Recently, Valve announced yet another new addition to Steam, called Family Sharing, which is to be launched in limited beta next week.
The new feature will allow you to authorize a "shared computer" on which others can download and play the games on your account. The official announcement doesn't specify whether these other players will need to be on your Steam friends list, but it's safe to assume they'll need to make their own separate Steam accounts if they haven't done so already. In return, they'll get separately logged achievements and saved progress for the games they "borrow" from your library. According to the FAQ shown here, up to ten devices can be authorized for sharing at once, but only one person is allowed to play the games from a single library at any given time.
The idea of sharing games on Steam sounds like a pretty big deal — a game changer, if you'll allow the terrible pun — but is it all it's cracked up to be? While you and some of your friends could, in theory, share the same pool of Steam games, time management would be an issue. Since a friend can only borrow your library when you're not playing, the Family Sharing feature amounts to little more than a safer alternative to the unofficial method of sharing Steam games — that is, letting your friend have your password.
Tighter restrictions might also be implemented later on — it's easy to imagine some kind of time limit on "borrowed" games, for example, or a drastic decrease in the number of shared computers allowed, or a drastic decrease in the number of games available for sharing — so we can only wait and see if the finer details of Family Sharing prove too good to be true after the beta is over. In the meantime, it might help to read those details carefully. There already are some games which can't be shared, according to the Family Sharing FAQ, namely those requiring "an additional third-party key, account, or subscription." While this limitation is technical, it makes me wonder if some developers will make sure their games are exempt from sharing by implementing any of these already-quite-irritating requirements.
So let's say Family Sharing doesn't live up to our expectations. Does this mean Steam's version of sharing is a bad thing? Not really. Any amount of sharing is extremely valuable for those who like to try before they buy (especially when playable demos are such a rarity these days). A lot of players supposedly engage in piracy for this purpose alone, and Family Sharing might present an alternative to some. It all depends on whether getting a friend to share on your computer (and then finding time to play when he or she is offline) is more of a hassle than finding a good torrent. As always, Steam has to treat piracy as a competitor. The problem will never go away, so the only real solution for digital distributors is to make their services so convenient that we don't mind giving them our money.
For many, however, no combination of convenience and competitive pricing can change their view that digital goods mean a loss of consumer rights. Being allowed to resell a thing that you've purchased is often considered a right, but it can't be done with Steam games. There's no thriving second-hand market for downloaded content because customers are rarely allowed to transfer "ownership" of what they've purchased. Even sharing without breaking the law can be difficult. While Steam can certainly try to remedy this situation, it might not be feasible for a digital distributor to emulate the way in which physical media can be shared legitimately among friends and family. Digital rights management always gets in the way somehow, often ruining the experience, while the total absence of digital rights management leads people to stop sharing and start giving away free copies. Neither scenario is ideal. (There are some DRM-free digital distributors, like Humble Bundle and GOG.com, but they're basically operating on the honor system, and they can only pull it off because their customers like them enough to support them voluntarily.)
Although any publisher of any intellectual property, retail or digital, might prefer that your friends buy their own copies of whatever you have, borrowing physical media is so commonplace that nobody really complains. But is it only allowed because it can't be avoided? Nintendo didn't try to stop me from lending my copy of Metroid Prime to a friend back in 7th grade because lending GameCube discs is legally and socially acceptable, but what's more important is that, unlike a digital distributor, they had no way of stopping me. The same can be said of music CDs, paperback books, and anything else you can physically hand off to your good pal. It always felt a little unfair that digitally distributed games like those on Steam — or, in fact, any game protected by any form of DRM, even if it comes on a disc — cannot be shared in the same way as your favorite book... but hey, maybe we're just spoiled by centuries of unauthorized sharing gone unpunished.
In any case, Steam's new Family Sharing feature will not erase all the perceived injustices of DRM, and Valve had its own arguably evil part to play in the rise of online DRM with the introduction of Steam back in 2003, but it seems to be a step back in the right direction. (At the very least, it certainly isn't a step in the wrong direction, since they're giving us some new options and taking none away.) The new feature on Steam certainly isn't a perfect imitation of "real" sharing, but it's a decent compromise.
