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lumberbaron

Steam Trading Card

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yeah you need all the drops for a badge, but you can get booster packs randomly of you get all the drops and the booster packs have 3 random cards, it will tell you more details if you click on the how do i earn card drops? part in the badges section of steam

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The TF2 hats thing has already taught me never to accept friend requests from anyone I don't recognize and don't share any groups with. I think it's kind of shitty that your Steam level influences you friend list size (not that I've heard of that being a problem for anyone).

 

I, like some others in this thread, am not entirely comfortable with how this could potentially prey on people's irrational desire to increase arbitrary numbers, as well as being a fun trading game for others. I'm pretty positive some people are putting stuff into this without really enjoying it. The reason I'm so certain is that when I first saw this Steam level stuff show up, my immediate reaction was "hey, why is mine lower than everyone else's, I've had this account for ages and have far too many games". I read what it was about, and there was a moment where I considered pursuing the trading card metagame just to push up that stupid number, but thankfully I realized that that's not at all something I'd find fulfilling.

 

Of course, anyone with the capacity to pay for stuff on Steam should be old and responsible enough to decide for themselves whether they want to put time and money into this thing, so in that sense I guess it's all fine. If I'd decided to put my time and money into it, that would have been my own dumb choice (to be clear: only dumb because on some level I knew I wouldn't get anything out of it). Still, it's hard not to see a cynical side to it.

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I found a Half Life 2 booster pack in my Steam inventory today, but I don't know whyyyyy!

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Yeah I was confused as hell when I got those emoticons. Also amused as hell when I realized what they were. What a weird-ass thing.

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So it seems pretty easy to participate in the whole trading card thing without spending any real money. Now that there's a decent number of games with trading cards, I've just been selling my cards for games I don't care so much about, and using the proceeds to buy cards to finish sets for other games that I like more. I've completed a couple badges now, and I'm actually up a couple bucks in my steam wallet.

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That's what I've been doing. Managed to craft 10 badges already. So far I'm rather disappointed on the returns. The emoticons are boring, and most wallpapers really suck. Trine 2 has the best wallpapers.

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After denouncing Valve with the strongest possible language, Steam dropped some Binding of Isaac cards into my inventory.  I am now fully in their clutches.

 

The cards and badges are a kind of transparent way to say, "Hey, we've got all these different sections of Steam that you never click on!  Pay attention to us!"

 

It also tries to normalize the marketplace, telling you how easy it is to start buying and selling things there.  Making a profit on your cards is only a way to seduce you!

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Crafted another badge, and received this:

 

Mystery (Trading Card)

Steam
Mysterious Trading Card
This card is very mysterious. Very, very mysterious. The kind of mysterious card you might want to hold on to.
Tags: Mysterious, Common, Trading Card, Tradable, Marketable

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Yeah. There's also a foil version of that. Last I checked, it was going for $44 on the marketplace. I laughed.

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Current going rate for the foil version 7.5 euros. it's insane.

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Yeah, I've got a couple mystery cards as well. I'm assuming they're Summer Sale related, since that should be starting pretty quick.

ps: I have an extra copy of Frozen Synapse in my inventory. If anyone wants to send some cards my way, it is yours.

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Yeah if this keeps up I may be able to defray a bunch of the costs from the next sale. This thing is a goldmine for people who don't care about  it (kind of ironic, maybe?)

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i think i will sell most of mine i sold a double i got with a drop for $0.33 it will take a while but i think a free game for owning games is cool (way better than my power player badge) maybe if steam made it a rule for all games to have cards and loads of games started to have badges i could get quite a few free games

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I don't know if anyone has already mentioned this, but I thought this was interesting:

While we're all berating Valve for trying to make money off of this, it looks like the majority of the marketplace fees for selling these cards are actually going to the developers.

ufQMyd6.png

 

If I'm reading this right, it looks like a two thirds of the fees being charged are going to the developers/publishers, while only the remaining third of the fees is going to Valve.

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I think the thing that doesn't work for me about this system is the emphasis on crafting badges. For some reason, I would much rather have a full set of trading cards than a badge (even though they're both pretty silly). I guess my brain is going "why would I trade 8 meaningless JPEGs for 1 equally meaningless JPEG?" and I'd just rather have a nice little art gallery than an icon on my profile. So I've just been hoarding my cards for every game and I'll probably never get any more unless I get some more of those random "booster packs."

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So people actually use Steam as a kind of "gamer facebook"?

 

Huh...bizarre. But I guess anyplace with a friends list and a profile page can be shoehorned into that mold if its creators try hard enough.

 

I got a card and sold it right away for $0.44, but I can't decide if I feel more than $0.44 worth of silly for participating. I think it's alright though. When I got done rolling my eyes the money was still there.

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I think the thing that doesn't work for me about this system is the emphasis on crafting badges. For some reason, I would much rather have a full set of trading cards than a badge (even though they're both pretty silly). I guess my brain is going "why would I trade 8 meaningless JPEGs for 1 equally meaningless JPEG?" and I'd just rather have a nice little art gallery than an icon on my profile. So I've just been hoarding my cards for every game and I'll probably never get any more unless I get some more of those random "booster packs."

I agree that I'd rather have the cards than the badge, but on top of both of them being meaningless JPGs, every badge you craft gets you an emoticon and a profile background. I couldn't care less about the backgrounds, 'cause who the hell actually looks at my Steam profile except me, but the emoticons are (very) stupid fun. U:

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if you craft the badge, you can still see the meaningless jpegs of the card.

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Oh, really? That changes everything! I thought that since you had to collect the cards again if you wanted to level up the badge, it would mean you no longer had access to the cards you used to craft it.

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