Steam "Cards"

[Yegolev]

Not entirely, then.   Good luck with your speculating!

[Samwise]

I got a Bastion foil card.  Only considered the possibility of trying to get a foil badge for about five seconds before realizing I was better off selling it for a buck to someone crazier than I.

[KallDrexx]

I feel like cards have been losing their value.  I used to get 25 cents or so per card and recently I've been barely able to eek out 6 cents after steam fees. 

Maybe I'm just getting cards for games no one gives a shit about though....

[Sky]

Most of mine are sitting at 1-2¢ after Steam's cut.

Still, when they first came out I made enough for a couple free games, so that was cool.

[Kail]

I feel like cards have been losing their value.  I used to get 25 cents or so per card and recently I've been barely able to eek out 6 cents after steam fees. 

I get the same impression, especially for new games, though I'm generally looking at 10¢ for the ones I sell.  If they were only like a penny a pop I'd probably just use them to level my account.  And some sets are still weirdly expensive, like Agarest cards going for somewhere around a buck each.

Foils seem to be pretty slow to shift.  Seems like whenever someone lands one they expect to sell it for huge returns, but nobody is buying them (at least the ones I'm selling).

[HaemishM]

The last few days, my card sales have jumped - of course that coincides with actually getting some cards out of the blue for Rocksmith 2014. Those are selling well - around .$20-.25 cents each.

[Samwise]

Sold a Bioshock Infinite foil card for $0.79.   I wonder how many normal badges I could complete with that money. 

[Speedy Cerviche]

Do you get discounts for badges or something? What is the point of this?

[HaemishM]

To get OCD gamer freaks to pay you "real" money into your Steam Wallet for useless baubles so that you can buy other games on Steam with their money. 

[Samwise]

The more badges you complete the more booster packs you get so you can get more badges.

Also you get emoticons and wallpaper.

Also shut up.

[Paelos]

They missed the boat on one thing with this. They should have tied getting cards to achievements instead of just getting them for playtime. That would have made achievements actually have some small meaning instead of the way they are now, which is completely pointless and nobody cares.

[Kail]

Achievements being worthless is better than making them matter.  There isn't a standard to which achievements are held, Dust Force only has 1 achievement, for getting an S+ rank on every level (which is goddamn HARD), while other games give you achievements for easy stuff, like finishing the tutorial or killing your first enemy.  Plus, a lot of old games (System Shock 2, for example) would be difficult to modify to include achievements, but since cards are all handled by Steam, they can be implemented with almost no effort.

[Ingmar]

Tying cards to achievements still wouldn't make them matter. 

[Trippy]

The more badges you complete the more booster packs you get so you can get more badges.

Also you get emoticons and wallpaper.

Also shut up.

You level up your account too which does stuff.

[Paelos]

Tying cards to achievements still wouldn't make them matter. 

YES THEY WOULD! LALALALALA

[schild]

I can not stress how stupid this entire system is and that it's hilarious people are participating in it at all.

[Paelos]

You'd be stupid to ignore it if you can sell things for real money that have no actual value.

This was similar to making money in D3 when the AH was live.

[Samwise]

Secret of the Magic Crystals is the worst thing ever made by a human.  But each of the four cards will sell for about a quarter, maybe because there are so few of them on the market.  The whole trading card thing is a fascinating case study in the value of artificial scarcity -- these cards are free for Valve to make and free for me to get (unless you count the time I spent playing this terrible game, but that was my morbid curiosity at work), but both Valve and I make money from them.

Looking back through my Gmail folder, apparently I got this from MrHat.  Who does not own it himself.  I can only assume that gift copies of this thing get passed around like fruitcake; I see a few other friends who own it too.

[Ironwood]

I'm with Schild on this one...

[Maven]

Achievements being worthless is better than making them matter.

I find this statement amusing as its up to the individual whether achievements 'matter' (have meaning?) or not.

The game developer controls whether they're available or not, and how it ties into the game, but making it 'matter'? From the individual's perspective -- matter to *what*? Their entertainment value?

[Paelos]

Achievements having a small meaning towards another goal and making them matter are semantics arguments.

What I wanted was for achievements to be the way you got Steam levels, which are inherently meaningless anyway. Instead, they did cards because they can make money on the AH exchanges. I get it, but it doesn't really do anything for me.

[Samwise]

Steam levels, which are inherently meaningless anyway.

Not so -- when I hit level 20 I increased my card drop rate by 20%.

AND I got another slot on my profile page to display more badges and achievements in.

 

[Mithas]

I'm level 15 and I have never gotten a card other than the initial ones you get when you first play a game. I'm not sure what the drop rate is, but it isn't good.

[Samwise]

I'm level 15 and I have never gotten a card other than the initial ones you get when you first play a game. I'm not sure what the drop rate is, but it isn't good.

Yeah, I haven't gotten any booster packs yet either.  I am racking up a lot of eligibility though, so I'm sure it'll happen some day.

[Kail]

I'm level 15 and I have never gotten a card other than the initial ones you get when you first play a game. I'm not sure what the drop rate is, but it isn't good.

AFAIK it's there to keep the card pool a constant size.  Every time someone crafts cards into a badge, a few booster packs are randomly seeded to ensure that the market doesn't shrink.  So the drop rate is basically proportional to the rate at which people are crafting badges for that game.  I get about 2 packs a month, or so, I'd guess, and I'm eligible for about 100 games.