From the posting guidelines:

Posts asking for game recommendations are often seen as low-effort and drives low-quality and repetitive conversations, if any at all.

Thus, they are relegated to their own thread, so they do not clutter the sub-reddit.

Giveaway posts drive even lower quality engagement (I'd assume no one even looks at the comments), yet they are allowed. Even worse, due to them getting masses of comments (all lacking any meaningful discussion), they get pushed to the top of "hot posts", detracting further from posts that may actually be generating meaningful discussion. If we draw a line at recommendation posts, giveaways are certainly not meeting the quality threshold. (as a side note, I wasn't even able to put "recommendation" in my post title, that's how adamant the mods are about preventing lower quality post on the sub)

I understand that the giveaways aren't drowning out more meaningful posts at the time being, but with dozens of games releasing/crowdfunding each week, they very well could if it becomes more prevalent (and I feel it is currently a relatively effective way for publishers to market and we will see more of it).

As a separate note, these posts are advertisements, and should be treated as such. Many of the recent ones I have seen posted are posted by a user who does not meet the 10:1 participation:promotion ratio. They have made a total of 2 comments on non-giveaway posts and have posted 9 giveaways. All of this user's activity on this sub has been in the past month and they have averaged posting a giveaway every 2 days.

I get that giveaways can be exciting, but its really detracts from the quality of the sub if it becomes a whole bunch of ads (which I will reiterate, that's all giveaways are). Maybe if the mods take applications for giveaways, and there is a max one posted per week, it could be fine, but I don't want to see 30% of the posts in this sub being ads.