The known limitations, while forgivable, are numerous. For example, your Steam library is shared not with a person but with a single computer, which means the so-called borrower cannot simply play your shared library anywhere he or she wants. Furthermore, you cannot lend a dozen of your games to a dozen different friends, since your library can only be shared on ten computers. Finally, since only one account can access a lender's library at a time, a single borrower essentially reserves the entire library instead of grabbing a single game. You can't let your friend play one game while you play another, so it's kind of like lending your copy of The Kite Runner to a friend when all the books on your shelf are glued together.
This kind of sharing does have some perks, though. After I lent that copy of Metroid Prime to that friend, I never got it back. If you're sharing your Steam games, you don't have to worry about this, and you can even boot your friend out of your library while he or she is playing if you've decided it's your turn to play. (According to the FAQ linked above, the other person will be given a few minutes to finish up or to buy their own copy of the game. How kind.) Better yet, since it's all digital, there's no "sorry, I scratched the disc" or "oh man, my mom sold it at the yard sale." The fact that your entire library is shared at once can also be a good thing, unless your friend is a young kid who needs to stay away from your bloody murder simulators.
It's entirely possible that Family Sharing will make Steam more attractive to those who usually avoid buying digital copies. Many of them, however, will probably continue to avoid Steam on principle, regardless of how Steam's features and restrictions might affect them personally. Even those of us who are always online, and always signed in, can be annoyed when going online and signing in is a requirement for installing a game. Even those of us who don't think Valve is likely to go suddenly bankrupt can be angry about what would happen if our accounts were to vanish into thin air. Even those of us who only care to share our Steam libraries with a single friend might be critical of the fact that we can't allow more than some arbitrary number of shared computers. Unfortunately for consumers of PC games, however, DRM is a fact of life. It has been for years. At least Steam makes it relatively painless most of the time.
I won't say they're adding this Family Sharing feature out of the goodness of their hearts — that's not how businesses operate. The most altruistic motivation they can have is the hope of bringing in new customers by improving their image. In this case, they might also be responding to the problem of accounts being shared off the record. You can share your Steam account without the help of Family Sharing simply by giving your password to a trusted friend, and Valve obviously knows some people are doing this. Instead of alienating customers by enforcing tighter restrictions, they're embracing the idea of sharing, but with sane limits. They can't stop us from sharing our accounts, but they can try to keep sharing under control if they can convince us to do it their way.
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Going Nowhere Rather Slowly
For the first few months of its existence, when I was between jobs, this blog was essentially a weekly project. Now that I've been employed at not-so-enjoyable jobs for almost a year, while struggling to balance multiple hobbies with personal relationships and weighing the possibility of going back to graduate school, I fear it's becoming a monthly one. I'll try to step it up, because I know that writing makes me happy even though I'm often too tired to write, but the schedule of this blog has always been "when I feel like it, when I have time, and when it's done."
This kind of schedule isn't always very kind to time-sensitive subjects like coverage of game-related news and commentary on current events, which is why I've only written two articles for Gather Your Party. In fact, this kind of schedule isn't kind to any of my ideas unless I stop watching TV and commit to working. I have a few things in the works, but I've had to choose carefully which things get written down. I'd like to write a detailed analysis of every game I play, but that wasn't happening even when I had all the time in the world, and it certainly isn't happening now.
I guess this will have to suffice: Torchlight II is fun but like any game in the genre it becomes an endless and slightly grindy search for better gear and you realize rather quickly that the entire game is just a glorified, rather complicated, weighted random number generator; Serious Sam 3: BFE doesn't improve the series with the addition of sprinting and iron sights, and if this is meant as a parody of modern shooters then it's only funny because the iron sights hardly seem to do anything at all; Heretic is a fun game but my decision to do a vanilla run before trying a source port might have damaged my eyes.
Anyway, I'm not dead, and the gradual decline in the frequency of posts on this blog doesn't mean that I've lost interest or that I've run out of things to say. Mostly it just means I'm spending more of my personal downtime actually playing video games. And I guess that's a good thing.
