Asset Flippers are ...
Why they don't just take of the tax card for the dev until the dev has sold X amount of copies in Steam? They don't even need to make them unmarketable
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At the value that stuff goes around, its gotten about the attention it deserves - namely, close to none.
Steams shitty system is to blame ... but they've taken measures (the Greenlight thats to be changed) so no big deal.
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I'm so glad I stopped idling for cards... Just seems like a waste of time idling games for cards, or games like CSGO or TF2...
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I just got back into idling just for the heck of making use of my already huge amount of cards (setup a bot account to farm cards from free games). If I can complete a few sets, I can craft a few badges for fun during the sales. While I'm not exactly proud of doing it, it's a fun little task to gather, trade and match cards for sets.
Game idling, on the other hand, I probably will never do. Seems pointless to waste resources for the chance of winning something worth a few cents at most. I'm already usually not into cards farming to begin with. :P
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See thats the only reason I would do it now! Like getting to level 60 was easy because I just idled most of it. I honestly, loved getting into STM and getting all my card sets ready! I got some cool badges and emotes etc out of it! Sometimes if a new game comes out I will craft badges and sell backgrounds for mad profitz but idling in general... You are making pennies... I'd rather just use that time to either find a job/if you have a job work. I see so many people as well with thousands of hours in CSGO/TF2 etc with no achievements... They clearly do it for the drops, too much time wasted D:
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To be fair you say "use that time" as if you're required to sit over and watch it for it to work. The whole point of it being a bot is that it does everything itself, there's no reason you can't do your own work at the same time. I currently have 4 bot accounts that farm games from those cheap as chips wholesale key sellers and it just runs in the background about 16 hours a day doing its own thing while I do mine.
Don't get me wrong, it's not exactly something I plan on doing forever or consider a top of the market investment strategy, I'm just trying to get cheap as possible cards in preparation for the summer sale so I can level up without having to buy cards from the market, I'm just saying it's not like it gets in the way of my own work in any way.
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Yeah I understand that, in a way if you want to make a couple extra £ then its great! Its just setting up bots, putting the £4 to make sure you can trade, leaving your PC running all the time costing electricity, getting scripts, selling cards. Just seems like more hassle than its worth. Like I have one bot I made months ago and its just pointless to me. I crafted a few badges one summer and honestly it was the most tedious thing I've ever done...
But like I said if it works for you and you don't mind it then thats great! Just to me I regret making that bot now..
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Thats 18 hours of electricity you're using for a few pence. You actually lose money from excessive idling, the idea that you make money is such a fallacy because you can see the numbers.
Of course if you are already using the PC that's different, however I'd argue that those 18 hours a day would be better served working earning significantly more.
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And the thing with Valve games idling is that you absolutely need to be in a server to get drops. Just think of that resource expenses to items profit value ratio... ._.
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Don't let it eat you alive, friend... I currently have somewhere between 300-350 full sets ready to converted in to badges, growing every day. Summer sale is going to be a slow and tedious few days T_T
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Only a dozen so far. Not planning on buying cards or trading other than dups, so I probably won't get much further than that. :P
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Fair enough. In case you don't already know about it, I highly recommend STM. Dupe for dupe same set trade matching, plus a script you can install so it'll automatically fill the trade with the cards you were matched with. It really is a thing of beauty.
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I like crafting Badges, so I keep the cards I get from drops. I have some sets saved up for the Summer Sale as I like getting the special Badges rather than the (mostly) useless coupons.:)
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The main factors leading to all these asset flips are the poorly-thought out Greenlight system, the ability of developers to generate infinite keys for free, and the fact that the Steam marketplace feeds back into the developer's pocket (this one isn't inherently bad, but it still contributes to the problem).
If developers had to pay a percentage of the Steam store price to generate keys, they might think twice before promising free keys for Greenlight votes. Valve also needs to crack down on 'fake' votes from bot accounts by either adding a better vetting process or removing voting rights from people who don't meet certain standards (account value, account age, etc.).
As an aspiring developer, the idea that people would flood a market with products that they themselves don't think are even worth a dollar is sickening. Valve needs to change the rules so only legitimately interested consumers will buy these games.
