PSA: Make money off your Steam games.

For those who don't know, most Steam games have cards that you get by spending time in the games. These cards sell for usually about 10 cents each... not much you would say, except that when you have a long list of Steam games, with 5 cards or so each, if you were to get them all you could get a nice chunk of money, say if your Steam list is 100 games, that's 500 cards or $50!

The problem is willing to play the games for so long, or leaving them running in the background would be too much a hassle for the gain, but that's where the post come from. There is an open source program I'm using called "Idle Master" (you can read the code) that basically takes your Steam list, and goes through each game and simulates that you're playing it, basically sends Steam the same calls of 'game starting' and 'game ending' that the game would send.

It's not dangerous as there is no hacking involved. The only possible problem could be if you're playing one of the VAC secured games at the same time (mostly competitive games like Counterstrike, Left 4 Dead, etc). If anything you can just run it when you're not playing and get a nice Steam credit.

I don't know if badges and cards are the same thing, but I've played Skyrim for over 1500 hours and only have 4 of the 8 badges. Something seems fishy.

those are cards :lol:, the other 4 you have to buy them from the market to craft the first badge

ive always sold my cards, ever since the whole thing started back in the beta;
1003 games eligible for booster packs x 3 cards = 3000 cards
3000 cards x 0.05 cents =150 euros yey (this being an example, i remember at the beginning cards were even 1 euro each), so all in all i made much more than that

ps i use ASF to get the cards

Well, each time there is some fun innovation, there is an exploit program, more and more people will get the exploit program and either steam has to stop with trading cards, reduce the money to almost nothingness for each card, or implement some nasty software blocking the cheating software. The computer industry is a tough one.

Don't use those programs, get your cards by playing games instead as it was intended.

Valve makes money from every card sale, so nope, they wont stop anything

I don't see much harm in this program either though of course I would not want to put my hands into the fire for it.

Personally I played all the games I had. I even spent like 2-3 hours in games like team fortress, which I normally wouldn't play at all but which I happened to have. Gather some experience about games I usually don't play.
The only times when I started the game and went afk was for games which implemented these cards retroactively.

That said, I always re-invest. I collect the badges you can make with these cards.
So I sell all the ones which I have multiple times, and then buy the missing ones.

While in most cases you end up with 3 of 8 cards, and having one card twice, so you need to sell one and buy 5, it actually works out on average for me. That's also because now and then you get free card packs as gift from steam. In the beginning I chose a couple of games where I did not complete the badges, but right now I am at 7,69€ and basically complete all badges.

For me it's more of a fun collecting game. I don't pay any real money, and I don't get any money out of it.

I have seen these cards in my account many times and have never done anything with them. If it's not too much trouble, how do you sell them? Is it a super easy process with a defined market price? Do I have to haggle over each card? Thanks!

Jaguar said:

I have seen these cards in my account many times and have never done anything with them. If it's not too much trouble, how do you sell them? Is it a super easy process with a defined market price? Do I have to haggle over each card? Thanks!

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It's an easy process minus the email spam (you need to approve via emails unless you got an authenticator on Steam) and wait time until someone boy your stuff. In the Steam app, you need to go into your inventory (View->Inventory), next select a card and you should see a sell button on the bottom right.

You can also access the Market via Community->Market and then click the "Sell an item" button.

You don't haggle, but you set the price you want to sell your item at, not that it's not in cent (I once put a card at $30 because I forgot the 0. in front of it).

if you have many cards to sell, i would recommend this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/steam-inventory-helper/cmeakgjggjdlcpncigglobpjbkabhmjl

ASF + WinAuth + Inv Helper = no hassle

Personally I'd just recommend to open the steam inventory in a real browser. Gives you much more flexibility than the built in and crippled steam browser.
Just go to your steam inventory, right click, choose "copy page url" and open that url with a real browser.

porcozaur said:

if you have many cards to sell, i would recommend this https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/steam-inventory-helper/cmeakgjggjdlcpncigglobpjbkabhmjl

ASF + WinAuth + Inv Helper = no hassle

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Nice! this makes it even better!

GothicGothicness said:

Well, each time there is some fun innovation, there is an exploit program, more and more people will get the exploit program and either steam has to stop with trading cards, reduce the money to almost nothingness for each card, or implement some nasty software blocking the cheating software. The computer industry is a tough one.

Don't use those programs, get your cards by playing games instead as it was intended.

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The thing is, this is not 'fun'. It's really not any different than leaving a game running in your computer overnight. At least this way the video card is not being used, which saves some trees somewhere

crpgnut said:

I don't know if badges and cards are the same thing, but I've played Skyrim for over 1500 hours and only have 4 of the 8 badges. Something seems fishy.

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You can only earn about half the cards by playing the game. There's also a very small chance of earning bonus cards. I don't remember the exact rules on it and I've only gotten one pack of cards that way. (And it still wasn't enough to earn a badge.)

The idea is you are supposed to TRADE these cards with your friends. You give them some cards from one game, they give you some from another, and you both complete a badge for the game. But yeah, you can also buy them off the Steam market.

Badges give you… well… not a lot. I think the main draw is that you can put a game-related emoticon in your forum posts. Oh, and your "Steam level" goes up.

