Is the Steam Auction a Bad Omen?

I don't think they can really do a system wide rollback of the market. There are a lot of edge cases that would present a problem...say, wallet funds spent by a user on in-game purchases in a F2P game, or wallet funds being used to buy something like EVE Online PLEX - subscription tokens that are tradable and often sold on the secondary market.

I think the best they can do at this point is just cease the entire program, or at the least severely restrict it. There are going to be a lot of pissed off people either way, though.

It's par for course for Steam. I was in the business when TF2 first introduced trading and crafting. You'd try to set up trades in trade servers for hours for maybe a single dollar in profit. As time went on, the profits rose per trade but still a complete waste of time. Till I decided to give most my valuable inventory, 12 keys, 40+ hats and some other crap to a random dude from Spain. Trading took over my gaming time in an very obsessive way, to the point I set up three computers to idle (and drive the electricity bills way up) in servers to get item drops.

I've witnessed many things that crashed the market. Traders with hidden agendas, scammers, glitchers, mules for offloading hot tophats, you name it. Valve can't be bothered to actually implement an actual functional market place without some stupid exploit. Never again Steam!

Wow, this has been surprisingly interesting. I never would have guessed this would suddenly be such a shitshow.

I do hope this doesn't hurt the card economy (ecardnomy) too much, though. I quite like the loop of selling off cards and getting a few free games, often with their own cards, each sale.

@mb said:

Yeah, it wouldn't necessarily address people who profited from the event and have already spent the money in their Steam wallet, but at least it would be helpful to people that are saying "I just spent $50 on gems [Like an idiot. -ed], now they're all gone". Obviously that person shouldn't get back like a million gems or whatever, but at least they'd get the money back.

It'll be interesting to see where they draw the line on who to ban. There are the obvious people who duped a bunch of gems and sold them, but all of the secondary people who bought gems to make cards and potentially sold those boosters/the cards in them for a tidy profit are...kind of profiteering, but it's obviously not as bad as the people who duped millions of gems.

Some guy had amassed 1.8 BILLION gems. Now with the going rate if 1 gem = 1 cent...the guy was a multi-millionaire. I'm not even kidding since he could have used those gems to legitly buys gems with. Offcourse they had to do the stupid thing and bid 9 million gems per game.

@shagge said:

All this time, you've secretly been an alt account of Drew.

@bisonhero: The jig is up! Cheese it, the fuzz are on to us! *hides under cardboard box*

@bisonhero said:

And in a way I profiteered in the third degree by buying up a bunch of booster packs when the market was flush and they were going for a good amount less than average. In this case, I didn't spend any money on the cheap gems themselves but still took advantage of the indirect economic forces at work. The most corrupt link the chain is the money that transferred from steam users to the ones who were duping gems but then I may have likely passed along cash to those who bought into the duped gems.

I will echo that at the very least this is all incredibly fascinating to think about. I would love to have heard the conversations unfold at Valve during this whole thing.

@bacongames: I bet the conversation at Valve was a bunch of yelling and very sternly worded emails. Or maybe everybody started a jousting tournament using their office-desks-with-wheels as their trusty steeds. Fuck, I don't know how they resolve disputes at Valve.

@bisonhero: Yeah...well, I for one will be anxiously watching for Valve's response to this. I think the biggest issue facing everyone is the massive influx of cards into the market. Supply of a lot of cards and boosters just went through the roof - I was buying some booster packs for $.06 earlier, and reselling the cards for $.05-$.14 a piece. This may eventually be somewhat mitigated by people crafting badges thereby taking the cards out of the market, but not all of them are going to be crafted. Most probably won't.

Check out the Kick-Ass 2 Booster Packs, this is just the first one I looked at:

@shagge said:

@mb: Yeah, it may just be that there is no way to roll back the cards (unless they have some magical button that knows when all the booster packs and the cards in them were made, and can just undo all badges/cards that exist as a result of any account that Valve knows was an account that purchased 3-cent gem bags). The gems seem like the easiest thing to undo, but every other effect that had is a lot more complicated.

I wonder if gems being marketable was an oversight? I can't believe that Valve's economists didn't see this coming, even without the duping.

I don't know if the biggest issue is the supply influx. If the influx was the only consequence, at most I can see average prices being lower for a while and more cards being owned inventories than usual but that won't stop people from re-adjusting their sell prices back to normal. Even during the mad rush for boosters, card prices stayed the same because people were offloading them at market prices but when the rush ended the cards had no reason to move much.

@mb said:

If they weren't dupable, I think the market would've been fine. 1000 gems would've actually been worth something, since breaking down cards/backgrounds/emoticons into 1000 gems takes some work, and requires something like 10-15 items (highest individual item seemed to be 100 gems, but lots of stuff was only like 40 gems, some cards were only worth like 1 gem I seem to recall). The average value of all of those would've been maybe at least 50 cents?

