Convert Steam Points to store credit

[unwaveringresolve]

I have over 261K steam points from a lifetime of buying things from the Steam catalog. I never, ever plan to buy anything from the Steam Points Shop.

Many credit cards offer a cash-back program where you can exchange points you earn for cash at pennies on the dollar. I think Steam could use a similar model, with an appropriately low exchange rate - for example, 1 Steam Point is equal to $0.001, so that 1000 steam points is equal to $1.00, paid to the Steam Wallet.

For those of us who spend hundreds of dollars on games every year, it would still be a fairly small benefit, but it still offers an incentive for players to keep their money in the Steam Marketplace and occasionally get a small bonus for our patronage.

The steam points shop can still be there for people who would make use of it, but it would not be the only use for steam points.

[Komarimaru]

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

Komarimaru の投稿を引用：

Both of you seem to not understand how money laundering works.

You take illegally gained income, and find a way to convert it to legal tender. So, say you make many Steam account to make purchases and get these points now with monetary value.

You now use these accounts to gift said points to another account to get said income to make physical purchases that then could be sold.

Even at a 80% loss, legal tender is more important than illegal funds.

And, this was attempted before and was abused heavily so Valve was like, nope! Plus leads to more hassle and more reason to try and compromise accounts.

Understand now?

The only thing is, the tender wouldn't be illegally acquired.

Getting the points from a game purchase and then transferring them would be completely legal if Steam allowed you to do so. The points would also lock anything to only be on Steam and probably not any hardware.

Not agreeing with the idea of converting points to real money, but it wouldn't be money laundering if they were used as you described.

The reason it was big issue before was because of 3rd party sites giving real money outside of Steam to people for their Steam items. Since that money wasn't locked into Steam and the items were usually stolen from hijacked accounts, it became a huge legal issue as well.

Uh huh... stolen credit cards, compromised accounts of various institutions like paypal and steam alone... Using said illegal funds into a shady bank account to make purchases...

I'm starting to think, people watch too much TV and have little RL experience in fiscal responsibility and the dangers involved.

[FOXDUDE69]

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Again: Steam felt the need to introduce a loyalty programme. That means they already felt a sting. But it's not Steam Vs Epic, no idea why you and others want to reduce it to that.
It's Steam Vs EGS, GOG, HumbleBundle, THE-STORE-THAT-SHALL-NOT-BE-NAMED, and all platforms selling keys for Steam. All of them. At once. Only one of them needs to provide a better deal to make potential customers rather use them than Steam.

And it's not just Steam vs other PC platforms, I'ts vs consoles too.

One of the things I found hilarious when Steam loyalists got their hands on a Steam Deck is that a lot of them say something along the line of "playing my games on the couch is something I didn't know I wanted before I had the Deck." When everyone else already realized that was great way to enjoy our games decades ago.

And no, running an HDMI cable across your home is not a practical solution, and the Steam Link App introduces input lag, visual artifacts and occasional big picture related bugs that make you get up from the couch and go to wherever you have your computer to fix it, it's far from a seamless experience.

Steam is still the number 1 PC platform but it absolutely lost the battle for the living room when Steam machines failed. Reality is every single console is providing fierce competition to Steam every time someone decides they'd rather play a game on their 75" QLED with their feet up, and seeing as current gen consoles can deliver 4K 60FPS for a third of a price of a current gen GPU, it's fierce competition that's going nowhere even if Steam decides to make a home console because there's something else the other consoles provide that Steam cannot, virtually cheater-free Multiplayer, no RCE and an achievement ecosystem with far more integrity.

Something else to keep in mind is that Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo do not allow third party activation of DLC purchased on their stores, so when Ubisoft decided to kill access to certain Single Player DLCs last year, legit owners of those DLCs on PC lost legal access to those DLCs, while console owners still had access to all single player content they purchased.

With all these things in mind, and their competitors on PC, Steam better come up with a proper loyalty program soon, for their own good.

