Steam Trading Cards

Started by SilverSpook, Sun 24/03/2019 06:59:05

Previous topic - Next topic

SilverSpook

I ask cause I haven't personally done it much, but I hear that Steam trading cards are fairly popular, and I was considering adding them to my game (Neofeud) Steam options.

Thanks for your input!

Stupot

I don't really use Steam a hell of a lot as it is, but I'm not really interested in the trading cards. Apparently I have a few and they're worth a little bit of money somehow.

Ghost

#2
I actually like to get at least a full set of cards and craft a badge for games that I really enjoy. I'm not interested in the actual trading/selling, since Steam has done its best to make this as convulted and inconvenient as possible (confirming emails, sales are held for a few days, etc). But I'll happily shell out the extra monies to get a badge for a fun game.
If I somehow end up with foil cards... well then there is no helping me, I have to get the foil set and badge then, too, it's like find a rare in a Magic the Gathering blister pack.

Trading cards canalso be a way for the developer to earn a few extra cents while "giving" a little something extra in return. Win win. So no harm in adding them, as far as I am concerned.

Blondbraid

I'm one of those people who has hundreds of cards but no idea what to use them for.
I mean, I've tried selling some but I only ever got one sold and as Ghost said, it's just so inconvenient and difficult to do so.
I've seen the option to break them into gems and use the gems to craft a new card, but it seemed to take so many gems that
I'm not sure if it'd be worth it.

What are badges used for anyway?  ???


Retro Wolf

It is a bit tedious, I've successfully sold most of my trading cards by being a penny below the recommended sell price. I've made about £3, but I don't use steam that much anyway.

I'm under the impression that the dev gets a cut of the trading card sales? Also some people will buy your game purely for the trading cards, they'll just "idle" the game to generate cards. You could make some cool looking cards with your skills SilverSpook.

Danvzare

#5
I still have no idea how they even work.  ???
I've played a game with them, all the way to completion. Even getting every single achievement, and I still have no idea how to access the steam cards for the game.
Which is a shame, because some of those cards contain additional lore.

doctorhibert

Definitely add them. It's very little extra work for you, and you get a cut from all the sales.

The way steam cards work is that you simply get them from time played, but you can only get half of them. So if your badge requires 10 cards, you'll get 5 from playing the game, and you'll have to buy/trade for the other 5. Once you craft a badge, you get a background and a couple of emoticons. If you have good BGs and/or emoticons you can make some money from that, since people will be buying cards to craft badges and then sell the items.

Most people don't really care much about trading cards, so they'll just sell them. Every sale gives you a cut. The sales are only a couple of cents for the normal cards and maybe 50 cents for the foil, but they can add up

So basically, try to make the coolest/most useful background and emojis so people will buy and sell stuff

Ghost

Quote from: Blondbraid on Sun 24/03/2019 10:41:49
What are badges used for anyway?  ???

They can be displayed on your profile, and that is about it. They are purely cosmetic, though you do get these weird "xp" if you craft lots if I am not mistaken. And xp give you more ways to customize your profile as you level up.

As a cynic one could just say that Steam wanted to add a social element to its site (card trading), and what they got were people idling games to get some easy profit, so they added security in form of tedium instead of just overhauling the system for real.
I still consider a badge something worth making and showcasing, if just as a sign of liking a game- but honestly, few people may think that way.

WHAM

From what I've seen, card trading has lost most of its meaning and all of my friends have a notification sitting on the top right corner of their steam window, letting them know they have "X new items". A lot of people don't even bother to look at the cards nowadays, since they have so many and the effort of selling them is not worth the trouble to do it, considering the return of 1-2 cents per card.

However, if the effort is minimal, I do still recommend adding them to a game, and am looking to do so for my own game as well, despite my disinterest in them. Despite their lack of worth and tedious nature, they are still seen as one of those marks of a complete game being sold on steam, so if "Achiement Spammer 2000" or "Titty-Bouncer Extreme" have them, your game may be viewer negatively by comparison for not having them. And hey, there are the few people who do like collecting badges, and those people will thank you for the opportunity. :)
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

SilverSpook

Interesting, I actually heard some fellow devs say they're a huge revenue source. Some kickstarter backers even adamantly demanded including the cards.

When Neofeud released in 2017, Steam had limited most new games without massive user bases from adding trading cards, I think due to misuse. I didn't even have the option in my Steamworks developer account at the time.

But I just recently noticed that I'm now able to create cards for Neofeud, so yay! I actually made a just-for-fun 'Blackjack 21' card game with Neofeud art already, for playing aruond in the Silver Spook livestreams. So I think it won't be too difficult to get the art into Steam Card format.

LimpingFish

It depends. Rare card sets (ie. sets for games that don't have a huge install base, or for games that rarely go on sale) can command "high" prices. Sets for cheap games (or games that feature heavily in bundles and whatnot) usually bottom out at the three cent rate fairly quickly.

Valve does a lot to combat bot card farming (the main reason shovel-ware games feature cards in the first place), so the market isn't what it used to be.

As to why people buy cards: Cards mean badges, badges mean levels, levels (every ten) mean extra friend slots, etc.
Steam: LimpingFish
PSN: LFishRoller
XB: TheActualLimpingFish
Spotify: LimpingFish

WHAM

Quote from: LimpingFish on Sun 24/03/2019 23:20:35
As to why people buy cards: Cards mean badges, badges mean levels, levels (every ten) mean extra friend slots, etc.

Wait, what? Friend slots? Is that an ACTUAL thing?
Wrongthinker and anticitizen one. Pending removal to memory hole. | WHAMGAMES proudly presents: The Night Falls, a community roleplaying game

Ghost

Quote from: WHAM on Mon 25/03/2019 08:09:07
Wait, what? Friend slots? Is that an ACTUAL thing?
Aye, it sure is. You can't just MAKE friends, man. You need slots for them. Where else would you put them?  (laugh)


One thing that's also worth mentioning is how games can differ quite a lot in their "set size". There are games that feature a set of about 6 cards and I saw at least two that require a dozen cards for a full set. I'm pretty sure smaller sets, while less lucrative, give a good incentive to complete it at least once, even if it means purchasing missing cards. Your game always drops half the number of cards of a set but you can get doubles, so there's never a way to farm a game "fully".
Would be interesting to learn *who* decides on the set size, actually.

SMF spam blocked by CleanTalk