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Valve was talking last week with TotalBiscuit and Jim Sterling about that issue and some others
http://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/2017/04/valve-consults-totalbiscuit-and-jim-sterling-on-the-future-of-steam/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeEyCYv_QDI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OyenZvskc
Valve wants to use Steam Direct to make sure “Fake Games” can’t make any money. Games like asset flips or trading card milling games, or games that just plain don’t work. Valve will have a set of rules for games on Steam Direct, and games can be removed if a game or the developer is in violation of the rules.
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Yeah, I've been keeping up with TB's Valve exploits lately since they could mean a change in the market. On the one hand, I'm glad they're changing the system, but on the other hand just throwing greenlight out for a new system might cause more problems (plus I still haven't used the Steam Greenlight pass my friend bought me). From what I've read, chances are Steam Direct will allow even more games through, but will require an up-front payment (harsh on indies) and will be accompanied by a change in the Steam store's display algorithms. Releasing during that initial phase where no one knows how the algorithm works might be pure suicide for small developers.
It's frustrating to see Valve fail to understand their own economy when they have hired economists in the past and should still have some on staff. Well, hopefully they are misunderstanding it and not allowing this stuff just because they get a cut.
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Well, for those actually good indie games buried among the crap they want to hide from the market they plan to create the "steam explorers" thing. Who knows if that would work... (since they are the own users who will choose which games deserve a better exposure, manipulatoin from certain communities is possible)
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I doubt that Valve actually cares, really, because they make a profit from market transactions. Cards farmers = more money for Valve.
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If people are stupid enough to buy it, then someone will sell it.
With the changes to Greenlight, this will become less an issue.
Really, Valve should never have implemented trading cards, but again -- who can blame them ... they sell.
It's amazing how many people didn't bother to watch the video before commenting. /facepalm
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More like 20-30w on a home server that's on 24/7 anyway so I can access it from anywhere.
Costs me a whopping $5/month to run it.
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Valve shouldn't have opened up the marketplace to just anyone, if you ask me. But what exactly is the problem with cards? I make a little money, devs make a little money, Valve makes a little money and people who think it's a good idea to spend money to craft badges... can do so. Who's harmed?
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I never said anyone was "harmed." IMHO they're useless fluff, that's all.
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Well, you said they should never have implemented them, so... I assumed you saw some harm done. I wouldn't say they're useless for those who sell them. I'd definitely say it's useless to buy them, though! :D
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Some would say it harmed the industry (along with Greenlight), by making it viable for asset-flippers to make money off crap games they shoveled to market by the dozen.
YMMV.
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It's Greenlight (and the general lack of curation) that enabled shovelware to reach Steam. Shovelware certainly makes the environment worse, but I wouldn't say it harms the industry because I don't think it actually dilutes sales: money spent on cards is hardly taken away from actual-games-buying budgets and for everyone else (from the worst asset-flipper to Platinum Games) cards are a plus sign in the bank account.
Someone linked a report of a conversation between Valve, Sterling and TotalBiscuit and one of the points was, more or less, make shovelware invisible on Steam. Why have it on sale in the first place, then? It's this dogmatism I find absurd.
Link (first bullet point after the video): http://www.capsulecomputers.com.au/2017/04/valve-consults-totalbiscuit-and-jim-sterling-on-the-future-of-steam/
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Why have it on sale in the first place, then?
-> So Valve can continue getting their slice of profitz from the secondary cards industry, just out of sight from regular consumers who're tired of seeing a storefront full of trash.
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Maybe you're right, but I don't think so. I think the profit from cards for Valve is marginal and expendable. I think Newell and maybe someone else of those in charge have this stubborn vision of an open marketplace (Steam as a "network API" as a goal, as stated by Newell) and they don't want to give it up, so they're trying to mitigate its consequences.
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It's Greenlight (and the general lack of curation) that enabled shovelware to reach Steam.
And it's the trading cards that made money for those shovelware companies. That's why the keys were given away by the 1000's.
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I don't know... Are cards that profitable? Maybe they are just profitable enough to make it worth it to pump worthless games on the market.
