Hello Flippers!
To address fairness in displaying listings to buyers, Gameflip no longer considers the date/time of the listing creation. This change will ensure that excessive listing creation and deletion will not enable such listings to be shown more frequently. Excessive creation of listings will also be excluded from potential marketing by Gameflip.
Let me know if you have any questions on this post.
Thanks!
Hi DunnBiscuit! Pretty sad to read this. I thought the site was facing some kind of issue.
It seems that the search results are still sorted in some way by date/time but by oldest first?
I will talk from my short experience here as I have been selling in other marketplaces for years and let me say Gameflip is by far superior in many aspects to many of them but if this changes I’m not sure it will remain like this anymore. I’m open to hear others opinion but personally I don’t know what could be fairer and equalizer than this system granting a rotation of offers so everybody has the same opportunity to show his goods while at the same time being so efficient in promoting a good coexistence between competitors with little to non-existent price wars and delivering a constant/fresh feed of options for the customers.
Yes I know some may have a point exposing they don’t know how to interact with the API but if we all can come to an agreement that the only problem here are those very few getting excluded then we should also agree that the solution would be to find a way to include them instead of kicking the table. Why not adding for example a Bump-Offers feature until x hours to the profile and then setting a common rate limit to the API as well?
The real question is if we are really moving to something better like you say or if the site will become slowly into a mess like many others where only a very few can sell and not before having entered a savage war of tricky offers and confusing categories which benefits no one…
If the decision is to continue I got no problem. I will adapt myself to whatever the new ecosystem would be but my grain of salt is the change will be for worst.
Time and numbers will tell!
So what now determines the displaying of my listings on the search results?
Is there a way for us buyers to avoid the old listings we already have seen before, at least when viewing just a single seller’s offerings or does this not affect when viewing a single seller (guess I could try to check myself)?
Your ratings score (positive - negative) will help you bump your listings to the front page.
You may filter the listings by “most recent” that way you will see the new listings first.
In my opinion, this change will remove any incentives for those who constantly create, delete, and create listings (for the same thing). If buyers are interested in seeing the latest, they’re one click away from sorting by Most recent.
Personally, I search for items that I want directly, not browsing the front page.
I get your point. The ones who refine their searches won’t be affected probably but if you have had the chance of selling here you would have noticed that most of the people stick to a product of the front page and this is why I’m claiming the rotation is so important.
I invite you to browse anything by category or simply search for something like the name of a game and you will find out there is just one or two sellers in front. With the rest of the sellers far behind our sales in general (Not just me but the sales of the whole group) have dropped at least 80% since the “tweaks” were implemented. The funny part is this trying to be carried in name of fairness lol. I can be ignored but hopefully somebody cares about numbers.
I get your point. Those sellers who can spam are doing so to drown out others (push them to many pages later). The problem doesn’t go away regardless of sorting order. To fix the issue, there has to be a mechanism to measure quality of the listing push the lower quality ones to the back.
There’s plenty of evidence in the forum on how this “spam” situations were addressed succesfully by the mods in the past yet it could have had a definitive solution by applying requests weight and limit rates like many other API’s usually have. About those you say were “drowning” before at least they used to had the opportunity to save themselves because api documentation is very explanatory and with straight forward examples.
Now what you describe is exactly what started to happen remarkably after the recent tweaks: there is only one seller in front and the rest is being pushed many pages behind. The other system could have lacked of some regulation like you say but there was always a variety of options from different sellers in front for the customer to decide whatever represents “best quality” for him. For some it could be the delivery speed, a bundle alternative, certain product characteristic, etc. and you can’t discern this properly if you don’t have propositions from different sellers to compare.
Applying a biased quality criteria is nothing new and only produces further concentration of sales in the hands of one or two sellers condemning the rest to dissapear in the long term. Please don’t support this change in the name of fairness because I have seen how my colleagues have stopped selling all of a sudden with the exception of a single seller when we all used to have a fair part!