This kind of schedule isn't always very kind to time-sensitive subjects like coverage of game-related news and commentary on current events, which is why I've only written two articles for Gather Your Party. In fact, this kind of schedule isn't kind to any of my ideas unless I stop watching TV and commit to working. I have a few things in the works, but I've had to choose carefully which things get written down. I'd like to write a detailed analysis of every game I play, but that wasn't happening even when I had all the time in the world, and it certainly isn't happening now.
I guess this will have to suffice: Torchlight II is fun but like any game in the genre it becomes an endless and slightly grindy search for better gear and you realize rather quickly that the entire game is just a glorified, rather complicated, weighted random number generator; Serious Sam 3: BFE doesn't improve the series with the addition of sprinting and iron sights, and if this is meant as a parody of modern shooters then it's only funny because the iron sights hardly seem to do anything at all; Heretic is a fun game but my decision to do a vanilla run before trying a source port might have damaged my eyes.
Anyway, I'm not dead, and the gradual decline in the frequency of posts on this blog doesn't mean that I've lost interest or that I've run out of things to say. Mostly it just means I'm spending more of my personal downtime actually playing video games. And I guess that's a good thing.
Thursday, July 11, 2013
Steam Sales: Not What They Used to Be
This article was also published on Gather Your Party on June 12, 2013. Read it here.
Today marks the beginning of yet another seasonal Steam sale. This typically means another themed event to accompany the daily discounts, and this year's summer sale is no exception, but users who aren't already enjoying the recently introduced Steam trading cards might be less than thrilled about the nature of this event. The Summer Getaway Sale predictably implements the new feature with the unveiling of ten Summer Getaway trading cards.
Always in search of ways to convince potential customers that Steam is more than a typical online distributor with some neatly packaged digital rights management, Valve has famously made a habit of supplementing its well-known seasonal sales with themed objectives, contests, and other giveaways. Last year's two big events, however, were arguably lackluster compared to those which had come before, and this isn't a nostalgia-induced observation.
The Great Steam Treasure Hunt of December 2010, for example, was a pretty big deal. By completing special objectives related to in-game actions and community participation, Steam users could enter into a series of drawings to win free games. Every two days, 20 people won the top five games from their wishlists; 3 users then won a hundred games at the end of the event. The Steam Summer Camp Sale in 2011 followed a similar format with a few differences, namely that a single "ticket" was earned for each completed objective. Three of these tickets could then be exchanged for something at the prize booth (e.g., free downloadable content for a Steam game). Each ticket earned also came with automatic entry into another free-game sweepstakes in which 100 people won ten games.
The Great Gift Pile event, which took place the following winter, was perhaps the most notorious Steam event to date. This time, each completed objective came with one of three prizes: a lump of coal, a coupon, or a free game. Seven lumps of coal could then be "crafted" into a non-coal prize, and any remaining lumps of coal at the end of the event were used as entries into yet another Steam game give-away: One lucky person won every game on Steam, 50 won ten games, 100 won five games, and 1,000 won the Valve complete pack. Unfortunately, Humble Indie Bundle 4 was going on at the same time, and the name-your-own-price bundle included Steam keys for some of the games whose achievements were needed to win prizes.
People quickly realized that, by creating dozens of Steam accounts and buying dozens of bundles for $0.01 each, they could vastly increase their odds of getting free stuff without spending a lot of money. All of that free stuff could then be traded back to their main Steam accounts. Because of this easily exploited loophole, Steam ran out of third-party coupons before the event was over, and Humble Bundle was forced to raise the minimum price for Steam keys to $1.00.
Compared to the previous events, the Summer Sale of 2012 was a massive step down. Discounts went on as usual, but the sale was devoid of any contests or cool prizes, possibly due to the previous event's Humble Bundle shenanigans. Only a few community-based objectives were posted for the duration of the sale, and the only reward for participation was an easily obtained Steam badge. The following Holiday Sale was more of the same.
These last two events did come with a couple of new features which return this summer: Flash Sales which roll over every few hours (like Daily Deals on crack) and a Community's Choice poll to determine which of three games will go on sale next. It should be noted, however, that the games featured in Flash Sales and Community's Choice polls often seem to end up being featured as Daily Deals anyway.