Price and convenience is all that matters to real gamers, those inflated Steam MAU numbers, heavily bloated by alt F2P accounts and throwaway cheater accounts, those are utterly meaningless.

[Boblin the Goblin]

FOX6NINE の投稿を引用：

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Again: Steam felt the need to introduce a loyalty programme. That means they already felt a sting. But it's not Steam Vs Epic, no idea why you and others want to reduce it to that.
It's Steam Vs EGS, GOG, HumbleBundle, THE-STORE-THAT-SHALL-NOT-BE-NAMED, and all platforms selling keys for Steam. All of them. At once. Only one of them needs to provide a better deal to make potential customers rather use them than Steam.

And it's not just Steam vs other PC platforms, I'ts vs consoles too.

One of the things I found hilarious when Steam loyalists got their hands on a Steam Deck is that a lot of them say something along the line of "playing my games on the couch is something I didn't know I wanted before I had the Deck." When everyone else already realized that was great way to enjoy our games decades ago.

And no, running an HDMI cable across your home is not a practical solution, and the Steam Link App introduces input lag, visual artifacts and occasional big picture related bugs that make you get up from the couch and go to wherever you have your computer to fix it, it's far from a seamless experience.

Even with the Deck, Steam is not part of the console market. I can't take my Switch with me and play my Steam library. I couldn't take a PS5 or Xbox with me and play me Steam games. The Deck is still a PC only in a handheld form factor.

FOX6NINE の投稿を引用：

Steam is still the number 1 PC platform but it absolutely lost the battle for the living room when Steam machines failed. Reality is every single console is providing fierce competition to Steam every time someone decides they'd rather play a game on their 75" QLED with their feet up, and seeing as current gen consoles can deliver 4K 60FPS for a third of a price of a current gen GPU, it's fierce competition that's going nowhere even if Steam decides to make a home console because there's something else the other consoles provide that Steam cannot, virtually cheater-free Multiplayer, no RCE and an achievement ecosystem with far more integrity.

The Steam Machine failed for many reasons. A major one being no one really knew what it was or did and the complete disorganization in manufacturing. They weren't really trying to battle the console market because they aren't part of that market. They wanted the Steam machine to be a PC like the deck but based around your Steam library and not as restrictive as a console. Current consoles can't deliver native 4k at 60fps. Even with upscaling, most games will not stay 60fps. Actually, most the games that run at '4k60fps' are either ports from the PS4, fighting games, or something simple like the Astro's Playground.

FOX6NINE の投稿を引用：

Something else to keep in mind is that Xbox/Playstation/Nintendo do not allow third party activation of DLC purchased on their stores, so when Ubisoft decided to kill access to certain Single Player DLCs last year, legit owners of those DLCs on PC lost legal access to those DLCs, while console owners still had access to all single player content they purchased.

With all these things in mind, and their competitors on PC, Steam better come up with a proper loyalty program soon, for their own good.

Price and convenience is all that matters to real gamers, those inflated Steam MAU numbers, heavily bloated by alt F2P accounts and throwaway cheater accounts, those are utterly meaningless.

The issue with Ubisoft was resolved with a patch released by them and an update to the game that gave the would-be lost content. The only content lost was that tied to their account servers since those are what got shut down. Steam has seen nothing but growth in the past 3 years. Even with EGS handing out free games, it didn't even make a dent in new users or active users on the platform.

They have only been growing. With the Deck, they are growing more.

[FOXDUDE69]

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

Steam has seen nothing but growth in the past 3 years. Even with EGS handing out free games, it didn't even make a dent in new users or active users on the platform.

They have only been growing. With the Deck, they are growing more.

That's not saying much. Every big platform is growing, that's what happens the new gamers are born every second and the non gaming generations die out. Expect the gaming demographic to keep increasing drastically for the next couple of decades and new record users being registred across all platforms.

