Steam Holiday Auction at a Halt After Suspected Exploits - Update

[roseofbattle]

Steam Holiday Auction at a Halt After Suspected Exploits - Update

The beginning of the Steam Holiday Auction has had some issues with Gems and is now temporarily closed.

Update: Valve has updated the Steam Holiday Auction page. It states the auction will return shortly. All gems that were created by you will return to your inventory in Steam, and all gem purchases in the community market will be reimbursed. Auction bids are being reset, and Valve is investigating trades involving gems on a case-by-case basis. A representative from Valve had nothing more to add.

Original story: Valve's new event on Steam [http://escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/steam], the Holiday Auction, is on hold less than a day after it began. Valve has not stated yet when the auction will resume.

The Holiday Auction [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/139041-Steam-Holiday-Auction-Event-Lets-You-Turn-Trading-Cards-Into-Games] allows Steam users with trading cards, which you collect by playing the games and from other Steam users, to turn them into Gems. With those Gems, you bid on games in the auctions area. After each 45-minute period, the highest bidder wins the game.

The auction page is closed for "some issues with Gems," as Valve states. However, some reports appearing on Reddit [http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2p1nil/possible_sack_of_gems_duplication_exploit/] point to possible exploits of gems, in which people could earn large amounts of Gems and throw off the economy. This also, of course, allows people exploiting Gems to bid an absurd number and increase their chances of winning free games.

One Reddit user [http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2p1qea/regarding_that_duplication_glitch/cmskt7z] notes 100 gem items were valued at $0.03 around the beginning of the event, and then soon tanked to ridiculously low prices.

Additionally, users in the Steam subreddit have said their gems have disappeared, which is especially unfortunate for people who were converting their trading cards into gems. We have reached out to Valve for comment.

Valve stated the auction will resume as soon as issues are sorted out. It's unknown whether the event will still go according to plan, ending on Dec. 18.

Source: Steam [https://steamcommunity.com/auction]


Permalink

 

[Lvl 64 Klutz]

Hmm... same thing happened over the summer when they tried to implement another idea that involved putting a completely unnecessary competitive edge to their sales. It's almost like it's a bad idea or something.

 

[Zontar]

Well my gems haven't disappeared (both crafted and the few I managed to buy on the market). Though I don't see the 100 gems for 0.03$ as an exploit, mainly because the 1000 gems in a sack I managed to grab between system errors was bought for 0.04$.

 

[Zontar]

Hmm... same thing happened over the summer when they tried to implement another idea that involved putting a completely unnecessary competitive edge to their sales. It's almost like it's a bad idea or something.

Ah yeah, that was hilarious. Reddit wanted to make it all be 'fair' for every team, then 4chan caught wiff of it and said 'fuck that' and made Red Team win most of the time. Though this time seems different since there are a loooooot more games being given away, and there's a real chance that more then a handful of people will win them (I'm hoping to get a few less well known games that where on the list).

 

[Mr.Mattress]

The whole Holiday Auction thing looked dumb anyways. I was worried that it was going to be the actual Holiday Sale. I'm glad it wasn't though.

Selling Gems to get games just seemed like a really dumb idea from the get-go anyways.

 

[WindKnight]

Hmm... same thing happened over the summer when they tried to implement another idea that involved putting a completely unnecessary competitive edge to their sales. It's almost like it's a bad idea or something.

Ah yeah, that was hilarious. Reddit wanted to make it all be 'fair' for every team, then 4chan caught wiff of it and said 'fuck that' and made Red Team win most of the time. Though this time seems different since there are a loooooot more games being given away, and there's a real chance that more then a handful of people will win them (I'm hoping to get a few less well known games that where on the list).

Wasn't there some dude who made a hilariously melodramatic post that basically painted a chance you might get some free games as something to fought for, like it was an actual real world cause, with lives at stake?

 

[seris]

the main exploit allowed users to earn large amounts of money by buying 1k gem sacks and then converting them to boosterpacks, the cards earned from these boosters could then be sold for a huge profit on the market. i made 25 cents off of 1 gem pack which could then buy me 8K more gems, if it had not been halted then others could gain rediculous amounts of gems and cash

 

[SomebodyNowhere]

In the small amount of time I was messing with this event and without exploiting I was able to post reasonable bids on around 6 games so I hope they sort this out and if not I suppose I'm only out a couple bucks.