So here we are, at the start of another sale, and again there are no sweepstakes or contests in sight. Furthermore, with the absence of any specially themed achievements or objectives, it looks like the last remnant of the old Steam events has been swept aside to make room for something presumably more lucrative.
This event's special badge can only be earned by crafting all ten Summer Getaway trading cards, and these cards can be obtained in a few ways. The easiest is by casting Community's Choice votes (three of which are good for one card), yielding a maximum of one card per day. Unfortunately, this only works if your Steam level, based on previously collected badges, is 5 or higher. If not, or if you can't check into Steam every few hours for the next eleven days, you'll have to turn to alternative methods: spending money on Steam (which is likely Valve's favorite option), crafting badges for games you already own (which involves collecting other sets of cards), trading other items for the required cards (which means you need something worth trading), or simply buying the cards from other users on the Steam market (a monetary transaction from which Valve takes a small percentage).
As Valve continues to push the new trading card feature, frequently adding to the list of participating games, it's possible that the use of trading cards to earn a badge, as opposed to the completion of special achievements, will be the norm in future Steam events.
Today marks the beginning of yet another seasonal Steam sale. This typically means another themed event to accompany the daily discounts, and this year's summer sale is no exception, but users who aren't already enjoying the recently introduced Steam trading cards might be less than thrilled about the nature of this event. The Summer Getaway Sale predictably implements the new feature with the unveiling of ten Summer Getaway trading cards.
Always in search of ways to convince potential customers that Steam is more than a typical online distributor with some neatly packaged digital rights management, Valve has famously made a habit of supplementing its well-known seasonal sales with themed objectives, contests, and other giveaways. Last year's two big events, however, were arguably lackluster compared to those which had come before, and this isn't a nostalgia-induced observation.
The Great Steam Treasure Hunt of December 2010, for example, was a pretty big deal. By completing special objectives related to in-game actions and community participation, Steam users could enter into a series of drawings to win free games. Every two days, 20 people won the top five games from their wishlists; 3 users then won a hundred games at the end of the event. The Steam Summer Camp Sale in 2011 followed a similar format with a few differences, namely that a single "ticket" was earned for each completed objective. Three of these tickets could then be exchanged for something at the prize booth (e.g., free downloadable content for a Steam game). Each ticket earned also came with automatic entry into another free-game sweepstakes in which 100 people won ten games.
The Great Gift Pile event, which took place the following winter, was perhaps the most notorious Steam event to date. This time, each completed objective came with one of three prizes: a lump of coal, a coupon, or a free game. Seven lumps of coal could then be "crafted" into a non-coal prize, and any remaining lumps of coal at the end of the event were used as entries into yet another Steam game give-away: One lucky person won every game on Steam, 50 won ten games, 100 won five games, and 1,000 won the Valve complete pack. Unfortunately, Humble Indie Bundle 4 was going on at the same time, and the name-your-own-price bundle included Steam keys for some of the games whose achievements were needed to win prizes.
People quickly realized that, by creating dozens of Steam accounts and buying dozens of bundles for $0.01 each, they could vastly increase their odds of getting free stuff without spending a lot of money. All of that free stuff could then be traded back to their main Steam accounts. Because of this easily exploited loophole, Steam ran out of third-party coupons before the event was over, and Humble Bundle was forced to raise the minimum price for Steam keys to $1.00.
Compared to the previous events, the Summer Sale of 2012 was a massive step down. Discounts went on as usual, but the sale was devoid of any contests or cool prizes, possibly due to the previous event's Humble Bundle shenanigans. Only a few community-based objectives were posted for the duration of the sale, and the only reward for participation was an easily obtained Steam badge. The following Holiday Sale was more of the same.
These last two events did come with a couple of new features which return this summer: Flash Sales which roll over every few hours (like Daily Deals on crack) and a Community's Choice poll to determine which of three games will go on sale next. It should be noted, however, that the games featured in Flash Sales and Community's Choice polls often seem to end up being featured as Daily Deals anyway.
