I really hope there's something more to it than just collecting cards as a reward for crafting badges and buying games. I've really enjoyed some of the previous sale events that have integrated in-game achievements. The fact that they sometimes offered free games and DLC was certainly a part of it, but I also enjoyed the push to try out games I otherwise might have ignored, and a lot of devs went all out with creative new game modes and content. Feels like it's been a while since they've done that, though.
[edit]: Kudos on SteamCardExchange, by the way. I've used the bots a few times in the past, and I often find myself referring to the showcase. Super handy. :)
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the issue is that programs like Steam Achievement Manager can be used to exploit said offers, if they use achievements. with trading cards, it can't be modified.
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There was a Winter Event where you received coal for doing various tasks. The one requirement was that your account had to have at least one purchased game on it. At the time, Humble Bundle gave Steam keys for .01 purchases so it was abused severely to make eligible accounts for the Winter Event.
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I'm going to be a little more precise.
Among the games from the ongoing HIB (the HIB 4), a good majority had "coal achievements". So a shitload of people started abusing it to make alternate accounts and farm loads of coal, for trading purposes and/or in an attempt to win the Grand Winter Prize of the sale (all games on Steam. yeah).
It turned out that the HIB guys noticed it and decided to raise the Steam keys minimum to 1$. They also wrote a message about their dissapointment, but I couldn't find it.
Anyway, thanks to that and SAM, we'll probably never get achievement sales again... unless they do it in a more intelligent fashion.
Fun fact : some people had more than 1000 coals with this abuse. The guy who won only had 7. Karma, bitches!
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Unfortunately, I don't think your memory is that precise.
Two of the five games had one coal achievement each so I wouldn't call that a "good majority". Almost every day had an achievement in a free game or a easy achievement such as "Go to your Friends List and make a trade!", but these required a purchased game which is where Humble Bundle came in.
http://blog.humblebundle.com/post/14549340777/1-min-price-for-getting-steam-keys
There's the post you were looking for as well.
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You're right, I think I should have said a "good part" instead of majority. Time does indeed damage your memory.
Still, it must be noted that it was actually 3 instead of 2 : Cave Story+ had a christmas achievement, but it was not included in the Winter Sale achievements for an unknown reason (the abusers already knew about the achievements before the sale began).
And thank you for finding the post.
EDIT : yeah actually it was 4 : Bit Trip Runner also received achievements during the christmas season that were unused by the sale, that's why I thought of "majority".
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Maybe Valve could take a page out of SG's book. "You need $100 in non-bundled games, stop your bitching, fellas, everything's on sale!" It'd work better, even, since they can tell what was store-bought.
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They were already a well-known leader back at the coal farming incident too. Why did they need to do that? Also, I heard more about other sales than Steam.
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As for this year, I recall rockpapershotgun or pcgamer only mentioning two sales - steam and humble. Nothing about greenmangaming quick sales nor about amazon nor about gamersgate.
As for previous actions - I don't remember internet making that kind of ruckus about Steam Season Sales before they started giving away free stuff; but I can't remember if there were sales without free stuff :P
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I can't comment on that, my first was the coal one, but even if news sites only talked about Steam and Humble, I got a lot more updates about the other sales from here, forums, chat.
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You probably should have seen this coming after the summer sale. I've been waiting to craft because cards have more value than coupons for games I don't want
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Pretty much this. I only level up when the cards are announced.
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Glad to hear that! That was one of the main reasons in the early days to start that project. You had no choice other than to craft it yourself or spend hours looking for someone with that specific level of a badge to check whether you want to upgrade it or not.
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Yeah I stopped early on some badges (Sword of the Stars: the Pit, I'm looking at you!) because I didnt want a crappy goblin as a L5 badge!
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Yeah your site is great, I use it sicne a while back to check which badges (and which level) I want.
Also used hte bots, they helped me complete the Summer badges :p
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Mysterious Sale Card is the old one, they just renamed all these cards (maybe to show them correct in steam market, cause market is based on names, not on class id's).
If you craft something you will find a card with a number.
(Mysterious Sale Card in inventories are renamed, I think if someone buys such a card it will rename itself. Just a theory.)
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Is this to persuade people like me to stop selling cards and get hooked on badge making? It won't work, Steam. I will always luz $$ more than has badges!
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Or to push up card values for a bigger cut. Maybe.
