's not ok to develop a tool that does the same thing? If the tool doesn't abuse resources or do anything illegal it should be ok to use and/or at least be approved of by Steam. Not to mention, but larger groups can afford more servers, which means more people gaming, which means more people buying games, which is good for everyone. I don't know how many times I've seen groups with dead servers, mainly because they have no one in their groups.

Anyway, all this thought went into the design of the GATOR and even though Steam may frown on the software because of what it does, they shouldn't, because it was developed with them in mind and developed to be as secure and safe as possible for it's users.

[Stinkyfax]

groupgator, it is clear that you might be gathering login/pass chain as your program asks for this as well as has background connection to your servers. And if author says "no", it is risky considering software is closed source.

[Stinkyfax]

(11-16-2011, 11:13 PM)groupgator Wrote:  Honestly I don't understand why Steam frowns upon this sort of thing especially when the GATOR was developed to be so thoughtful of Steams resources. I can see if a program spammed and more or less attacked their network, but otherwise if it's not harming their system then what is the big deal? If you think about it, when you invite manually you send/receive quite a few requests per invite. I can invite probably 50 people every 5 min's manually by opening up a bunch of tabs in Firefox, each tab with a different user, then going to each one and inviting to the group I want to invite to. So that's 50 pages open all requesting images, information, and sending the invite requests. Why is that ok to do, but it's not ok to develop a tool that does the same thing? If the tool doesn't abuse resources or do anything illegal it should be ok to use and/or at least be approved of by Steam. Not to mention, but larger groups can afford more servers, which means more people gaming, which means more people buying games, which is good for everyone. I don't know how many times I've seen groups with dead servers, mainly because they have no one in their groups.

Anyway, all this thought went into the design of the GATOR and even though Steam may frown on the software because of what it does, they shouldn't, because it was developed with them in mind and developed to be as secure and safe as possible for it's users.

Sorry, not trying to offend you but you talk like a naive kid.
Corporations have to follow their policy, there can be no exception or even consideration of whether your software harms them or not.
I don't think I need to remind of all corporations policy towards 3rd party software

[Mike]

Also, using any kind of software _MAY_ get you VAC-banned. Who knows what is inside a closed-source program..

[loopyman]

(11-16-2011, 11:13 PM)groupgator Wrote:  -snip-

Anyway, all this thought went into the design of the GATOR and even though Steam may frown on the software because of what it does, they shouldn't, because it was developed with them in mind and developed to be as secure and safe as possible for it's users.

Because one kid opening a browser and getting bored after 5 mins uses less resources than a bunch of script kiddies using a script over large periods of time to accomplish nothing.

[groupgator]

(11-17-2011, 06:38 AM)loopyman Wrote:  

(11-16-2011, 11:13 PM)groupgator Wrote:  -snip-

Anyway, all this thought went into the design of the GATOR and even though Steam may frown on the software because of what it does, they shouldn't, because it was developed with them in mind and developed to be as secure and safe as possible for it's users.

Because one kid opening a browser and getting bored after 5 mins uses less resources than a bunch of script kiddies using a script over large periods of time to accomplish nothing.

Yes if you're using a script that isn't the GATOR you are probably spamming and sending more requests than allowed which in turn produces bad results. The GATOR doesn't spam, it goes at a pace respectful of Steam, but fast enough to show good results for the user. The slower you invite the better the results, at least this is what we've discovered. Not only that, but going too fast could be considered an attack on Steam and might be illegal.

So for the record:
1. GATOR DOES NOT SPAM
2. GATOR IS NOT A HACK
3. GATOR DOES NOT STEAL OR SHARE ANY ACCOUNT INFORMATION WHATSOEVER. WE RESPECT THE USERS PRIVACY.
4. GATOR IS SAFE AND SECURE FOR THE USER
5. GATOR PRODUCES RESULTS
6. GATOR IS RESOURCE RESPECTFUL

We explain things in more detail on our website. What GATOR does and what GATOR does not do.

[groupgator]

(11-17-2011, 03:34 AM)Stinkyfax Wrote:  groupgator, it is clear that you might be gathering login/pass chain as your program asks for this as well as has background connection to your servers. And if author says "no", it is risky considering software is closed source.

When you sign up for a Group GATOR account, at groupgator.org, you enter that user and pass into GATOR to log in. Then once logged in Group GATOR asks you to lock it to your computer. This sends a unique identifier specific to your computer to our database, which is used not only to verify the user, but to protect it from being shared with all the users friends. After which GATOR verifies you have an active subscription. If you do then it works, if you do not then it says you don't and will not work. It does these things like I said to protect it from being shared or copied and also to verify the correct user is using the software. It's not gathering any information from the user or sending any information to the database. The free version doesn't communicate with our database at all.

If people are concerned it's recommended they use an account they aren't worried about or create a new account. I'm sure they'll see there isn't much risk involved when a year later they're still using it and have had no issues with their account...

[groupgator]

(11-17-2011, 04:17 AM)Mike Wrote:  Also, using any kind of software _MAY_ get you VAC-banned. Who knows what is inside a closed-source program..

VAC is used to protect against hacking. So unless Steam were to manually assign a VAC ban for some reason as long as you're not hacking a game this should never go into effect. It's meant to protect players from hackers who cheat at games. Group GATOR has nothing to do with any game on Steam or any other game for that matter. Also I know of several people who have used similar scripts for the same purpose and have for a long time without consequence.

And the program has to be closed source because we have to protect our investment. It's not to hide anything illegal or malicious. A lot of work went into it. Geeesh

[Mike]

Just saying, MW2 Liberation (made for cheaters) got a lot of people banned from ALL their Steam-games because it messed with VAC itself, how do any of us know that this doesn't do the same? I choose to not trust you because I do not want my group suspended, my account hi-jacked or VAC-banned. Suit yourself.

[Mooga]

Use at your own risk.
Please stop the flaming guys.

[groupgator]

(11-21-2011, 02:09 PM)Mooga Wrote:  Use at your own risk.
Please stop the flaming guys.

Ya thanks for that. I do appreciate your concerns and this user couldn't have said it any better. You use it at your own risk. If you are too concerned to use it that is fine. We have several satisfied users at the moment and I've already more or less explained why most of what you're concerned with is really of no concern.

A new update is due out probably in the next couple months which will add a lot of cool new features making the whole process even easier. Hope some of you change your minds, it really is a good piece of software.

Thanks to the admins for allowing me to defend myself. Peace!

[waylaidwanderer]

Hi everyone. Searching for "Steam group auto invite" in Google leads to this as one of the top results, so I thought I would share a program that I've written - an alternative for groupGATOR for those of you who are worried about the close-sourced and potentially insecure nature of the program.

SteamGrouper works just like groupGATOR, except that it is fully compatible with SteamGuard. No need to worry about account security! All Steam-related information is encrypted and not seen by SteamGrouper; only the Steam API receives this information.

SteamGrouper can gather members extremely fast, faster than groupGATOR, and auto-inviting is very smooth. The trial version also has no limits on how many users you can invite.

SteamGrouper is licensed under the GPL. This means that it is not close-sourced like groupGATOR. I will provide the source for anyone who asks.
This program is elegant in its simplicity. It is beautiful, and very easy to use. No configuration is required - just touch and go!

Let me just mention that the subscription prices are very, very cheap

[cs-deimos]

Hey, guys!
Does someone still have that software called Group Gator? If someone does, can you please send me a download link in a private message? The official site is innactive and I can't download it from there : (