I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, but how does it even make sense to hack someone's Steam account for their games? First of all, wouldn't it be much easier to simply pirate the games? Second, wouldn't the hacker lose access as soon as the account is reported as hacked, presumably within a day or so?

I can only imagine for the same reasons as WoW accs get hacked:
Stealing digital goods and spamming, maybe even resale of the acc. :<

Last one would be difficult though, i was hacked many moons ago,
got it back with 2 emails to steam support. <3

Maybe there isn't really any draws, maybe it's just a big conspiracy?

:)

I wonder if they announce that the draw is made and winners notified or something?

...Valve time.

That's exactly why I do it. 10 seconds to enter into something that someone will win. I enter into a lot of things, but I win a lot of things. Heck, I won $300 cash from a Two Worlds II giveaway. Somebody has to win so why not me?

I'm not going to go above and beyond to get massive entries but I'll at least enter once. It only takes one to win, regardless of odds. :)

That's true. The prize will always go to someone and lady luck is quite whimsical. There are people who bank their hopes on winning though, will go above and beyond and will end up sorely disappointed.

The contest rules don't talk about choosing winners until the 12th at the earliest.

Because those sorts of hackers are assholes.

If your account is compromised then you might not have access to your games for a long time. They don't do it to get your games. They do it because they want to -hurt you- because they're jealous.

Account hacks are usually used just for credit card fraud (buy game with stored credit card, gift it elsewhere) and Friends based scams(CHECK THIS LINK), not for access to the games. With exception to games that have a social element. They might sell your TF2 items (I've seen this happen to people).

Not revealing members names is best because some people simply don't like to be publicly outed even for good things.

Usually it's to test new cheats on VAC protected games.

I have two tickets, but just for having a wishlist and stuff. Do you have to manually enter the contest, and the ones with the most tickets win? Aww, man. :(

out of all of it i got about 9 tickets. still the odds are probibly more than a million tickets so i doubt i would get anything.

No.
Every ticket you received is automatically entered.
Every ticket got the same chances to win,
so naturally the more tickets you have the higher chances,
but having all possible tickets is by far not a guarantee for winning.
Everyone with a ticket got a chance.

Now is this ticket thing some sort of monetary thing where Steam benefits (i.e. the more games you buy the more you get) or some sort of other reward system (maybe for being active in the forums or games, dunno)?

You got tickets two ways:

The non-game tickets were watching a trailer, playing a demo, linking your Facebook and Youtube profiles, leaving comments on friends' screenshots and profiles, reviewing a game, and I forget what else.

The game tickets were obtained by completing certain objectives on certain games. Said games were usually on sale (or free, in the case of TF2 and Spiral Knights.) In some cases these objectives were pretty easy (do X thing in a certain level.) In others... not so much (Wonderful End of the World had you delete your profile and finish the game in one sitting.)

Some people bought the games on sale to get the tickets... which is kinda silly since some of those games weren't very good, or had been on sale numerous times in the past in the indie packs.