I expect that it would've created a "run on the bank" sort of situation, except everybody would be rushing to the marketplace to buy all the emoticons/backgrounds since they're worth like 40-60 gems, but are like 3 cents a piece, whereas trading cards are worth similar amounts of gems or sometimes less, but also cost more on the marketplace.

It would probably have been more efficient to try to do that to get gems and use gems to get boosters, for a while, until the marketplace values of emoticons/backgrounds increased appropriately, or the marketplace just ran out of them or something.

Sure it will - prices on cards are only high because they are rare. Look at foil cards, they are expensive - then look at the prices for the regular cards from the most common games, they are 3 or 4 cents. This can be seen in the Steam Market when new games with trading cards come out, when the cards first show up on the market they are priced extraordinarily high because there are so few of them, then as more and more get introduced, prices fall in line with what other typical cards cost.

It's a pure supply and demand model, supply was increased and demand wasn't. It's basic economics.

@mb: Valve takes a cut of every transaction on the marketplace and obviously the transaction stay in users steam wallets so that money is basically Valves. Having the gems be marketable was definitely not an oversight because as with all the gimmicks they do with their sales they make money off it.

You are absolutely right but since the economic system is largely low impact and superfluous, it's not something that I necessarily see as a problem if prices fall for digital trading cards on Steam. People's livelihoods aren't on the line, there won't be far reaching economic consequences. People might just have more baubles in their Steam inventory.

EDIT: Seems like they're doing the sensible thing and rolling back market purchases and resetting people's recycled gems. Since the money spent is all Steam wallet money, there's no issues with bank transaction or the like. Giving back recycled gems is actually a bit of a freebie if you legitimately crafted a booster with recycled gems prior to this getting out of control. In general I think this was kind of a win-win because it meant I could get a lot more cards I could have otherwise and people who spent several dollars on duped gems get their money back. And since it's all just digital collectibles anyway, I'm okay with that.

I took a look at the FAQ page about it, said aloud "what the fuck is this," looked at the prices of some of the bids that were already in, and closed the tab. I'm normally onboard for whatever weird bullshit Valve wants to do, but I guess this is just one layer too deep for me.

Totally innocent though, just like all the other stuff they ever do. It's a good way for them to try to reset the economy on this stuff and for people to remove all the bullshit they've accrued in their inventories. It's a win-win, and no harm, no foul to people who don't want to worry about it.

Did...did I just imagine all of this?

But really, I should have done what MB did :o Well, I did put a buy order for 1000 gems in, but then I realised it would probably take ages to get around to me, so I just cancelled it.

I wonder if Valve have considered hiring an economist? :P

A man stares blankly at his monitor, a look of abject horror on his face as he witnesses the meltdown of December 2014's Steam Auction.

His supervisor stands back, maw agape at the ramifications of it all. After an eternity of stunned silence, he awkwardly clears his throat and mutters under his breath.

"We... we can't ignore this. We can't hide this," he whispers in hushed tones. "Gaben must be informed immediately."

"Informed of what?" says a third, much larger figure in the shadows behind.

The others swivel to attention and avert their gaze toward the ground. "M-my lord!" the manager squeaks.

Newell steps forward and points, "You. Speak."

"The a-auction's suffered a setback, sir. The gems have been..."

The longer Gabe stands there, the colder and darker the room seems to become. "Have been what?"

"T-they've been duplicated! It's an exploit! The prices of booster packs have plummeted! They're now worth just a few cents! What used to be over a dollar is now only about three-"

"Utter not that number in my presence"

"A thousand apologies! What is to become of the auction? W-what of the gems already in the system?"

There is but a short pause before the large figure grumbles his reply.

"This ends now"

"I beg your pardon, my liege, but it can be saved! We can fix this, give us another chance!"

"This ends now!" the giant bellows. "I will not tell you... another time. Is that clear?"

"As glass, Lord Newell! We shall pull the plug on it immediately!"

Before the grovelling can cease, Gabe has shifted back into the shadows. His disembodied voice echoes around the room:

"Tomorrow, you shall meet me in my Chamber of Knives."

Deathly silence settles over the room. One person coughs; a single dropped pencil clinks off the floor.

"Bring the economist."

@giantstalker: Amazing.

Looks like they shut it down.

The conversion rates were really messed up: individual cards = 20-30 gems; then it costs 600+ gems to buy a booster pack, not sure why anyone would do that.

I hope they get things worked out and give it another shot.