So here we are, at the start of another sale, and again there are no sweepstakes or contests in sight. Furthermore, with the absence of any specially themed achievements or objectives, it looks like the last remnant of the old Steam events has been swept aside to make room for something presumably more lucrative.
This event's special badge can only be earned by crafting all ten Summer Getaway trading cards, and these cards can be obtained in a few ways. The easiest is by casting Community's Choice votes (three of which are good for one card), yielding a maximum of one card per day. Unfortunately, this only works if your Steam level, based on previously collected badges, is 5 or higher. If not, or if you can't check into Steam every few hours for the next eleven days, you'll have to turn to alternative methods: spending money on Steam (which is likely Valve's favorite option), crafting badges for games you already own (which involves collecting other sets of cards), trading other items for the required cards (which means you need something worth trading), or simply buying the cards from other users on the Steam market (a monetary transaction from which Valve takes a small percentage).
As Valve continues to push the new trading card feature, frequently adding to the list of participating games, it's possible that the use of trading cards to earn a badge, as opposed to the completion of special achievements, will be the norm in future Steam events.
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
Steam Trading Cards Out of Beta
Steam's trading cards, mentioned briefly in this way-too-long post about virtual trading cards in general, are out of beta today. I already had the pleasure of "collecting" some of these cards a few weeks ago, thanks to a Steam friend who sent me a beta invite, but my participation thus far (spurred by curiosity alone) has been strictly passive. I got my standard card drops for Half-Life 2 and Portal 2 by running each game for a couple of hours, but I've yet to go out of my way to collect an entire set of cards for any given game.
It hardly seems worth it, since doing so would likely require trading with strangers or giving money to strangers; one is irritating and the other is insane. Meanwhile, it seems the only material reward for obtaining a full set of cards is the possibility of a coupon alongside a bunch of virtual things that are no more useful to me than the virtual cards used to pay for them. On the other hand, all of these virtual things are worth something to someone, so more substantial material rewards — monetary rewards, in fact — might be within reach if you know how to work the system for a profit.
For those of you not in-the-know, the newly introduced Steam trading cards are the latest in a series of secondary features added to the already-bloated Steam Community over the past year or two. (Steam Market? Steam Workshop? Greenlight? What are these "Community Hub" things and why do these discussions need to be separate from the existing Steam forums? I think I've had enough.) Unfortunately, these trading cards don't do much, and they're not part of a collectible card game like Magic: The Gathering. They're just collectibles. You can exchange a set of them to get a handful of virtual prizes, but in the end it all boils down to more collectible stuff in your inventory, more cosmetic features on your profile, and perhaps a bigger ego if you're actually proud of this.
Your first few trading cards can be earned by playing any the applicable games, and additional cards can then be received from three-card booster packs which are given out at random. However, booster packs don't seem plentiful — at least, not at this time — so getting a complete set of cards before the heat death of the universe will likely require trade of some kind.
For most games, the initial gameplay-induced card drops are based on playtime only, so you don't have to do anything in-game to get them. In fact, you don't even have to play; you can just get your cards by idling at the main menu of each game. (If I remember correctly, it only takes a couple of hours to get your maximum share of trading cards from any given game, much less than the length of a typical playthrough, so whether you're playing the game or leaving it paused for card-mining, there's no grinding involved here.) The only games with special card-dropping rules are the so-called "free-to-play" Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, which only drop one card per $9 spent on in-game items.
So what's the point of all this?
Here's a hint: Money. But I'll get into that shortly. First and foremost, these trading cards give you another reason to care about your Steam Level, an arbitrary indicator of coolness according to Valve, which appears on your Steam profile. A user's level is based on experience points which are in turn earned primarily by accumulating badges. What are badges? Well, actually, those are nothing new.
Most of the badges on my own profile are from participation in Steam's sale-related events from previous years. (Valve has a history of using the Steam community as a platform for meta-games aimed at getting its members more involved and excited about spending money, and sometimes this involves handing out specially themed achievements for the various games on sale during an event. These achievements often translate to badges and thus to experience.) Badges and experience points can also be earned for being a long-time member, participating in beta tests, and — predictably — owning lots and lots of Steam games.