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That's what the video in the OP is about. Asset flipping devs unload thousands of free keys to the farmers and the farmers use thousands of bots to farm the cards and sell them. The devs get their cut (since no one is buying their trash anyway), and the farmers make their money.
edit: to be fair, I should add that bundle sites add to the spread of these companies.
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Sure, most bundle sites are accomplices of the mechanism.
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Solution
You are developer :
- pay $1000 and you can generate 1000 keys
- $5000 - 5000 keys
- $10000 - unlimit keys generation
Result
- no more keys for positive reviews
- no more trash games for $0,01
- less cards on market, >price
- less shitty developers
😊
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you have better idea?
With unlimit key generation all changes with the system of reviews do not mean anything ;_;
For example, i'm trash developer, i got 20 000 keys of my trash game for free.
I gave 10 000 keys to my friends. They bought 10-20 copies of my trash game in steam store (for different accounts) and wrote positive reviews. And they can sell 10 000 keys in their own "$0,01-per-game store" for profits.
Now my trash game with 90% ratings, i have profits from cards and sell keys (another 10 000) in my own store (yep, card-farmers will buy it). Good?
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The better idea would be for Valve to do a better job at detecting these "fake games" and keeping them off the store.
If they can't be sold on steam, they can't generate Steam cards either.
But Valve seem to forget that Steam is their private property, not some publically owned democracy, and with proper terms of use for developers (and enforcing those terms, which means putting in effort) they can easily label these "fake game" developers the digital equivalent of trespassers and boot them off with impunity if they want to.
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Well Valve recently update key generation terms to combat this:
Steam keys are designed to help our partners run their businesses on other retail and digital stores, where the partner is compensated for every unit sold. Keys are not intended to be sold in bulk or given away for free, except for testing. If you want to give your game away for free, we think that’s great, but it should also be free on Steam. If you want to sell copies of your game for pennies or less, Steam probably isn’t the right store for your game, and Steam keys aren’t an appropriate way to distribute your game in that manner.
Note: Valve reserves the right to reject key requests.
Who knows if they will even try to enforce this.
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Valve killing greenlight, inviting TB & Jim Sterling along for an Q and A, this is combating the Greenlight shite problem. There is going to be a new paid service to dissuade shitty devs from asset flipping and card profiteering, no price has been put on it but $5,000 was spoken of, more likely going to be $500.
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Said above, the idea that idling cards is a money maker is such a fallacy. Most the games that people idle are gained for free, free game with cards = profitz right?
Free game with 5 cards might get you what? 20p? Yet you'll be spending more than that on electricity running your computer to idle the games. Not to mention the manpower time spent gathering keys, setting up bots etc. You may as well get a job and earn proper money.
Idling whilst you are at your PC, sure if you are into it, I've always struggled to get into idling though, I liked it when it was glitched and I could insta drop every card. That bought me in around £40 level 50 + backgrounds/emotes which was worth it for the time spent, but id never leave it running overnight.
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Apparently it's profitable for some people.
Probably because they had enough money to invest up front to make it work at large enough scale. (With enough copies of the same bot running on the same machine to pay for electricity can still make money).
And because it's all automated, you can do it alongside a normal job once things are up and running...
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Nope. Without problem you can get laptops with less than 100W power cosumption. 10 hours of running it costs 1kWh price of electricity (quick google says it's around 12p in UK). In that time you can idle at least 2 games, earning 20p each. But let's cut your estimation by half - still profitable. Now the fun part. Laptop is perfectly capable of idling hundreds of accounts at the same time. So, for 12p of electricity you get 20 pounds of profits for every 100 accounts. Sounds like good business to me
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Who's running 12 bot accounts from a 100w laptop. Who has a gaming rig and is running anything at 100w? That's a definite exception case using an uncommon power source.
Overall, idling is not worth the money, you lose money through time spent to gain the money and the money you put in to set up the account, buy the game, power used to supply the laptop/pc to run shit.
