Valve recently launched their new loyalty service — Steam Trading Cards enabling participants to win special game-specific cards by playing their favorite games. The service may sound like a variation of achievements, but unlike the latter, it allows players to get something extra.
Throughout the gaming forums it is not difficult to notice that not all players are satisfied with the achievements model so many games nowadays employs. Non-rewarding, absurd, un-fun are among the most common adjectives describing the issue. Valve with their Steam platform decided to solve the problem with launching Steam Trading Cards (currently in Beta) — service rewarding the players with collectible cards that can be used to earn tradable items.
“Many games have achievements that are grindy or un-fun to get, and we want the act of getting game cards to be fun for all users in games(…). [We] don’t want to push users to cheat or use achievement-unlockers in games in order to get cards, since that devalues achievements and isn’t that fun either.”
said Valve.
Every game participating in the service will have a specific set of collectible cards that can be obtained either by playing the game or by trading with other community members. When player have collected full set of cards he can craft them into a badge and, by doing so, earn steam xp and receive a game-related item like coupon, profile background or emoticons. The set of cards can be collected again to obtain even more rewards and earn xp to level up his Steam profile.
Beta version of Steam Trading Cards include following games: Don’t Starve, Dota 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2. As you might expect Valve promises to add much more games in the future.