But even though Steam is growing, a lot of those games sales are happening outside of Steam. Would be really interesting to see what percentage of Hogwarts keys were purchased from HB.

[Boblin the Goblin]

FOX6NINE の投稿を引用：

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

Steam has seen nothing but growth in the past 3 years. Even with EGS handing out free games, it didn't even make a dent in new users or active users on the platform.

They have only been growing. With the Deck, they are growing more.

That's not saying much. Every big platform is growing, that's what happens the new gamers are born every second and the non gaming generations die out. Expect the gaming demographic to keep increasing drastically for the next couple of decades and new record users being registred across all platforms.

But even though Steam is growing, a lot of those games sales are happening outside of Steam. Would be really interesting to see what percentage of Hogwarts keys were purchased from HB.

It's saying a lot.

Right now is the peak time of gaming generations. The kids who used to ask for money to play games are now able to buy their own, that's why it's such a big boom. Video games are not as popular with the Alpha or late Gen Z as much as it is with Millennials or early Gen-Z.

Becoming popular right now spell success for years to come, that's why we are seeing things like Game Pass and Microsoft trying to scoop up big studios.

Even if a game is sold outside of Steam, it still brings the user to Steam and their analytics show that most of those people do end up staying.

[Start_Running]

Its fair to say gamings been growing. Gamer parents raise gamer kids. and as those kids cross into having independent income there is another surge. This cyucle happens about every 12015 years and due to itrs nature.. about the only thing that will stop it is a generational birth deficit.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Its fair to say gamings been growing. Gamer parents raise gamer kids. and as those kids cross into having independent income there is another surge. This cyucle happens about every 12015 years and due to itrs nature.. about the only thing that will stop it is a generational birth deficit.

Did you mean to type '15' years or were you making a joke with it?

[Komarimaru]

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

Start_Running の投稿を引用：

Its fair to say gamings been growing. Gamer parents raise gamer kids. and as those kids cross into having independent income there is another surge. This cyucle happens about every 12015 years and due to itrs nature.. about the only thing that will stop it is a generational birth deficit.

Did you mean to type '15' years or were you making a joke with it?

Typo, common. 12-15 years. 0 is near the -

And they are correct, though the gap has dropped to around 8-12 now.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Komarimaru の投稿を引用：

SlowMango の投稿を引用：

Did you mean to type '15' years or were you making a joke with it?

Typo, common. 12-15 years. 0 is near the -

And they are correct, though the gap has dropped to around 8-12 now.

Oh, that makes sense.

Yeah. It's essentially every generation instead of every generation and a half.

[cinedine]

Tanoomba の投稿を引用：

Non sequitur.

If you try this debate club ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on me, then please stick to it yourself.

Nowhere do I argue that Steam is doing less than great. However, you don't even know how they are doing. They don't disclose their finances. We can deduct though, that they are spending a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money, so they probably have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money to burn.

What I have seen so far is:
- Steam offering an (questionable) incentive programme to spend money on their store directly
- Steam trying hard to monetise the ♥♥♥♥ out of their platform
- Steam giving up almost 1/3 of their revenue from 3rd party game sales with their reduced cut for best selling titles. You know, the ones that make up the bulk of 3rd party sales.
- Steam offering their services for EA Play and soon Game Pass, so even more people who don't pay for it directly
- EA coming back to Steam as did Ubisoft for some older titles. Either they have reached a point where their only grow was in adamant Steam-only customers or they got some really nice offer. However, you can bet your arse off that neither came "crawling back" as the beloved fairy tale among fanbois goes.

Bonus: Steam outright removing key generation unless a certain percentage of game sales was made on Steam directly. Hm, seems they are not that happy with people buying from other sides after all. Of course, although most likely to curb free key generation from scam games. Seems like they are still battling that problem.

