Digital Homicide Showcases A Steam Flaw | Feature Creep
Posted Sep 19, 2016, 9:11 PM UTC
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Well, there's the scam right there. Great video, I don't think I ever would've realized the potential for scamming using trading cards without this.
It really is like The Producers. Amazing.
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I never thought that movie would pertain to so many real life scenarios when I originally watched it.
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I wonder what would happen if they ticked off Valve enough to the point DH would get sued due to exploiting their Market system.
Sure Valve does get their share of every market transaction, but at the same time DH's shovelware has a cost for them (storage space, bandwith, anything that requires maintenance).
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Plenty of people already know this - I've only been actively using Steam for 2 of my 4 years having an account and figured this out a long time ago. But yeah, maybe a publicized bit about it will get it some proper attention.
A side effect of all these cheap/often free games with trading cards though, other than some devs making an easier profit from their sale than the games themselves, is users [including myself] who like to farm the free cards and sell them for easy Steam wallet funds or to craft badges and increase their level.
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Note the whole 'using cards to make more money' never made any sense
Most 'math' based on this uses the insane notion that
- Take # of copies on Steam
- Multiply by # of cards
And here's the part that is wrong
- Assume all cards can be sold
All numbers assume every single card can be sold. This literally makes zero sense.
Lets assume #1 and #2 are correct. Sure a dev creates a game, hands out keys like its candy. Now we have a situation where there are even 100,000 copies of a game in circulation and they did it for free by spamming keys in giveaways, cracker jack boxes, kinder surpises, whatever. Lets even make the even worse assumption that every user on Steam idles for the cards and every single user intends to sell the cards. Again this simply is not the case but hey lets just assume it.
Here's where everything breaks down
Since supply is basically in a huge bloat cards cannot be sold for much. As such best case scenario a dev is going to take a 1 cent take on each card sold.
So even in the most IDEAL situation, in game that has 6 cards. Where each user gets 3 cards, and somehow every single user sells those cards you get
100,000 * 3 cards per user * 1 cent per card = $3k
So in the utterly ideal situation where you give away 100k copies AND every single person sells all their cards you're only making $3k in card sales. Again this is in the most ideal condition which by far simply is not going to happen at all.
Now here's the real kicker
WHO IS BUYING THESE CARDS
Again we have essentially a sellers market. Too much supply. Not enough demand. Everyone wants to sell the cards not buy them. No one wants these cards. Thus you acnnot possibly even reach close to the theoretical maximum simply because no one wants the cards. Demand simply doesn't exist.
You need to sell 10,000 cards just to cover the Greenlight fee. Which again looking at the DH games which even before being removed were selling cards at a rate of like 10 a day. Again this is not what I would call a viable business model. You could literally sell lemonade outside your home for more money. You could sell ice to an eskimo in the North Pole and make more money.
The idea that 'oh devs make money on trading cards' makes zero sense. the math does not add up. You'd be better off working at mcdonalds, mowing lawns, selling your sperm, selling your blood, or literally anything else.
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My kids won't shut up can someone tl;dr this for me?
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The reason DH (and other devs on Steam) made a lot of shit games in a short period of time, and did not care. is not to make money from the games' sales so much as to make money from the trading cards it takes a piece of the profit from.
This makes them money while polluting Steam with shit games, and Valve get's a share of that same profit, hopefully they plan on going back to at least semi-curation.
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Thank you.
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I just can't believe that people care that much about Steam cards.
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Dude, steam cards have bought me a few games and dlcs over the last week that would have run me over 75 bucks.
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To expand on this, if you install Enhanced Steam you can see in your badge page an approximate worth of all trading cards you have yet to drop.
Mine says that I could make ~60€ out of them. Not that I really plan on doing that anytime soon, but is definitely something to not ditch.
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They(I am included) technically dont care about the cards but for the cheap profit or cheap levels they can get. Or you know hey just collect Steam games
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So less money for devs and higher prices for consumers is the solution? lol :D
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So shitty devs putting shitty games only to sell trading cards was apparently a secret??? Just when I thought DH couldn't get any more retarded... Damn, these guys are the most stupid (stupidest?) devs I have ever seen, what the hell!