2 hours of idling will not net you £20, you're lucky if you can get 5p return on trash games. 2 hours before a game even starts to drop cards, lets say every game has met that 2 hour criteria, I have yet to see the kind of returns you're speaking of in 2 hours. When cards dropped instantly and I had over 1,000 cards to idle, around 3/4 hours got me £40. That was instant drops, over 1,000 cards and many of those cards worth 25p+.
No one will ever convince me that my time is worth the money you get out of idling cards. Do it in the background whilst your are doing something sure. If you are desparate near sales, sure. New game with expensive backgrounds, sure. All day every day, nah not for me.
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We aren't talking average gamer with at most couple of alts. We are speaking card business. <100W rating is nothing uncommon in business line of laptops. And it can easily run thousand of accounts at the same time. Tbh, you could idle 100 accounts at the same time on your phone if you had android version of ASF
10 hours. It's plenty time to fully idle two games. Even if you earn 5p from each (20p came from you first), at 100 accounts it will be 5GBP. Nearly effortles - all you have to to is buy/generate a bulk of keys and copy-paste to bot's input window. Bots can (and do) sell those cards on market, so again - your time cost is a big round 0.
5 pounds may be nothing for you, but it adds up and it's only 100 accounts. Nothing forbids to have a 1k accounts. 50 a day (1500/month) isn't chump change even for brits.
I agree with you that idling by hand couple of accounts is not worth it. What makes it worth is the large scale and full automation of the process - this is what really drives the flood of crap with cards. Not the +1 trash collectors, but giant bot farms
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Bot farms seems excessive, but if they exist, more power to them. I'm not aware of a bot farm with 1,000+ accounts, if they exist then fair play mega bucks, still seems like a needless amount of effort for me personally.
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With less than $5 a month, you can get a very cheap VPS server and run all your bots there.
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I'm not sure this guy knows entirely what he is talking about... Why does he a show a Deus Ex: Mankind Devided Foil card that's worth 170 gems when he claims that those farmed cards are usually not sold but turned into gems, when most cards are only worth 2 - 4 gems ? So if a trash non-foil trading card gives 3 gems on average you have to spend roughly 333 cards to get a sack of gems that's worth around 0,88 € on the market. That doesn't seem to add up. Even if they use their gems to craft Boosters with a good return on investment it would be way cheaper to sell those cards and buy gems from the market.
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Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Some cards are even only 1 gem worth.
Cards are sold as in on market.
With gems: ~0.78-0.80€ per sack this means 3 gems * 3 cards per game = 9 gems per game
That means 0,0072€ per idled game. Since game keys are sold at like 2 RUB, it would simply not be profitable
In same case:
Sell 3 cards at 3 cents each (1 cent profit) = 3 cents per game = 4 times more.
That starts to be near 'buy in' cost for games. (I guess some games have more cards and sell for more than 1 cent profit, especially since Russia has big advantage due to lower denomination than $0.01 are available.
I think Russia can decrement in ~$0.0001, so they put fraction below you, and yet it rounds to same in USD.
I think this year Valve said they put so it looks at same currency first, so advantage is now less, but still is.
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I thought it was stupid too, developpers don't give games or sell them super cheap for people to turn cards into gems. Developpers don't make money on gems but they keep a cut on the market when you sell cards.
Also the guy in the video talks like he just invented the wheel but a lot of people here are already aware of what's going on.
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Seems there's a whole Russian network dedicated to it.
And we are surprised by that? :)
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amoral scum that need to be burned off of the Earth's surface
clever capitalists exploiting every aspect of a market Valve allows them to exploit
Why not both? :(
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Seems there's a whole Russian network dedicated to it.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjoYaJWzylI for more explanation, there'll probably be follow-ups from the same guy (SidAlpha) and/or others.
For me, this mostly fills in missing links for what's been a suspicion ever since it became clear this was how Digital Homicide really made their money.
Still think the main problem is that these trashy asset flips make it onto the store though - if that wouldn't happen, they would not be generating card drops for the farmers either.
Edit 1:
Should include that Valve Direct is supposed to combat part of this according to Valve. See TotalBiscuit's and Jim Sterling's vids on those as well.
(Thanks perrolijo & others for reminding me of those)
Of course, a topic like this this would also need a polaziring poll, so:
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