If anyone is wondering how this will impact the fairness of sales on the platform, I can probably answer now: It depends on the steps the platform takes and what DunnBiscuit mentioned.
It will either remain the same or get worse, especially if we’re talking about new sellers. The only ones who might benefit are those who have been active on the platform for years and know how it works, particularly those using the API interface regularly.
Considering the fact that, as a new potential customer of the platform, you need to see something before buying it, the number of items added by individual sellers, flooding the platform, plays a significant role in sales. As we know, the number of listed items is also linked to the number of reviews (score ratio).
This is also one way to increase the chances of selling an item, competing against sellers who use the API 24/7. Even though their product listings are already filled with hundreds or thousands of the same items, they continuously add more, making it impossible for others to break through and make sales. Sometimes even the API users do the same for competitive reasons. This issue isn’t new and has been around since the platform’s inception but has worsened over the years.
Moreover, since new accounts are limited in the number of items they can list, one alternative for them is to keep adding and removing items within minutes of posting them, increasing the chance of making a sale as the product reappears at the top of the recommended list.
If you’re a seller who can only list 50 unique items and want to compete with another seller who can list up to 5,000 items, with over 1,000 of the same product, you know you’re at a disadvantage from the start.
Now think about the odds of even finding your product on the recommended list, let alone selling it. The chances are 1 in 1,000, and that’s with just two sellers. What if there are more—2, 3, 5, 10, etc.—and each of them has already listed 500-1,000 items and continues adding more? For any new seller on the platform, selling becomes almost impossible.
So, what will removing the “time added” from the recommended list accomplish? It will simply sweep away those few who miraculously appeared on the recommended list, banishing them to the depths of the platform. They’ll be replaced by a few accounts that managed to accumulate a high score ratio over the past six months, creating a vicious cycle where only those accounts will secure any sales, keeping them perpetually on the recommended items list.
If that’s not enough, and someone still isn’t aware, it won’t stop there. Most of the highest score accounts are using the API 24/7. So, removing the time will only ensure that these accounts dominate not only the recently added items list but also the recommended one (which is already in bad shape).
As for you, the new seller with no experience with the API, limited to 50 items, which, within seconds of being listed, will be buried by API users, with a zero score ratio, you might as well hide in the shadows because no one will ever see your items. Drastic, but true.
If the platform plans to address this issue, it should implement restrictions that prevent sellers from constantly re-adding the same items (they don’t have to do it, but no one will stop them at the cost of sales). Limit their number of listings to a minimum so that it doesn’t disrupt sales but also doesn’t negatively impact other sellers.
This could involve completely eliminating the constant re-listing, especially when the “time added” for recommended items will no longer matter.
Introducing an API panel directly into the platform with appropriate restrictions that monitor the number of items currently listed, for example, allowing only six items. If the item sells, another can be added. Or simply introduce a limit on the number of units of an item so that it doesn’t occupy 100 listings on the page but just one. This way, when viewing the platform’s website or app, we could see more sellers offering the same product regardless of how many they have in stock.
Additionally, I agree with NY3 on the issue of rotating the front page. The front page should rotate continuously for all sellers, regardless of score, giving everyone an equal chance to sell at all times.
Removing the “time added” from the recommended items list will likely create what already exists—a second tab for “Highest Seller Rating,” which will show the same thing, only now it’ll be called “recommended” and will be displayed as the main tab.
As for the score, I noticed some time ago that sellers began treating customer support, which I respect and appreciate for their work, as a tool for continuously removing reviews they simply don’t like, regardless of the fact that those reviews reflect the actual transaction.
What makes them no longer objective in any way towards other sellers is not about the comments deliberately lowering a seller’s rating, but rather every single comment a seller receives that is anything other than positive. I’m not sure if this happens out of sympathy for the sellers or not, but when it becomes a continuous issue and concerns the same problem, support is likely well aware of which accounts are involved. Additionally, in cases where ranking on the site is currently based on this, it becomes completely biased.