The trading card thing factors into all of this because each complete set of cards associated with a given game — all eight of the Half-Life 2 cards, for example — can be exchanged for a badge. (The same badge can then be "leveled up" multiple times by collecting the same set of cards again and again.) Along with each badge comes the aforementioned handful of virtual goodies, which may or may not include a coupon, as well as a bunch of experience which raises your Steam Level. Having a higher level then increases your chance of randomly getting a booster pack of three cards.
At this early date, however, it's not exactly clear how frequently one might expect to receive a booster pack. As I mentioned above, it seems pretty rare. The trading card FAQ only shows the percentages of increased drop rates associated with each leveling milestone, and indicates that booster packs are "granted randomly to eligible users as more badges are crafted by members of the community." Without more information, I'll just have to wait and see how long it takes me to get a booster pack, if I ever get one. Frankly, however, I'm more interested in how Valve is controlling the number of cards in circulation.
Logging playtime will only get you half the set of cards for any given game — for example, four of the eight Half-Life 2 cards — and that might include duplicates. In the absence of booster packs, a player who doesn't trade will literally never earn a badge, and a player who only trades card-for-card will literally never be able to craft badges for all of his or her applicable games. In such a system, allowing cards to be permanently consumed in the badge crafting process would very quickly lead to a shortage. Booster packs fix this, but giving them out willy nilly would lead to an ever-increasing surplus. I can only assume that the cards being exchanged for badges are the very same cards being redistributed in booster packs. After all, that would make loads of sense, especially if we're supposed to pretend that these imaginary cards are to be treated as actual collectible objects like Magic cards or vintage stamps. If it is the case, however, the seemingly miniscule odds of receiving a booster pack would suggest that a relatively small number of users are actually crafting badges.
In any case, while a user who doesn't trade still does theoretically have a chance of eventually crafting a badge, the system heavily encourages trading, which is far more convenient. The only question is whether you're trading cards for cards, or paying cash. Even more convenient than finding a stranger who has what you need, and needs what you have, is looking up exactly what you need on the Steam Market and buying it. Sounds crazy? It's already happening. Thousands of cards are showing up on the Steam Market, with the rare foil cards going for a few dollars and regular cards ranging from around 40 cents to just above a dollar. This doesn't necessarily mean that just as many thousands of cards are successfully being sold, but the list of recently sold items on the market's main page does show a few cards every time I reload it.
This brings me to Valve's other motivation for getting into the virtual trading card business. Simply put, the whole thing is designed to suck more money from the wallets of those who are prone to trading card addiction. Some people, like me, are driven to obsessive completionism in video games; for other people, that completionism extends outside of video games to stuff like this. There are people out there who will not feel complete until they've collected every card. It's not inconceivable that some poor soul might actually buy one of these trading-card-enabled games on Steam for the sole purpose of getting more cards to trade. For the slightly less insane (but equally addicted) collector, the Steam Market is there with individual cards for sale, always waiting, tempting you with an easy path to your next badge.
For everything sold on the market, Valve takes a small transaction fee, so even though they aren't selling cards directly to users, they're still making money. In addition to these user-to-user card sales, the introduction of this trading card meta-game brings a mess of other items to the market as well, namely the emoticons and profile backgrounds that are earned with the creation of each badge. As long as the market is alive, Valve is making money just by keeping the servers turned on.
Evil, huh? But none of this is particularly bad for the user. Sellers on the market can make some extra change to put toward their next game (if they don't want their cards and don't mind viciously undercutting thousands upon thousands of other sellers), and buyers needn't worry much about the transaction fee unless they plan on turning around selling the very same items they just bought (which appears to be a losing proposition when each buyer pays more than each seller earns). Some have allegedly made a significant profit (in Steam Wallet credit) by purchasing cards and selling whatever rare items come out of badge crafting, but I can only assume this requires some cleverness and some luck. Trading card hustling and associated caveats aside, though, it's pretty nice to have an official means of selling items that you don't want to keep, even if your Steam wallet will only grow by a few cents.
