I never made it to a decade...

...because times no longer use decades on the site. Shame, as a “decade” has much nicer ring to it than “10 years” but regardless of the wording, that anniversary is coming up for me in just a few days. :D

More importantly, do you remember what other anniversary it is?
That's right, the anniversary of Steam Gems! These shiny little items that are now a staple currency for many users made their debut in the 2014 Holiday Sale and have been with us ever since. They were made to be used in the holiday auction that took place during the same sale, in which you could place bids with gems on any of the games that were participating in the auction festivities. If your bid was the highest, you would win that game and were allowed to either add it to your account or store it in your inventory. While the gems obviously stayed, Steam never repeated the auction event and it's highly unlikely they would, considering that they've also gotten rid of flash discounts and each sale gets bleaker. I could also start mourning the loss of inventory gifts here, but let's not sidetrack too far.

Why is this relevant to my factory day?
Because the Steam auction is the very reason I'm on Steamgifts in the first place.

When the auction kicked off, I absolutely had to win something in the first round. Don't ask me why as I can no longer remember what demon possessed me with this idea. The auction lasted for several days, with new rounds every 45 minutes, and there was nothing special offered to those being first to win. Realistically there was not a single reason to be in a hurry with it but I had to get something immediately. Knowing it would be impossible to get any of the bigger titles available, I browsed through the participating games for ones with lower bids, stumbling on a game called Samorost 2. There weren't many bids on it and so I joined for that one, ending up paying quite a few gems but succeeded in my goal to get a first round win. In memory of this, here's the thread creation tax with that very same game:

Samorost 2 [Lvl 4]

Problem was that I had absolutely zero interest in keeping the game. I looked at the game again and even now I still have zero interest in having this game for myself, so at least some things never change. I claimed it into my inventory, but since nobody on my friends list wanted it either, I was stuck with it. I didn't want to hang on to it and immediately started figuring out where to get rid of it. This is another thing that I don't really have a memory of as to why I was in such a hurry to get rid of it, when the gift could've just been kept hanging in my inventory indefinitely without issue. I wasn't familiar with trading enough to bother trying that, but after some searching I discovered Steamgifts. Since the site didn't look like a scam, I registered the same day and the day after that created my first giveaway.

Samorost 2 found a new home and I stuck around the site. I went on to continue making bids in the auction, and according to my licenses activations, I seem to have won Claire, Gemini Rue, Papo & Yo, and Penumbra Collectors Pack from the auction. At least these are all gifts that I activated around that time frame, so a pretty decent haul overall in terms of numbers. :D

That's about it for my origin story, thanks for reading! This time of year there is already bunch of events from many people, and I'm not an event creator myself so I have none of that for you. I did briefly consider some type of event inspired by the auction, but it wouldn't have functioned here in Steamgifts, so I stopped that train of thought before it got to any planning stages.