(I’m not talking about exceptional circumstances that genuinely require this.)
Overall, when it comes to the aesthetics of the site in recent years, the changes have definitely been for the better. However, regarding issues with searching and displaying items, positioning, etc., it seems to me that not much has changed in this area, regardless of the practices and algorithms applied. So far, it doesn’t look like things are going to improve anytime soon. But maybe I’m wrong—this is just my opinion.
Additionally, I hope the website will find a reasonable alternative for withdrawing funds after removing Wise.
Thanks for the feedback here, we are working towards the API/listings issues you mentioned. This has been around for some time and despite tweaks in the past, with these new tweaks to listing creation, this API/listings creation in quantity needs to be addressed. Also, the team is working and discussing other improvements regarding the selling flow, including new withdrawal options.
Please note that those aren’t simple to accomplish, so estimating when any will be live is hard, but I’ll share more info whenever I can share them.
Stay tuned, and just to make you all aware, not only me, but the entire team is reading your feedback here and on other platforms
Thank you.
Hello Dunn. Is the API bot for posting currently under maintenance? Because for a few hours, me and all other sellers have not been able to post ads with the API bot.
Thanks
Hello, no it isn’t. How many listings have you created so far? Perhaps you reached the daily limit.
I suggest to try again tomorrow.
Thanks!
With Andrei’s suggestion, I have been publishing at most 100 ads per hour for months. But today for some reason my API bot stopped publishing. As far as I can see, the situation is the same for other sellers.
With Andrei’s suggestion, I have been publishing at most 100 ads per hour for months. But today for some reason my API bot stopped publishing. As far as I can see, the situation is the same for other sellers.
What is the daily listing limit? This is the first time I’ve heard of this. ( I have been with gameflip for almost 4-5 years.)
It is the limit then, 100 listings per hour surpasses more than double the current listing limit.
The daily limit is 1000 listings per day. So please try listing again tomorrow.
I understand that you are trying something new. If you changed something in the API, shouldn’t you have informed us? Many other sellers still think that the API bot is broken and are trying to figure out what is going on.This change was activated today. And I think we will need more information. For example, if we have reached the daily listing limit, when will this limit be reset again? Is there a certain time per day?
And I am sorry to say that 1000 listings per day is really too little for big and popular sellers. You could have done at least 1500-2000. Because we sell hundreds of different products for different games and with a daily listing limit of 1000, it is almost impossible.
I understand that you are doing something for new and small sellers to Gameflip, but it is a change that slows down popular and reliable sellers who are really benefiting your site. This is just my opinion. We will understand this more clearly in time.
However, I believe that the limit of 1000 listings per day is more than sufficient. This allows for posting items at intervals of 1.5 minutes throughout the day.
Even if you’re a seller offering 100 different items, you can list them 10 times in a day.
Especially since it’s a daily limit and not a total limit, where after reaching sales of over 2000 sold items, the limit increases to 5000 listings. So, with 100 different items you’re selling, this gives you the ability to have up to 100 pieces in your offer simultaneously within five days, which is more than enough.
How often you remove them from your list is entirely up to you. You can just as well adjust the price without constantly removing and relisting them.
Moreover, regarding the amendment that was mentioned about removing the item addition time entirely, it wouldn’t matter how often you add items in the case of recommended ones. But I already commented above on how this would affect new sellers.
In addition, the overall perspective of 1000 listings per day is perfectly fine as long as the platform ensures and takes care to prevent the appearance of multiple accounts, as is the case with almost every other service selling in-game items.
Otherwise, introducing any limit will only result in exceeding the limits anyway by using 2, 3, or even 10 accounts.
Therefore, when registering on any service used for selling, by providing your details and registering accounts according to the platform’s rules, you agree that the account from which you’re currently selling items is the only one used for selling items on the platform.
The goal is to limit unfair competition and price manipulation from the position of multiple accounts simultaneously.