Defenders of the month rewards

Petersl · 2025-07-03T04:10:21+00:00

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Hi everyone,

At the moment when you get the defenders of the month reward it's a free month validity extension to Bitdefender.

Getting a free month sub is great but how about letting the defenders of the month choose from different rewards.

Maybe instead of automatically getting the free month sub you get tokens that you then can exchange for either a free month sub or if you save them up get the 1 year premium VPN or exchange them for merch or other rewards.

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Gjoksi

voted +1 on this…

i like this part the most "or exchange them for merch"…

@Alexandru_BD

Racer_X

Hi,

Voted +1 on this.

This is a great idea!

Flexx

Thanks for the great suggestion—it’s a creative approach and I can see how a token-based system could offer more flexibility for Defenders of the Month.

That said, I just wanted to share a bit of context based on what I’ve seen behind the scenes. As far as I know, nothing about the current reward process is automated. The Defender of the Month are selected based on their monthly contributions in the Bitdefender community forum, and @Alexandru_BD has to manually contact Bitdefender support to request and process each individual license extension. So even the current “free month” reward takes effort to implement each time.

I do like the idea of saving tokens to redeem larger rewards, such as a 1-year Premium VPN or merch. But realistically, that kind of system would still require approval from higher management. Even when users have enough tokens, Bitdefender support can’t process those redemptions without that approval from higher management. A good example is the feedback giveaway from a few months ago, which offered rewards such as smartphones and 1-year Premium Security subscriptions—it also required management sign-off.

Another thing to consider is who would be responsible for tracking and managing the tokens for each user. That could add quite a bit of complexity on top of what is already a manual and time-consuming process.

Lastly, changing the reward structure frequently—especially with so many different benefits being offered—might raise questions, particularly regarding @Alexandru_BD role and why certain perks are being given for free. It’s worth remembering that even the current one-month extension wasn’t initially allowed, and @Alexandru_BD put in significant effort to get approval for it.

These are just my personal thoughts based on the current process. @Alexandru_BD would definitely be the best person to confirm what's possible and where things might evolve.

Regards

Nunzio77

+ 1 for gadgets

Alexandru_BD

Hello everyone, and thank you @Petersl for sharing your suggestion with us here.

I must say, the concept is interesting and I know it has been done before (not here, but I have encountered similar gamification and rewards programs across various industries).
If you want my honest opinion (prepare for a long post), I think implementing a gamification based loyalty program using tokens can indeed offer long-term engagement benefits, but it also presents several technical, operational, and organizational challenges, so we need to balance them and conclude if this is something feasible, both in terms of resources, but also from the technical perspective. First, like Flexx mentioned above, the current gamification program is somewhat basic and managed manually. Changing this to something token-based would involve multiple automation and integration challenges, not that easy to tackle, for several reasons. For starters, it would be necessary to develop and implement a reliable event-tracking mechanism, and ensure it can be compatible cross-platform (mobile, desktop, web) and this already complicates the data pipeline. Because having inconsistent data across systems can ultimately lead to incorrect token award, and I've seen this happen. Let's assume that tracking is in place, another challenging task is integration. Essentially, this would require product platforms, billing, and support tools to synchronize in real time, not to mention the actual design and implementation of tokens and token accounting, because this creates the need for a secure, auditable ledger of issued or redeemed tokens.. so I think in this scenario we would actually be transitioning to a loyalty consumer-oriented program, which can be subject to taxation, and even international regulations in some cases. Also, we need to take into account that tokens must be tamper-proof, especially if they carry monetary or product value. But that's another challenge. Going back to integration, token issuance with various backend actions requires modular, well-documented APIs. So this gets even more technical and we also need to consider the platform limitations we have here, because we can't realy alter or change all the parameters of this website to acommodate this token integration.
The engineering teams would also have to configure which actions should earn tokens, and how much, and this requires a precise and consistent scoring system, which must be developed from scratch, because we would no longer rely on the existing automation tools in effect.
Then there's another challenge. Ensuring users don't game the system (e.g., fake engagement, bots, etc.) adds even more complexity. Token farming via fake accounts or spoofed interactions is actually a thing..

Furthermore, token redemptions for physical products or services tie directly to budgets (marketing, operations, support, etc.) Such a gamification project usually involves multiple teams, for example Product teams (triggers for token issuance); Marketing (program design and rewards); Finance (cost tracking and forecasting); Legal (terms, disclaimers, data policies) not to mention Program design teams and the UX complexity, and also Logistics.

Of course we thought about this before, ever since we started redesigning the Bitdefender community, but implementing a token-based loyalty or gamification program is not just about issuing points. It’s about building a robust, secure, and scalable ecosystem that fairly rewards meaningful interactions. The difficulty lies in aligning technical automation with human behavior, organizational processes, and long-term sustainability, but also in logistics, if we are considering merch, there should be a delivery system in place, which implies additional costs and complexity.
Considering the above reasons and what such a program entails, we opted for the more simplistic, easy to manage version, also because the community doesn't have that many resources and it relies mostly on peer-to-peer support and actual user contributions, so we don't really have a team of dozens of people from various departments that can put in the huge amount of work required to develop, implement and manage such a gamification program based on tokens.

I hope I was transparent enough regarding this. But this isn't to say that we will stop exploring other avenues of gamification in the future, and we will continue to invest in this lovely community.

Thank you for taking the time to read my long comment. 🙂🤜🤛

Flexx

https://community.bitdefender.com/en/discussion/comment/355057#Comment_355057

Nice one, @Alexandru_BD. Today I actually read your entire post — if you know what I mean — and in short, you wrote it perfectly 😅

Regards

Alexandru_BD

😄😄 Thanks, I appreciate your time.