So it's not all bad, but don't think Valve is doing us any favors; if you try to look at this from the developer's point of view, all of our usernames turn into dollar signs as usual. If you think you're going to get rich by selling all your cards, think again. Valve, on the other hand, has created yet another way to generate revenue by doing very little work. They've created their own little economy in which everything is heavily taxed but nobody really cares.
In other Steam-related news, this year's summer sale is due to start pretty soon. No one ever seems to know the exact starting date, but last year's summer sale started in mid-July, and in the previous year it started at the end of June and overlapped with the July 4th holiday. I probably already own most of the Steam games I'd be willing to buy this summer, and my backlog is already long enough thanks to the incessant Humble Bundle events, but I look forward to another Steam event nonetheless. (Maybe I'll get another badge.)
It hardly seems worth it, since doing so would likely require trading with strangers or giving money to strangers; one is irritating and the other is insane. Meanwhile, it seems the only material reward for obtaining a full set of cards is the possibility of a coupon alongside a bunch of virtual things that are no more useful to me than the virtual cards used to pay for them. On the other hand, all of these virtual things are worth something to someone, so more substantial material rewards — monetary rewards, in fact — might be within reach if you know how to work the system for a profit.
How It Works
For those of you not in-the-know, the newly introduced Steam trading cards are the latest in a series of secondary features added to the already-bloated Steam Community over the past year or two. (Steam Market? Steam Workshop? Greenlight? What are these "Community Hub" things and why do these discussions need to be separate from the existing Steam forums? I think I've had enough.) Unfortunately, these trading cards don't do much, and they're not part of a collectible card game like Magic: The Gathering. They're just collectibles. You can exchange a set of them to get a handful of virtual prizes, but in the end it all boils down to more collectible stuff in your inventory, more cosmetic features on your profile, and perhaps a bigger ego if you're actually proud of this.
Your first few trading cards can be earned by playing any the applicable games, and additional cards can then be received from three-card booster packs which are given out at random. However, booster packs don't seem plentiful — at least, not at this time — so getting a complete set of cards before the heat death of the universe will likely require trade of some kind.
For most games, the initial gameplay-induced card drops are based on playtime only, so you don't have to do anything in-game to get them. In fact, you don't even have to play; you can just get your cards by idling at the main menu of each game. (If I remember correctly, it only takes a couple of hours to get your maximum share of trading cards from any given game, much less than the length of a typical playthrough, so whether you're playing the game or leaving it paused for card-mining, there's no grinding involved here.) The only games with special card-dropping rules are the so-called "free-to-play" Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2, which only drop one card per $9 spent on in-game items.
Leveling Up
So what's the point of all this?
Here's a hint: Money. But I'll get into that shortly. First and foremost, these trading cards give you another reason to care about your Steam Level, an arbitrary indicator of coolness according to Valve, which appears on your Steam profile. A user's level is based on experience points which are in turn earned primarily by accumulating badges. What are badges? Well, actually, those are nothing new.
Most of the badges on my own profile are from participation in Steam's sale-related events from previous years. (Valve has a history of using the Steam community as a platform for meta-games aimed at getting its members more involved and excited about spending money, and sometimes this involves handing out specially themed achievements for the various games on sale during an event. These achievements often translate to badges and thus to experience.) Badges and experience points can also be earned for being a long-time member, participating in beta tests, and — predictably — owning lots and lots of Steam games.
The trading card thing factors into all of this because each complete set of cards associated with a given game — all eight of the Half-Life 2 cards, for example — can be exchanged for a badge. (The same badge can then be "leveled up" multiple times by collecting the same set of cards again and again.) Along with each badge comes the aforementioned handful of virtual goodies, which may or may not include a coupon, as well as a bunch of experience which raises your Steam Level. Having a higher level then increases your chance of randomly getting a booster pack of three cards.
At this early date, however, it's not exactly clear how frequently one might expect to receive a booster pack. As I mentioned above, it seems pretty rare. The trading card FAQ only shows the percentages of increased drop rates associated with each leveling milestone, and indicates that booster packs are "granted randomly to eligible users as more badges are crafted by members of the community." Without more information, I'll just have to wait and see how long it takes me to get a booster pack, if I ever get one. Frankly, however, I'm more interested in how Valve is controlling the number of cards in circulation.