Programs like this will just mean more cards on the market, meaning the prices will go down.

I genuinely do not understand this market. For something to be worth something, someone else must be willing to pay money for it. The only case I see is Kordanor's case of reinvestment but that still seems to imply that there is value in there to begin with. I have a hard time believing that there are that many people willing to spend money (and time) to buy these virtual goods but I guess there is. With TF2 hats, I could at least see some money laundering possibility but these cards are so worthless that it seems unlikely to me to be used for that.

figment said:

I genuinely do not understand this market. For something to be worth something, someone else must be willing to pay money for it. The only case I see is Kordanor's case of reinvestment but that still seems to imply that there is value in there to begin with. I have a hard time believing that there are that many people willing to spend money (and time) to buy these virtual goods but I guess there is. With TF2 hats, I could at least see some money laundering possibility but these cards are so worthless that it seems unlikely to me to be used for that.

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Some people are just collectors. Same people who would spend hours grinding in some game to get a collectible.

Was looking at my stats, i did 8,078 Market Transactions since 2012 when all this thing started, removing lets say 578 for other things i sold (tho this number too is very big), that remains 7500 cards sold, so yeah there are definitely ppl buying :lol:, especially this year when gleam flourished with its free games giveaways

figment said:

I genuinely do not understand this market. For something to be worth something, someone else must be willing to pay money for it. The only case I see is Kordanor's case of reinvestment but that still seems to imply that there is value in there to begin with. I have a hard time believing that there are that many people willing to spend money (and time) to buy these virtual goods but I guess there is. With TF2 hats, I could at least see some money laundering possibility but these cards are so worthless that it seems unlikely to me to be used for that.

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Value is self explicit: enabling the desired scheme of making money off playing vid products.

That is the value of it.

crpgnut said:

I don't know if badges and cards are the same thing, but I've played Skyrim for over 1500 hours and only have 4 of the 8 badges. Something seems fishy.

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Only half of a games cards (rounded up) will drop, so a game with 8 cards will give you 4 card drops. The rest you're supposed to trade for or buy on the steam market.

GothicGothicness said:

Don't use those programs, get your cards by playing games instead as it was intended.

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Valve has encouraged the use of cards, both for devs & players, and getting cards specifically to sell on the market. They get a cut from each sale, so it's in their interest that you farm those cards. They are also apparently fine with games getting onto steam that specifically are there for card farming, that have no real qualities, and that are sold super cheap, or given away on mass, and where the main thing is that you get trading cards that you then can sell on the market.

Zloth said:

You can only earn about half the cards by playing the game. There's also a very small chance of earning bonus cards. I don't remember the exact rules on it and I've only gotten one pack of cards that way. (And it still wasn't enough to earn a badge.)

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Every time someone crafts a badge, someone else gets a "booster" containing 3 cards from that game. The booster is given to a random person who has already got all their card drops from that particular game. The chance of getting a booster depends on your level, with every 10 levels giving you a +20 percentage points chance of a drop rate. So a person who's level 50 will effectively have *2 the chance of getting a booster compared to someone who's level 0.

figment said:

I genuinely do not understand this market. For something to be worth something, someone else must be willing to pay money for it. The only case I see is Kordanor's case of reinvestment but that still seems to imply that there is value in there to begin with.

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Check your steam friends list. Anyone who's more than about level 20-30 is very likely to have crafted several badges. Personally I've made, based on my transaction history on Steam, 156.78€ from card sales, and I don't card farm, I just get the cards from the games I play, and dump them on the market.

Fnord said:

Personally I've made, based on my transaction history on Steam, 156.78€ from card sales, and I don't card farm, I just get the cards from the games I play, and dump them on the market.

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I don't begrudge you for selling them; by all means make some money. As I stated before, I'm perplexed by who is buying them. You got 156€. But someone or lots of someones spent that money. I'd be shocked if you spent or reinvested the equivalent in buying other peoples badges.

It can't just be people reinvesting. So we have marketing/advertising budgets as one source. I guess all I have to do is look at my nephew and recognize its ultimately the allowance and gift money of parents of 15 year olds.

figment said:

I don't begrudge you for selling them; by all means make some money. As I stated before, I'm perplexed by who is buying them. You got 156€. But someone or lots of someones spent that money. I'd be shocked if you spent or reinvested the equivalent in buying other peoples badges.

It can't just be people reinvesting. So we have marketing/advertising budgets as one source. I guess all I have to do is look at my nephew and recognize its ultimately the allowance and gift money of parents of 15 year olds.

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People are not reinvesting, they're just doing it to increase their steam level. There are minor benefits to having a high steam level, like getting a higher droprate for "boosters", and being able to get a larger friends list, and at some intervals you're able to get some more elements for your profile page on steam, like being able to have an extra achievement showcase and such, but really, it's mainly about getting that number indicating your steam level go up. And this is not a new phenomena. People were buying crap games for Xbox 360 to get achievements, which in turn made a counter go up. There was no real gain to it, all that happened was that a counter went up.

Things people will do to earn money. Get a real job, lazy good-for-nothings!