Steam badges.....what are they for?

You get them from cards, which then can be crafted into the badge, or from completing tasks. For the cards, you need to trade or buy the cards you don't have from the market. For the tasks there are a variety of things you can do to get them, such as, voting for a game of the year nominee or from just having an account of a certain age (you get a new badge every year on the date you created your account). Each badge has xp, and your Steam profile has a level, each level requires xp. Every 10 levels you unlock things for your profile like, the ability to have more friends, "showcases" on your profile and clout.

However, the true reason for all this is a bit more sinister. People spend time or money to upgrade their profile and their presence on the platform. Which means people tend to prefer their games on Steam as opposed to other platforms, because on Steam they are someone while elsewhere they are not. This is why a lot of people hate other platforms, especially Epic.

You can also sell you cards on the market, however this money can only be used on Steam. The market is another sinister ploy from Valve, things might be worth a lot (cs2 skins for example) and people spend 100s on items thinking it's an investment. However, you can only use your money on Steam. Yet another way Valve has made gamers ultra loyalist and hostile to other, more developer friendly, platforms.
 
Quite informative there @Dark Light. I too had no idea what any of it was, or how anything seems to work on Steam, i just use it to play games mostly and occasionally look in to the Workshop and forums.

Personally i think Steam is pretty good, and apart from GOG, there's no others that have had me intrigued.
 
Dark Light said:
You get them from cards, which then can be crafted into the badge, or from completing tasks. For the cards, you need to trade or buy the cards you don't have from the market. For the tasks there are a variety of things you can do to get them, such as, voting for a game of the year nominee or from just having an account of a certain age (you get a new badge every year on the date you created your account). Each badge has xp, and your Steam profile has a level, each level requires xp. Every 10 levels you unlock things for your profile like, the ability to have more friends, "showcases" on your profile and clout.

However, the true reason for all this is a bit more sinister. People spend time or money to upgrade their profile and their presence on the platform. Which means people tend to prefer their games on Steam as opposed to other platforms, because on Steam they are someone while elsewhere they are not. This is why a lot of people hate other platforms, especially Epic.

You can also sell you cards on the market, however this money can only be used on Steam. The market is another sinister ploy from Valve, things might be worth a lot (cs2 skins for example) and people spend 100s on items thinking it's an investment. However, you can only use your money on Steam. Yet another way Valve has made gamers ultra loyalist and hostile to other, more developer friendly, platforms.
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So it's like Skins? to show off?

My profile is private, so there is no showing off....if they don't do anything then I might as well sell every single one?
 
Raymond Lin said:
So it's like Skins? to show off?

My profile is private, so there is no showing off....if they don't do anything then I might as well sell every single one?
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Correct, however due to the Pound you will only get 1p or 2p for each card because there is a 2x 15% fee. So if you sell it for 3p you have to pay 2x 1p. There are foil cards which are worth a little bit more.
 
If you have 50,000 friends then creating badges and levelling up is the only way to increase the amount of people you can be friends with. I like collecting badges just for the collectible side of things. My Steam profile is something I really like to curate having been there from almost the beginning (11 months after launch)
 
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During covid I did some stuff with it but now I can't even be bothered to sell them off. I don't care and I'm sure nobody else cares about my steam level or profile badges.
 
What they mean to me is a certain affinity with a game or subset. A lot of my pinball friends on steam all have level 5 or foils for the main pinball games, as well as the background profiles to suit.

Personally I'm a huge fan of the X series, as much so the VR version they did for Rebirth. The Foil for RebirthVR took me a lot of time and expense to acquire, nobody had the cards to trade, absolutely tons of blind booster packs proved fruitless, 2 of the cards i needed were listed at something like £30 on the market, and the last had never been listed at all. Real lucky that after waiting 3-4 years those 2 came in for £5, and incredibly the last card popped up a month or so later.

If it wasn't for the Xrebirth foil, it would be a pinball foil like most of my friends. We do the groups, tournaments, guides, use the icons, fonts, emotes, wear the badges. Not exactly juvenile, most of us are in our 40's and 50's, it's just what we're in to.
 
lokiss said:
What they mean to me is a certain affinity with a game or subset. A lot of my pinball friends on steam all have level 5 or foils for the main pinball games, as well as the background profiles to suit.

Personally I'm a huge fan of the X series, as much so the VR version they did for Rebirth. The Foil for RebirthVR took me a lot of time and expense to acquire, nobody had the cards to trade, absolutely tons of blind booster packs proved fruitless, 2 of the cards i needed were listed at something like £30 on the market, and the last had never been listed at all. Real lucky that after waiting 3-4 years those 2 came in for £5, and incredibly the last card popped up a month or so later.

If it wasn't for the Xrebirth foil, it would be a pinball foil like most of my friends. We do the groups, tournaments, guides, use the icons, fonts, emotes, wear the badges. Not exactly juvenile, most of us are in our 40's and 50's, it's just what we're in to.
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i have no idea what any of that means :p you play pinball games and collect digital foil stickers, is that the short version?
 
It's better to ignore them unless you value your time at so little that you'd go through all that effort of clearing them out for 2p a time.
 
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