Points 1 and 3 especially are a clear sign for me that somebody feels pressure or premediates a problem before it becomes one.
The fact they didn't disclose user numbers for the last year' reviews is also remarkable. While they talk about growth, the only number they give is concurrent users. Something they themselves imly heavily has to do with the CoViD-pandemic. They also opted to give us the number of first time purchases as a daily average. Interesting choice considering the last years number was about a million more across the last two years. Numbers are still impressive of course. But with 90 million new "paying" customers over three years and 120 Monthly Active Users, you wonder how much of them are indeed recurring spenders. ;)

And in 2020 they had this to say:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/2961646623386540826 の投稿を引用：

Thus far, 15.5 million users have redeemed their points for 99 million items. And over 2 million users have granted 7 million Community Awards to their fellow community members.

So yeah, given their 31 million new first time purchasers that year it sounds suspiciously like their customers not giving a ♥♥♥♥ about Steam points.

[Boblin the Goblin]

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Tanoomba の投稿を引用：

Non sequitur.

If you try this debate club ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on me, then please stick to it yourself.

Nowhere do I argue that Steam is doing less than great. However, you don't even know how they are doing. They don't disclose their finances. We can deduct though, that they are spending a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money, so they probably have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money to burn.

What I have seen so far is:
- Steam offering an (questionable) incentive programme to spend money on their store directly
- Steam trying hard to monetise the ♥♥♥♥ out of their platform
- Steam giving up almost 1/3 of their revenue from 3rd party game sales with their reduced cut for best selling titles. You know, the ones that make up the bulk of 3rd party sales.
- Steam offering their services for EA Play and soon Game Pass, so even more people who don't pay for it directly
- EA coming back to Steam as did Ubisoft for some older titles. Either they have reached a point where their only grow was in adamant Steam-only customers or they got some really nice offer. However, you can bet your arse off that neither came "crawling back" as the beloved fairy tale among fanbois goes.

1) What questionable incentives did Steam offer?
2) You don't have to pay to use the platform. They don't nickle and dime you to use any of the services.
3) I don't see how this is a downside considering Steam will supposedly still get money from transactions in EA games or through DLC that is sold on Steam.
4) They probably got a nice offer. It also could be their own stores weren't pulling the numbers they wanted so they came back to get back into the market share that Steam has.

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Bonus: Steam outright removing key generation unless a certain percentage of game sales was made on Steam directly. Hm, seems they are not that happy with people buying from other sides after all. Of course, although most likely to curb free key generation from scam games. Seems like they are still battling that problem.

If they didn't want people to buy from other sites, they wouldn't allow key generation at all. Features for games are tied to the amount of sales and active users. Limiting key generation was to curb people posting a game and giving out tons of keys to artificially boost it's stats.

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Points 1 and 3 especially are a clear sign for me that somebody feels pressure or premediates a problem before it becomes one.
The fact they didn't disclose user numbers for the last year' reviews is also remarkable. While they talk about growth, the only number they give is concurrent users. Something they themselves imly heavily has to do with the CoViD-pandemic. They also opted to give us the number of first time purchases as a daily average. Interesting choice considering the last years number was about a million more across the last two years. Numbers are still impressive of course. But with 90 million new "paying" customers over three years and 120 Monthly Active Users, you wonder how much of them are indeed recurring spenders. ;)

Doing the math;

In 2020 they had 31.2 million new user purchases for the year.
In 2021 they had 31.2 million new user purchases for the year.
In 2022 they had 30.3 million new user purchases for the year.

While they did have a dip this year, the fact that they stated it as a daily average to hide it doesn't add up. If that were the case, they wouldn't have given the raw number like they did for 2021 where the new user spending stayed the same as 2020.

I don't know where you're getting the 120 active users a month from considering the concurrent users is just that amount logged in at the same time. It doesn't reflect monthly users or active daily users. Since that number is steadily growing, it is showing that the amount of users staying is also increasing as well. If they weren't retaining users, they would being getting more and more concurrent users.

cinedine の投稿を引用：

And in 2020 they had this to say:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/2961646623386540826 の投稿を引用：

Thus far, 15.5 million users have redeemed their points for 99 million items. And over 2 million users have granted 7 million Community Awards to their fellow community members.

