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Former Valve writer says Gabe Newell has been pretty clear about Steam: "It's an MMO"
(www.gamesradar.com)
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2026
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Arresting to have been using a thing so clearly designed to have gamelike features and never quite noticing it. I tend to credit myself as being fairly media literate and conscious about games, I guess either I'm wrong about that or they did an amazing job at it. I'll have to think carefully about that.
It is in no way an MMO, so don't feel bad.
It's a community-focussed store, bordering on being a social media network.
The crap they talk about with "levelling-up" and decorating your profile have nothing to do with gamifying the experience - they're just a way to add more microtransactions for yacht money.
At least out of all the yacht money on the planet, his goes to science yachts as well.
In no way is he altruistic or he'd not be a billionaire, but he's farther from the evil than the rest of the public billionaires.
So a billionaire can just build a school or something and they're out of the woods? idk
Not by today's standards no.
It's a community-focussed rental shop, bordering on being a social media network.
10-15 years ago, I knew a guy that bought games and traded cards just to level up his account. I remember asking him why he did it - since the levels are pretty much just cosmetic after the initial levels - and he straight up just said he liked to see the number go up
Ahh jeez, fuck I hate it
Do those trading cards still have any value (a few cents are ok) and are people really buying those? I never noticed that you could sell them. I do nothing with them. And having a very small "discount" on my next game would probably be worth more for me than some NFT like things that collect the digital equivalent of dust in my account.
Yes, they do, a few cents. It's a pain to sell them, since you seemingly have to do it one at a time. But some of them are even like 1$/€ so those are worth it
Just checked - I got over two hundred trading cards. On one hand, that's a pita to sell individually, on the other hand that's probably a free game in the next sale...
But I can do it over time and sell them bit by bit, no hurry...
I haven't checked in a while, but IIRC, there are scripts that can quickly sell your cards without you having to do it manually.
That'd be cool if so!
This is the one I use: https://steaminventoryhelper.com/
A friend of mine told me you get some additional discounts during Steam sales if you craft badges with cards. Never tried it or cared enough to do it, but if it's true that might be another motivation.
There's a bevy of "idle" games that are all about that. One if the most popular is literally called Numbers Go Up Idle
That's pretty much the whole point of the incremental genre.