Just realized why they might have introduced this gem thingy [Giveaway and topic closed]

With each new event, I can participate less and less on them. All because I havent got a credit card and I dont want to trade that much... :c
Also they are getting rid of the Bots/Alt.acc that can exploit the events, oh well...

I think so too, or the database guys said it's becoming a problem and they need to clean-up...

BTW, I looked too deep...

Anyway, the auctions are awesome IF you know what are the good deals... I mean, some of the games are finally cheaper in auction than if they were 80% off in my region for winter sale. Great idea from Valve :P (one of their only great recently..)

Thanks for Skyrim!

In my opinion the main 2 reasons for this event are:

a) clean up a lot of the items just sitting in the community market

b) ban all of the bots that they can

M guess is that it was a way for users to purchase things without having to involve the tax-man. Standardize transactions on non-currencies, and operating in different countries becomes significantly easier.

The idea is to raise prices on backgrounds and emotions by lowering their overall quantity in a closed system (which is Steam). When an item is rare, it is highly priced. People create more and more emotions and backgrounds as they craft badges, they are becoming more and more common, so their prices are becoming lower and lower. They had a way into the closed system, but had no way out of it - until recently. Cards, on the contrary, had the badge creation mechanism from the start to regulate their overall quantity in the system.

Why would Valve want to keep prices on community items high? Because they get valve cut (10%, if I'm not mistaken) on every Community Market transaction.

Just another example where the rich get "richer".

Partially true, though I think it has more to do with cleaning up the market and everyones inventories of that ever-growing stockpile of 1 cent items.
The fact that they now get a larger cut from each transaction probably weighs in - but is by no means their primary motivation.
Its the stagnation that had happened with tens or even hundreds of thousands of an item just 'sitting there'.

Its spring cleaning - but in winter.

I think it is about everyone getting rid of their cards right now, so that they have to get new ones during the winter sale to craft a badge. Double profits for valve that way.

That was my thought from the beginning. They realized nobody was buying all the 0.03 items, so they invented a way to get rid of them and package them into a currency that would sell. To make things better, gems are like poker chips in that you don't know how much you're spending, which is why people are now paying over 20 dollars (in gems) for a copy of CS:GO, which I find hilarious.

People have been wanting a way to get rid of unwanted items for a long time and have a clean inventory, some people were even giving stuff to Trash Bots. The gems does exactly this. Now we can clean up our inventories. I think it's awesome. And btw if you don't want to give Valve your money you don't have to participate. You might gain a few dollars out of it though, while the rich kids can enjoy having more things to spend money on.

I think it was a good way to get rid of all the unwanted trash in peoples inventories.

we have to be honest here, it's the only kinda good "thingy" made on steam lately

GEM = 3 Lettters G-E-M = HL 3 Confirmed, Thanks for HL3 Valve!

I've did some calculations. Right now I spend a total of 7,42 Euros, on products worth total of 56,98 Euros. (released between 2012 and 2014) I could have instead get about 4,08 Euros in Store Credit, if I had sold it at best time possible, so total price for me is 11,5 Euros. It gives me a total of 79,82 % discount so far. I will probably try to get something more. Scam by Gabe? Not from my point of view.

I will compare this to prices from Steam Winter Sale, and post results here to show difference between prices.

I was hoping it was some kind of test to see if a game trade in system would work.

just hope they close the booster crafting before the end...
otherwise the card market will collpase ='[

I'll bump this one last time.