 

[Gennadios]

Well, the silver lining is that I've managed to sell off the 1 cent crap that was sitting in my marketplace for what seemed like ages.

Valve needs to go QA their games and cut down on this meta gaming bullshit. I got $40 just selling trading cards and that's about all the ridiculous shit I'm willing to go along with.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

I don't know about you, but I'd feel better off if all the trading cards/badges were permanently dropped at the end of the auction as a motivator for turning them into gems. I know Valve wants to give us a method to make money through gaming, which then can be used on Steam, but the badge crafting/trading cards just isn't it.

So with that, all I can say is just GOG it, Steam. If I get a game, just let me have the emotes, profiles, wallpapers, et cetera for free - Don't make me play a meaningless game just to get them. Earning them through playing the game and nothing else is also a valid alternative.

 

[ryukage_sama]

I liked GOG's Insomnia Sale Promotion. Only X copies are available at Y% off. It had me waiting to see what would come next. I also liked their timed sales where every sale added to a countdown clock keeping the discount going longer. You could also vote whether to increase or decrease the sale time one second at a time.

Steam should try out something like that, but I don't think they could accomplish such a thing outside a browser.

 

[Operations]

One Reddit user [http://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/2p1qea/regarding_that_duplication_glitch/cmskt7z] notes 100 gem items were valued at $0.03 around the beginning of the event, and then soon tanked to ridiculously low prices.

Erm isn't that already the lowest price an item can go?
The break down is 1c to the seller, 1c to valve, 1c to the developer.
I know from selling a few things myself the tax is normally 2% with a minimum value of £0.02.

*Edit*
Actually it seems to be an additional 15% that gets added onto the amount you want, but with that same minimum which works out a much higher percentage on low value items.

 

[Baresark]

I looked into this. The most any of my items would sell for was 20 gems... I just don't bother with their promotions. It seems like as time goes on I have less and less reasons to open my Steam client. Of course, Dragon Age Inquisition has been consuming all of my time for gaming lately, which may have something to do with it. But a huge part of me is tired of the Early Access stuff getting thrown in my face and it's like it's nothing but ads all over for games I just don't care about. But this Gem thing only annoys me. I guess if you have lots of cards and no money it's fine.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

Fuck! I was gonna buy and convert a bunch of 3-4c emoticons for 100 gems, but I reset my password a week ago so I could install a game for my mum, so it locked me out of the market place for a week. I've missed the bus and now every other **** and his dog has gone and done it T.T
God damn it.

 

[the doom cannon]

I sold all my useless crap and have gotten 20-30 usd. I like that method more

 

[gamegod25]

Well this whole thing is a waste of time for me. There is no chance of me winning anything because even if I turned every one of my community items into gems I'd have maybe 1-2k which still wouldn't be enough to even place a bid when everything is going for between 2.5k all the way up to over 70k. Or I could spend 400 or more gems for just a single card booster pack...so thanks Valve, coal would at least have been useful.

 

[heroicbob]

i converted all my cards into gems and had barely enough to bid on the cheapest thing i could find 10 seconds later i was immediately outbid i feel like you could spend a lot more time and effort with this than simply buying the games outright

then again i already had zero investment in the trading cards to begin with all the ones i had were just the free ones you get for playing the game

 

[Endocrom]

This has been the steam event that professional card hoarders were born for.

You know the ones, posting huge sales pitches on every trade forum always asking for 2:1.

4k is the lowest auction I've seen and it was for DLC to an educational game.

 

[Dr.Awkward]

Basically what Steam needs to learn from this is that people have a hard time attributing value to an alternative temporary currency. Add to that bids that are still made with exploited gems, followed by a valuing algorithm that is simply broken, and you'll realize that Valve, despite all the talent, simply doesn't have the motivation to thoroughly complete their ideas.

....Yeah, I'll just say it; Valve's gotten lazy and can only half-ass their projects now. Most of the games they've "made" recently are really made by teams that were either brought on by Valve or licensed the rights to that developer. As for the additions for Steam? For one, Workshops often lack content moderation and as a result mods or items from other sites get stolen, or the content that shows up is from other games (remember the TERA mace that got approved by Valve for DOTA 2?)