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That's what I gambled on. Now I've reached my yearly limit. I refuse to give tax info to Steam in order to sell more. It's not cash we receive, it's wallet funds to spend strictly on Steam. Fuck that. No blood for badges!
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That would be legal obligation on Steam's part. Not their fault. SOP. Trust me. I hate handing out 1099s, but sometimes I gotta do it, too.
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More importantly, what do you get for crafting them? :P
( Edit: Well, I have all ten now, but there's no big blue 'Craft' button - wth..? )
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It won't show up until the sale, most likely, just like the summer sale variation on this did.
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nice webpage. any chance you can add booster pack prices to the sorting list?
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I'll see about that. Haven't talked internal about Boosters in a while. We didn't want our Bot to support them, maybe we restrict them from the Bot but include the Booster the the Showcase Page.
Where would you like to see it being added? To the right of the last card, similar to the Badges and Foil Badge?
Would still cause confusion because it may or may contain Foil cards, so do we have to add it to both card sets? And in that case it may seem there are two different existing boosters ...
Maybe just a button somewhere with "Boosterpack - Price: $xx.xx"?
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I'd like to see a comparison between the booster pack price and the price of the average 3 cards of that badge. That would be useful for the bargain shoppers who still need a lot of cards for a given badge. Considering the rarity of foils, ignore them in this calculation.
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Interesting idea. Maybe add it besides from the Showcase under "Tools", just like we did with the Badge Pricelists: Badge Pricelist - SteamCardExchange.net
We could call it "Booster Effectiveness" and make a table with the price of the Booster, and any combination of 3 regular cards to 3 foil cards by using the average price of cards of that game.
Not promising anything, it's just me tossing around ideas :)
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I left myself a note on my to-do list but unfortunately it won't be happening before Christmas or even next year. I'll have to hand in my bachelor thesis on December 18th the latest and Christmas is not the time to be as productive as usual either ...
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Steam trading cards and badges: Because steam was not drowning in enough cash before, so they decided to create a rip-off micro economy. Hurray!!!
-_-
Just in case anyone was wondering this as I was, at level 100 you still only get between 1-4 card pack drops per month. So if youre thinking you are leveling up to eventually turn a profit, don't do it for that reason :/
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Bah. If I'd remembered about this sort of thing, I wouldn't have crafted my badges until now. :(
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Ha i did the same. Have over 50 sets ready to be crafted. bwahahahahaha.
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I tend to hold off on crafting badges until I have money to spend on games. If there's nothing on sale that I want to play, I'll start crafting badges, hoping to get a coupon for something I want to buy.
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Well played! I've crafted one yesterday myself and instantly sold that Card as these prices could only go down. Guess I quadrupled my value :)
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It's been roughly 6 months now and they are still sold for constant price. I wonder when their rarity increases enough for them to raise again. If they'll use the exact same cards/badges next year again I doubt they'll ever increase!
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I think they will add other cards every year (previous sales had their own badges too without cards), but the prices will probably take 2 years or more until they start to rise.
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I will wait those two years for this BioShock summer foil to rise.
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Well I did the right thing waiting to craft my badges, but I've just crafted them all without regard to how much those cards were worth, then started opening all the booster packs I'd collected without thinking about if it was a good call or not.
Sold one of the 2 Snow Globe foils I got, for only £1.39, but I learnt my lesson from last time not to hold onto new foils too long.
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Simply craft any set of cards into a badge and you will get 3 items: 1x Emoticon, 1x Background and 1 Snow-Globe event card.
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Steam just released the first "information" about their upcoming winter event - the Snow Globes.
They added a new Badge to craft to your profile with a set of 10 cards. Right now you can obtain those cards by crafting any badge. Instead of receiving coupons you'll get any of those cards.
You can see them all listed here: Snow Globes - Steam Winter Event Cards [Beware: Shameless self promotion of my SteamCardExchange project!]
They've done the same during the summer sale where they added those cards a couple of days before the actual sale started!
Update 12/20/2013: The event started earlier today and for the first time ever they changed their pattern with 5 regular Badges and 1 Foil Badge. This time you can craft unlimited Level of Badges and we've discovered multiple versions of each so far. 21 Emoticons and 16 Backgrounds got added along with several Item's for different games you get by crafting the Snow Globes Badges.
Definitely more than I expected!
SteamCardExchange.net - Steamgifts.com promotion Thread
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