Given that Steam is doing all sorts of bullshit to prevent developers

What is their actual function? Why are people willing to purchase them?

>>387498168
people that circle jerk about their steam level

>>387498240
Worthless.

>>387498168
I have no idea but I've always been kind of glad that I can earn a little bit of free game money by selling these jpegs to retards.

>>387498168
Why are people willing to purchase any item that doesn't have practical use?

>>387497273
>why don't Valve just remove trading cards?
Because both people like me and Valve would lose a shit ton of money.
So fuck off.

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>>387498781
>tfw buying an entire game using money from cards

>>387499102

You can't do that anymore, valve cracked down on doing this.

>>387499039
>being poor enough to care about literally pennies from trading cards and spending time fucking around with them
i wish there was a way to turn this shit off, tons of people on steam have jobs and aren't underage

>>387499217
>pennies
Oh look, he doesn't know.

>>387498168
Purely cosmetic shit for your profile page. And raises steam level. Yes, people are that dumb.

>>387499197
What? Why?
Wasn't that the point? To sell cards and make steam credit and buy games?

>>387499197
You can still do that though, the crackdown was on asset flippers pushing titles for the sole reason of gifting a shitload of free copies to alternate accounts and using those to generate cards and items for sale to Steam level autists.

>>387497273
>why don't Valve just remove trading cards?
Because Valve gets 30% off every purchase.

>>387498168
I made the full day of defeat badge because I like the game much but can't play it that much anymore.

>>387498168
Because friendslots cost $1 per five slots past 100 because Valve are a bunch of fucking kikes and Valve doesn't want you to directly pay that fee to them to avoid any blame, so they make you go to the market where they get 30% off every transaction, buy cards, increase your Steam level and increase your friendslots that way. It's been that way since 2011.

>>387499625
Making a few million on the fringes is nothing to Valve, especially given the problems the asset-flippers create.

>>387499896
Valve doesn't give a crap about asset-flippers. They care only about sales and Steam Direct is just a relaunch of Greenlight after the PR disaster it was. Who would have thought creating a system ripe for abuse would cause people to abuse it?

>>387500290
They clearly do, given that they've overhauling Greenlight and are limiting keys to developers pretty much to prevent it. Getting rid of it would solve a lot of problems. I doubt many of Steam's users actually understand the card system anyway.

The problem for Valve is that Steam is in the middle of being an open platform and curated platform, and in many ways is the worst of both worlds. Lack of transparency and arbitrary decisions then hiding behind 'PUBLIC PLATFORM' for a whole bunch of bullshit.

I wouldn't be surprised if something happens soon to shake up Steam's dominance. It seems like there's unrest and unpopularity about how Steam is run, and Valve have been focusing on things that are out of touch with most users (e.g. Steam controller, Steam link, big-box mode etc) while not improving the core experience.

>>387499830
I guess the solution is don't add everyone you meet as a friend you goddamn whore

>>387500983
>It's okay when Valve does it!
Imagine if Facebook did it.
There would be riots with normies all over the fucking United States if they did it.
Zuckerberg would laugh his way to the bank before getting lynched by the mob.

Trading cards print Valve money. and that dota2 card game will likely use the trading cards.

their problem was chinese/russians were flooding out indie games nonstop, awarding bot accounts thousands of free copies and selling them. Hell, they probably made better money doing that then they did from their 49 cent games.

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>>387498505
Steam level is tied to the amount of friends you can have, but, ultimately, yes - pointless. However Valve is probably one of the best if not the best company in the world that can make money off pointless stuff. Hats, CSGO skins, trading cards and other irrelevant shit is probably the ultimate form of luxury item. At least other luxury items have something behind them: materials, knowledge, brand, quality assurance, work. A randomly generated pattern on a 3d knife is as far from that as it you can get, yet it cost so much purely because of people desires.

Combined with the price of brand new AAA game cards, $20 meme emotes and cash cows grinding to Level 100, trading cards are a way for Valve to skim an extra few dollars off of every game sold

And there are people who do buy them, too. For every shit game I idle the cards for, I'm able to sell em in a week

>>387499197
This is how you spot the salty gogcuck, who spouts nonsense pulled out of his putrid shithole.

There's literally nothing wrong with trading cards. If you don't like them, just sell them for half a buck or so.

trading cards are stupid i got a few free games because of selling them.

>>387501117
Facebook has a friend limit. Look it up.

Eh, there was a program that made steam think you were inside a game, which could farm trading cards automatically.

I then sold everything, because they're fucking useless, and 30 or 40 USD.

I like free stuff.

>>387503865
But they don't charge people to increase it.

>>387504093
>"free"
You paid for the games where they come from.

>>387498168
a)to sell them for pennies, in some cases of indie the cards cost more than the game itself
b)increase steam level and get game related shit like wallpapers for Steam for pennies
So take your pick, about 0.50€ for cards you earn or pay about 0.50€ to get remaining cards for badge (100xp+some shit)

>>387498943
like videogames? hmm

>>387499217
you can turn it off for yourself by completely ignoring it, no idea why you bother rest of us with your 'wishes'