@mb: The bold and italics are pretty great in there. But yeah, looks like they can't undo any of the booster packs that were crafted using ill-gotten gems.

Ok I am holding onto the stuff in my inventory until after this thing ends.

The real question now is whether Valve will allow people to sell the gems on the marketplace again.

Well, it makes sense, especially if those booster packs were then opened...

At least this whole thing was an excuse for the artist to create more art. That gem yeti is great.

@bacongames said:

I mean, if they're confident that there is no longer a way to dupe gems and completely flood the market with them, I don't see why not. Though yes, they may be wary enough that the gems just won't be tradeable or marketable.

kinda shitty.. I had about 100 sacks of gems I had purchased... a well whatever, I'm sure the moment they put this up people will exploit it once again.

I think its neat they're trying something like this. But I don't think its a good idea overall.

Damn. Looks like I missed out on free steambux.

It's not a bad omen. Just an experiment. Sure it had dinner issues when first launched, what doesn't? I don't want them to stop trying new things, that works be pretty crappy. Steam is over of the few people willing if do weird experiments like this. It isn't something they sound be punished for.

the auction is back! but I can't seem to buy gems from market anymore.

I'm not gonna bid anything but it's gonna be fun seeing how much people bid on games hehe.

Its a stupid system, it needs to die, seriously, its artificial demand created for an artificial supply, ain't nothing healthy about that for anyone. Valve is playing us, I like to think i'm rising above it by selling every item i get, but I feel like it's going to become endemic to the system before too long.

They seem to be doing this again. Restarted it or whatever. I don't understand how they determine how many gems the cards are worth. It seems completely random. Some of my items are apparently worth 5 gems and others are worth 100.

And the amount each game costs (even on the lower end) is insane when I add all that I currently have up. It'd be impossible to ever get enough gems.

I don't think I understand this gem/auction thing so I don't know that I'm gonna be able to play around with this at all.

I don't think Steam is ever going to try something like this again.

I have literally no idea why there are trading cards on Steam.

Literally.

I understand the auction even less. It is my opinion that both the cards and the auction are weird, and make no sense.

So...gem sacks are back. This time they're selling for about $0.70

BOOSTER. PACKS.

That's all I care about. Maybe I will FINALLY get all the Awesomenauts cards!

People like to praise Valve for Steam and everything, but I am pretty apathetic towards them. They are still great game developers, but all of these systems they create that are seemingly ONLY for people who use exploits and cheats are ridiculous.

I don't understand what the purpose of this auction thing is, if i traded in a card i got today i'd have got 32 gems, selling the card would give me 6p, so if 32 gems is worth 6p, the current highest bid for a copy of CS:GO is £202 in gems...
The most expensive item at the moment is a christmas theme for Steam, using that same math it costs £1959 in gems... what is going on?
Who the hell is bidding?

If you want a game there's a winter sale on the way probably in a few days, am i missing something here?

@cikame: But not every copy of the game is going to be won for the highest bid. Every 45 minutes the next highest bidder gets a copy.

@cikame: The purpose of this auction is to get people to get rid of their inventory junk excepting the cards. This is why backgrounds and emoticons yield a lot of gems and cards (despite being monetarily more valuable) yield less. Notice that you can also craft booster packs with gems.

The reason people are bidding at inflated costs is because...well...they're people?

i continue to enjoy valve doing unorthodox stuff- but i've opted out of this one. a cursory glance at the value of the items in my inventory vs. the bids on games i want reveals that i have neither the energy nor wherewithal to get the stuff.

fun for people that like to play the market though. and in terms of it being a 'bad omen'- i think it's like everything valve does, just an experiment. probably won't last. useful for them though (a sort of reset on item rarity).

Well, it made it so I stopped ignoring the Steam inventory/marketplace system altogether and actually sat down and sold all that useless crap today, so there's that. Plus, I made over 5 bucks by selling non-existent stuff that literally has no purpose in my life. I could not stop yelling to my wife as the items sold and sold and sold, and how completely flabbergasted I was at how I could be financially rewarded for selling basically nothing.

Seems win-win for both Valve and me. I am sure they appreciated the 2 cents they got on each of my 100+ items. Valve is filled with evil financial genius. They have figured out a way to make money when people purge their account of trash they don't even care about, and that is damn amazing.

Well, I still have a ton of stuff I just can't get rid of, most of it old-ass achievement-bound and crafted TF2 items. I could sell my few crates, but for 0.03€ a pop ... nah. I decided that 0.08€ is my lower limit for selling anything. On the other hand, making that shit marketable would be opening the flood gates.

@atomic_dumpling: yeah. Game specific items don't gemify, unfortunately.

How funny would it be after this auction stuff is done, they pull a TF2 and make any surviving items "Vintage".