Ethics of trading cards after refund

[Kitten]

Edit:

I think my original question was too narrow.


Do you think Trading Cards (and to a lesser extent achievements) should be kept after refunding a game?


---
Original:

I'm not necessarily looking for the be-all end-all answer on this (unless there is an official statement about it), but I'm wondering what others feel about the grey area of trading cards and (to a lesser extent) achievement after you refund the applicable game?

I recently bought a game during the Summer Sale, mainly because of the low price. I had tried it out, played through the tutorial, continued through a few levels, but couldn't get interested in the gameplay. I decided to try out the Steam refund system because I didn't want the game in my account. For reference, I probably put in about 25 minutes into the game before I decided to refund it, as the gameplay just wasn't my style.

I didn't get far enough to get any achievements, but after refunding the game, I noticed I had collected some trading cards.

I have no interest in creating the badge, nor do I plan on re-buying the game.

How would you approach the situation? Would you hold onto them? Sell them on the Market? Trade them?

[Zenexras of Blackwick]

Just sell them or trade them, I suppose. No point really in holding onto them.

[Hextravert]

Because I never use the Community Market, I trade cards against backgrounds.

What does this have to do with ethics? It's not like I can delete or return the cards.

If they want the cards back, they only have to say the word. I couldn't care less.

Originally posted by Kitten:

I'm not necessarily looking for the be-all end-all answer on this (unless there is an official statement about it), but I'm wondering what others feel about the grey area of trading cards and (to a lesser extent) achievement after you refund the applicable game?

I recently bought a game during the Summer Sale, mainly because of the low price. I had tried it out, played through the tutorial, continued through a few levels, but couldn't get interested in the gameplay. I decided to try out the Steam refund system because I didn't want the game in my account. For reference, I probably put in about 25 minutes into the game before I decided to refund it, as the gameplay just wasn't my style.

I didn't get far enough to get any achievements, but after refunding the game, I noticed I had collected some trading cards.

I have no interest in creating the badge, nor do I plan on re-buying the game.

How would you approach the situation? Would you hold onto them? Sell them on the Market? Trade them?

[Kitten]

Originally posted by Hextravert:

I used the word 'ethics' because I believe that a select group of players will buy games (cheap or otherwise), for the purpose of getting trading cards and returning the game, thereby making money.

I am aware that Steam reserves the right to deny refunds if abuse like that occurs. Maybe I should have framed my question broader.

[tmwfte]

Originally posted by Kitten:

Originally posted by Hextravert:

I used the word 'ethics' because I believe that a select group of players will buy games (cheap or otherwise), for the purpose of getting trading cards and returning the game, thereby making money.

I am aware that Steam reserves the right to deny refunds if abuse like that occurs. Maybe I should have framed my question broader.

A few days ago, Valve changed the drop period to address just this. Drops for trading cards don't begin now until after two hours played, thus ensuring that if someone was intent on gaming the system by selling the cards drop and refunding the game wouldn't be able to do so, since the drops occur after the 2-hour refund grace period.

[Kitten]

Do you have a link? Or was there an announcement about it?

[That Pyro is Glass Shark]

Originally posted by Kitten:

Do you have a link? Or was there an announcement about it?

I don't know if they made an announcement about it yet, but I can confirm you must now play 2 hours of a game before cards will start dropping.

[tmwfte]

Originally posted by Kitten:

Do you have a link? Or was there an announcement about it?

Steam announce things like this? You've got to be kidding me.

I do have http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3120647&page=449 starting at post #6729 on though. And the fact that nary a drop before the two hour mark has occurred for me the past nine games I've run. There's likely similar discussion on the official Steam Trading Cards Group.

[Kitten]

Alright, thanks for the information.

[Dangerous Beans]

I've been wondering why card drops were taking so long. I don't really like this state of affairs. I wonder if we could think up a better solution.

[That Pyro is Glass Shark]

Originally posted by Dangerous Beans:

I've been wondering why card drops were taking so long. I don't really like this state of affairs. I wonder if we could think up a better solution.

I agree. This current system is very annoying. Especially when it comes to most of the indie games that have little replayability and playtimes of less than 2 hours.

[Ton]

yeah, its was too long to get the card. maybe just end the game reaaally quick?

[✨Hot Soup✨]

Originally posted by Dangerous Beans:

I've been wondering why card drops were taking so long. I don't really like this state of affairs. I wonder if we could think up a better solution.

scammers ruin everything

[Dangerous Beans]

Originally posted by So Young and Pretty👌:

Originally posted by Dangerous Beans:

I've been wondering why card drops were taking so long. I don't really like this state of affairs. I wonder if we could think up a better solution.

scammers ruin everything

I view this as an engineering problem. The system should be secure. It's not a serious issue, but it's a pain in the butt and I'm tired of seeing the community suffer because of the reality that there are people that will exploit flawed systems. I'm not asking Steam to solve human nature, but I think it's worth investing a lot more time in finding solutions that don't make the innocent pay for the unscrupulous.

A possible solution would be simply requiring all assets to be returned during the refund. If the card drop identities are selected at the point of sale and then tagged when they drop then the refund could be made to require any cards that were droppedalong with the game itself. If you sold cards in the interim then you'd need to buy replacements in order to process the return. That seems reasonable, given that you'd probably find the same requirements when returning a physical product.

[Mary Virgin]

2 hours adding to get drops is too much. I buy many cheap bundles just for cards and I dread having 10 games to farm that will take 20 hours to farm more or one full day. The cost of burning power and CPU is more than the rate of cards in market in which sense these cards are now expensive and better bought from market than farmed. Right now if you craft a booster you get a forced option to make tradable or non-tradable pack. Similarly when you buy a game and run it firs time Steam can ask if you want drop cards out right or after 2 hours, if you take choose drops outright, you don't get a refund and you agree to that terms and condition before proceeding.

[Start_Running]

Originally posted by Kitten:

Originally posted by Hextravert:

I used the word 'ethics' because I believe that a select group of players will buy games (cheap or otherwise), for the purpose of getting trading cards and returning the game, thereby making money.

I am aware that Steam reserves the right to deny refunds if abuse like that occurs. Maybe I should have framed my question broader.

Kinda a hard to do that now since I hear trhe playtime required for the first card drop now exceeds 2 hours.