Steam Trading Cards Exit Beta On June 26

[Earnest Cavalli]

Steam Trading Cards Exit Beta On June 26

Valve's latest addictive addition to its ubiquitous online distribution platform officially arrives on June 26.

Hope you liked the hats, as Valve Software is continuing its push to keep players wildly addicted to gaming via Steam with the official launch of a virtual trading card game come June 26. Those of you enjoying the gimmick's beta incarnation are likely familiar with the intuitive gameplay system, but here's how it shakes out for everyone in the dark.

As you'd expect, all of Steam's cards are intangible representations of gaming elements. Characters from Valve titles, images of hats, and so on. Players earn cards by playing Steam games with support for the "card game" enabled. Once a player earns more than half the cards in a given set, the system will stop automatically doling out cards. This is where Valve's profit comes in. The details aren't currently clear, but it seems exceedingly likely that further cards will be available to players willing to pay real cash money for the joy of owning a series of 1s and 0s cobbled together to resemble a tiny piece of cardboard. We have to think that these cards will also be available for completing certain in-game tasks, but again that remains to be seen.

Oh, and as with any relatively modern card game, Valve's effort includes special rare and "foil" cards. If any are going to command a high price it would be these cards, so expect their prices to quickly rise to unreasonable levels.

If this sounds similar to the hats Valve introduced to Team Fortress 2, it should: The systems are quite alike, though the cards can function as their own sort of game, while the hats are merely a cosmetic upgrade for Team Fortress 2. Despite this, the hats have become wildly in demand, so it seems likely that the card game will prove even more enticing to players.

Finally, come June 26, not only will the cards exit beta, but Valve will also introduce card support for "several games," all of which are currently unnamed. Expect more details at the end of the month. More details on the card game can be found at Valve's official page [http://steamcommunity.com/tradingcards/]).

Source: Steam [http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tradingcards/discussions/1/864971287474769598/]

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[Roxas1359]

...as I just got a Beta Key only about 2 days ago. Man I have terrible timing with betas. XD
Gonna be interesting to see how this goes after it is out of aeta though.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

People are already wildly into it. I've seen some people care very much about their "Steam Level" and will jump through hoops and do Facebook things and the like to raise it. I don't intend on collecting the cards, but if someone wants something I've got I could come ahead just for playing a game. I've already traded 6 cards to get Left 4 Dead 2 for 5 bucks, so I foresee more savings as it rolls out of beta. If it makes people happy, more power to em'. They're just pictures to me.

 

[UNHchabo]

The details aren't currently clear, but it seems exceedingly likely that further cards will be available to players willing to pay real cash money for the joy of owning a series of 1s and 0s cobbled together to resemble a tiny piece of cardboard.

Further cards are available three ways:
1) Trading.
2) F2P games offer additional "drops" if you spend money in-game. For Team Fortress 2, I got 5 initial drops for buying the game before it went free, and you get one additional drop for every $9 spent.
3) This past week they introduced "booster packs"; each week that you login to Steam, you will get one booster pack for one game for which you've maxed out all your drops.

 

[Imre Csete]

Sounds like a more hardcore version of the usual summer community shenanigans, except this is permanent.

 

[Ironside]

Well if anyone wants to use the new profile a couple of days early I do have a beta access still in my inventory.

People are already wildly into it. I've seen some people care very much about their "Steam Level" and will jump through hoops and do Facebook things and the like to raise it. I don't intend on collecting the cards, but if someone wants something I've got I could come ahead just for playing a game. I've already traded 6 cards to get Left 4 Dead 2 for 5 bucks, so I foresee more savings as it rolls out of beta. If it makes people happy, more power to em'. They're just pictures to me.

I only just got the beta access, but from what I understand they can increase your steam level, which in turn gives you more profile customisation options (which I kind of like since the new profile is kinda cool looking) and adds +5 to the amount of friends you can have (which I am never going to fill up anyway since the limit is already 200+). Having said that though the badges mean nothing to me as well and I am content to play the long game and just increase my level with the years of service badge if all it is going to do is let me make my profile look slightly better. Do you get discounts or anything if your level goes up?

3) This past week they introduced "booster packs"; each week that you login to Steam, you will get one booster pack for one game for which you've maxed out all your drops.

I would never spend money on these cards, but if they happen to just drop into my inventory without me doing anything that would be pretty useful since I got the max for Don't Starve already apparently. Also does just continually being logged in count as logging into Steam each week?

 

[romanator0]

That's nice and all but I'm far more interested in this "event" that John Cook mentions that is supposedly beginning after the beta ends.

"Making trading cards available to all Steam users is a step towards an event we think everyone can be excited about..."
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tradingcards/discussions/1/864971287474769598/

 

[FEichinger]

That's nice and all but I'm far more interested in this "event" that John Cook mentions that is supposedly beginning after the beta ends.

"Making trading cards available to all Steam users is a step towards an event we think everyone can be excited about..."
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/tradingcards/discussions/1/864971287474769598/

Probably the finalization of Steam box, the end of Dota's beta, or the game sharing (as another social addition).

 

[UNHchabo]

3) This past week they introduced "booster packs"; each week that you login to Steam, you will get one booster pack for one game for which you've maxed out all your drops.

I would never spend money on these cards, but if they happen to just drop into my inventory without me doing anything that would be pretty useful since I got the max for Don't Starve already apparently. Also does just continually being logged in count as logging into Steam each week?

I imagine so. So far I've only got 1 booster pack, for Half-Life 2.

 

[hutchy27]

I just sold the cards for I got but it's good for people who enjoy that sort of thing. I originally planned to collect them for the emotions until I realized I would have to collect them multiple times for all the emotions for one game.

 

[CriticalMiss]

Do you get discounts or anything if your level goes up?

As far as I know, no. But the higher your level the more likely you are to get a booster pack drop. At a certain point it is double the normal rate, so that's cool I guess since you can then sell them for more than the cards cost individually. They also changed one of the badges so that you get experience based on how many games you have in your library, which will get you a fair few points if you've been buying a lot of games.

I'm interested to see what happens when the beta ends. They said that it is going to tie-in with the Summer sale and that a whole bunch of games will be getting cards when it goes public. It is likely that the value of the cards is going to plummet when the market is flooded with them, so I've already started to trade mine in for discounts and games whilst they are still worth something.