Artificial Scarcity
Logging playtime will only get you half the set of cards for any given game — for example, four of the eight Half-Life 2 cards — and that might include duplicates. In the absence of booster packs, a player who doesn't trade will literally never earn a badge, and a player who only trades card-for-card will literally never be able to craft badges for all of his or her applicable games. In such a system, allowing cards to be permanently consumed in the badge crafting process would very quickly lead to a shortage. Booster packs fix this, but giving them out willy nilly would lead to an ever-increasing surplus. I can only assume that the cards being exchanged for badges are the very same cards being redistributed in booster packs. After all, that would make loads of sense, especially if we're supposed to pretend that these imaginary cards are to be treated as actual collectible objects like Magic cards or vintage stamps. If it is the case, however, the seemingly miniscule odds of receiving a booster pack would suggest that a relatively small number of users are actually crafting badges.
In any case, while a user who doesn't trade still does theoretically have a chance of eventually crafting a badge, the system heavily encourages trading, which is far more convenient. The only question is whether you're trading cards for cards, or paying cash. Even more convenient than finding a stranger who has what you need, and needs what you have, is looking up exactly what you need on the Steam Market and buying it. Sounds crazy? It's already happening. Thousands of cards are showing up on the Steam Market, with the rare foil cards going for a few dollars and regular cards ranging from around 40 cents to just above a dollar. This doesn't necessarily mean that just as many thousands of cards are successfully being sold, but the list of recently sold items on the market's main page does show a few cards every time I reload it.
This brings me to Valve's other motivation for getting into the virtual trading card business. Simply put, the whole thing is designed to suck more money from the wallets of those who are prone to trading card addiction. Some people, like me, are driven to obsessive completionism in video games; for other people, that completionism extends outside of video games to stuff like this. There are people out there who will not feel complete until they've collected every card. It's not inconceivable that some poor soul might actually buy one of these trading-card-enabled games on Steam for the sole purpose of getting more cards to trade. For the slightly less insane (but equally addicted) collector, the Steam Market is there with individual cards for sale, always waiting, tempting you with an easy path to your next badge.
Free Money (But Not Just For You)
For everything sold on the market, Valve takes a small transaction fee, so even though they aren't selling cards directly to users, they're still making money. In addition to these user-to-user card sales, the introduction of this trading card meta-game brings a mess of other items to the market as well, namely the emoticons and profile backgrounds that are earned with the creation of each badge. As long as the market is alive, Valve is making money just by keeping the servers turned on.
Evil, huh? But none of this is particularly bad for the user. Sellers on the market can make some extra change to put toward their next game (if they don't want their cards and don't mind viciously undercutting thousands upon thousands of other sellers), and buyers needn't worry much about the transaction fee unless they plan on turning around selling the very same items they just bought (which appears to be a losing proposition when each buyer pays more than each seller earns). Some have allegedly made a significant profit (in Steam Wallet credit) by purchasing cards and selling whatever rare items come out of badge crafting, but I can only assume this requires some cleverness and some luck. Trading card hustling and associated caveats aside, though, it's pretty nice to have an official means of selling items that you don't want to keep, even if your Steam wallet will only grow by a few cents.
So it's not all bad, but don't think Valve is doing us any favors; if you try to look at this from the developer's point of view, all of our usernames turn into dollar signs as usual. If you think you're going to get rich by selling all your cards, think again. Valve, on the other hand, has created yet another way to generate revenue by doing very little work. They've created their own little economy in which everything is heavily taxed but nobody really cares.
In other Steam-related news, this year's summer sale is due to start pretty soon. No one ever seems to know the exact starting date, but last year's summer sale started in mid-July, and in the previous year it started at the end of June and overlapped with the July 4th holiday. I probably already own most of the Steam games I'd be willing to buy this summer, and my backlog is already long enough thanks to the incessant Humble Bundle events, but I look forward to another Steam event nonetheless. (Maybe I'll get another badge.)
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