So yeah, given their 31 million new first time purchasers that year it sounds suspiciously like their customers not giving a ♥♥♥♥ about Steam points.

That's fine. Steam points were always a novelty for users.

[Tanoomba]

cinedine の投稿を引用：

If you try this debate club ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on me, then please stick to it yourself.

You said "Steam felt the need to introduce a loyalty programme. That means they already felt a sting." Your conclusion does not logically stem from your premise. Experimenting with a loyalty program neither implies that there was a "need" for such a program nor that they "felt a sting". "Non sequitur" is simply the quickest way to communicate that fallacy.

SlowMango covered everything else.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Tanoomba の投稿を引用：

cinedine の投稿を引用：

If you try this debate club ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on me, then please stick to it yourself.

You said "Steam felt the need to introduce a loyalty programme. That means they already felt a sting." Your conclusion does not logically stem from your premise. Experimenting with a loyalty program neither implies that there was a "need" for such a program nor that they "felt a sting". "Non sequitur" is simply the quickest way to communicate that fallacy.

SlowMango covered everything else.

If they felt there was a need, it would be reasonable to assume they would not have abandoned the coupon system completely but instead reworked it to prevent abuse.

At least, that's how I see it.

[junior_duck]

I don't think that can be abused it was like farming bruh

[FOXDUDE69]

cinedine の投稿を引用：

Tanoomba の投稿を引用：

Non sequitur.

If you try this debate club ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ on me, then please stick to it yourself.

Nowhere do I argue that Steam is doing less than great. However, you don't even know how they are doing. They don't disclose their finances. We can deduct though, that they are spending a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money, so they probably have ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money to burn.

What I have seen so far is:
- Steam offering an (questionable) incentive programme to spend money on their store directly
- Steam trying hard to monetise the ♥♥♥♥ out of their platform
- Steam giving up almost 1/3 of their revenue from 3rd party game sales with their reduced cut for best selling titles. You know, the ones that make up the bulk of 3rd party sales.
- Steam offering their services for EA Play and soon Game Pass, so even more people who don't pay for it directly
- EA coming back to Steam as did Ubisoft for some older titles. Either they have reached a point where their only grow was in adamant Steam-only customers or they got some really nice offer. However, you can bet your arse off that neither came "crawling back" as the beloved fairy tale among fanbois goes.

Bonus: Steam outright removing key generation unless a certain percentage of game sales was made on Steam directly. Hm, seems they are not that happy with people buying from other sides after all. Of course, although most likely to curb free key generation from scam games. Seems like they are still battling that problem.

Points 1 and 3 especially are a clear sign for me that somebody feels pressure or premediates a problem before it becomes one.
The fact they didn't disclose user numbers for the last year' reviews is also remarkable. While they talk about growth, the only number they give is concurrent users. Something they themselves imly heavily has to do with the CoViD-pandemic. They also opted to give us the number of first time purchases as a daily average. Interesting choice considering the last years number was about a million more across the last two years. Numbers are still impressive of course. But with 90 million new "paying" customers over three years and 120 Monthly Active Users, you wonder how much of them are indeed recurring spenders. ;)

And in 2020 they had this to say:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/group/4145017/view/2961646623386540826 の投稿を引用：

Thus far, 15.5 million users have redeemed their points for 99 million items. And over 2 million users have granted 7 million Community Awards to their fellow community members.

So yeah, given their 31 million new first time purchasers that year it sounds suspiciously like their customers not giving a ♥♥♥♥ about Steam points.

Really hit all the nails in their head, didn't you, bro?
And I wonder if they included people who've activated keys bought elsewhere as "first time purchasers" to pump the numbers a bit.