Disable Steam trading cards

[Lanceor]

Yep, this is a horse that died years ago and has been re-exhumed for beating countless times...

But I need to say it again - please give us a way to disable trading cards and their notifications.

Others may like trading cards, but I and many others have no interest in receiving them, let alone collecting or trading them. The notifications are spam and are exceedingly annoying.

Likely questions/comments from the peanut gallery:

Surely the notifications can't be that annoying?
They're annoying enough that I'm posting here and lodging support tickets.

Can't you just ignore the notification?
The notification coud be a message from a friend or Steam admin, or maybe even a gift. But I wouldn't know until I check the message.

It takes very little effort to dismiss the notification!
Yes. It also takes very little effort to delete spam, or discard junk mail. But it is my time and effort that's being wasted every day to discard something that I didn't ask to receive in the first place.

In the time it took you to write this post, you could have traded the cards.
It wouldn't solve the problem - I would continue to receive trading cards and keep getting those green notifications. In fact, it will make the problem worse as I'll get trade notifications as well.

Why don't you sell them? It's free money!
No, it's not free as it takes a certain amount of time and effort to sell them. I'm already using a far better way to convert my time and effort into money - it's called a job. Perhaps if a bot can sell them for me, then it really is free money, but last I checked, bots and Steam accounts don't mix.

Why don't you lodge a support ticket?
I did... ticket HT-HFQV-HF8G-9NN7. They told me to post here.

Edit: spelling mistakes

[xaxazak]

Sounds totally reasonable and incredibly easy to do. I'd suggest that you also just give the option to cancel the notification but still receive the card.

[Livebait]

I thoroughly agree, and am a little disappointed with Valve that they have been so stubborn about this. Customization, convenience, and receptivity to the community is what put steam on top of all the awful products that tried to emulate it (looking at you Origins).

The fact that a significant number of people are annoyed enough to make posts or take out tickets should have been enough to clue valve in that they should give us a checkbox in settings to ignore trading card notifications.

This is the way I have perceived this, they haven't because:

1) They don't care and are too lazy.
- Something I never want to think about a company that handles my payment information.

2) They think that the cards are achieving their intended objective (i.e. making people buy more games. It is not free money, they hand you a few cents so that you spend 50$ on a game you probably wouldn't have. Rewarding someone for spending money is the oldest trick in the book and its sad that Pavlov has so many dogs in this community).

- This probably works for some people. Either their OCD makes them buy more games to complete collections, or they think "hey look at all this Free money I am making off of buying games I should do it more and spend more time on steam where my brain is filled with their advertisements for new games and products."

- If anything it has the opposite effect on a lot of people like me. It is the too pushy car salesman. It makes me want to use steam less, and it has definitely reduced the amount of cheap games I buy just to try or kill time with friends. I don't spend the 5 dollars on a game I normally would even though I don't necessarily "want" it, just because I know it will cause more spam.

- I am very active in modding and gaming with friends. The steam notifications I do tend to get are important and typically can't be ignored, and it is irritating to constantly have to deal with such a petty. transparent thing as their trading cards. Steam makes hundreds of dollars a year off of me. If they want to continue doing so, they should be more receptive of community feedback (at least when it comes to giving the user options, its not like I am asking for them to delete the feature, just let me shut it up).

[Memorizzi]

Could not agree more!!

[Kev]

Thanks Lanceor and Livebait for this. I couldn't have said it better myself.

But still, here's how i see it -
I'm a developer myself and i can't bring myself to believe that Steam's not seeing this :
Handling your community's efforts to make you understand its need for a checkbox by dismissing it through customer service is sure to take more time and effort than to actually put that checkbox in the settings and make that huge portion of the community that needs it happy again.

Not looking for trouble, just pointing it out...

[NotASnowman]

I use trading cards very frequently, and have to say the trading card notification is just a waste of time for everyone who knows about their trading card drops. They were handy when I was first getting into trading, they let me know I had something of value in my inventory, and informed me when I could stop idling a game for the cards. These days, I have loads of items in my inventory, and use Idle master for all my idling needs, the notification just serves to trick me into thinking something important is happening.

That notification could be a new booster pack, or a trade that's been accepted. Instead, it's just letting me know I have another item to sell for five cents. I wouldn't mind this if it was just an occasional thing, but my trading and market schemes have earned me 294 card drops for CSGO, and that number is only going to get bigger. I might end up with 2-3 notifications a day for a couple years at this rate, and all of them tell me something I already know.

[Space Coward]

The best solution would be handling it like TF2 items: have that notification still come up, but with a separate one for trading cards. This along with Items needs a quick way to dismiss all without going to your inventory.

[saaya]

i agree, id like to have an option to not get notified about new cards

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

I'd like to have the option to Choose what notifications appear when in-game:
* new item notifications
* subcategory: new trading card notifications
* achievements
* friend chat
* group events
...WITHOUT disabling overlay altogether.

[Pimpin Pippin]

I agree with the OP and i love his opening sentence about the exhumed horse xD

[Dingus]

Agreed. Please fix this epic UX fail.

Also, allow use of third party authenticators (tried logging into Steam via browser to post this, 8 minutes later I finally get the email and am writing my post). I'm never gonna use your crappy app, no matter how long it takes, or how incredibly annoying the mandatory 2-step authentication process is. FFS, stop being Nazis with the way you're conducting business lately. Not cool, Steam. /endrant

[NotASnowman]

Originally posted by Tim:

Also, allow use of third party authenticators (tried logging into Steam via browser to post this, 8 minutes later I finally get the email and am writing my post).

Just so you know, Steam was down for maitainance. All their automated services either have a delay, or simply don't function during this time.

[᠌ ᠌ ᠌᠌ ᠌ ᠌ ᠌ ᠌]

Originally posted by Quint the Glowing Bitter Oyster:

I'd like to have the option to Choose what notifications appear when in-game:
* new item notifications
* subcategory: new trading card notifications
* achievements
* friend chat
* group events
...WITHOUT disabling overlay altogether.

Me too, good idea.

[The Jagji]

I can understand not wanting to get the pop ups every time. I mean, when you close the game, you also have the green tab telling you too. But to not want the cards seems a bit silly, esptialy when you can just sell them on the market to go towards your next game or something.

[Dirty Dan]

Originally posted by The Wizzard Jagji:

I can understand not wanting to get the pop ups every time. I mean, when you close the game, you also have the green tab telling you too. But to not want the cards seems a bit silly, esptialy when you can just sell them on the market to go towards your next game or something.

You should see the second to last point he made. Plus the money you get is literally like 30 cents maximum. And that's after all the trade holds.

[RainAtDawn]

Originally posted by Casual Bacon:

Handling your community's efforts to make you understand its need for a checkbox by dismissing it through customer service is sure to take more time and effort than to actually put that checkbox in the settings and make that huge portion of the community that needs it happy again.

Seconding this.

Surely adding a opt-out would have to be less expensive than the good will damage caused by inflicting the cards on people who find them nothing but irritating.