The downside of the auction

[Spastic]

Personally, this whole Auction thing is a little unfair. Poor people won't be able to win any auctions (I dumped my 365 gems on one game with no expectations to win as most top bids for any game were over 5000 gems). People who can spend money on lots of games get lots of cards. people who can't afford to buy new games can't get cards effeciently. So the people with money potentially can bid super high on items they want.

Before you say "there are many free games to get cards from." I understand that. However people with money to spare can buy games, cards and still have access to the free games.

Now I'm not saying the auctions aren't a cool new thing, I just think it would've been nice to have a good old fashion "Holiday Sale". The less fortunate could get some good deals and the well off could get tons of games, thus everyone spends money and steam gets "richer".

I hope we get a real sale soon. I didn't feel the last "Sale" was very good. I spent a lot on the summer sale and it was worth it but hat sale a week ago or so felt... lacking.

[Spooky]

I completely agree with the holiday sale idea. They would have made money either way, why are they trying to pour time into something that can only favor people with lots of time on their hands?

[Bishop]

I agree as well, I turned my inventory into gems thinking oh hey look 1.7k gems wow nice. Then i go look at the auctions and I threw my hands in the air in anger. Who throws 170k gems with no question as to what the item is actually worth. This auction is a joke and a huge slap in the face. How about we get rewarded by how much we invested time and money in the steam market on games or just hours played. Well done cheating the little guys!

When I first saw the Holiday event I said hey cool I have been waiting for this, but honestly I am dissapointed like my time spent on the steam comunity is nothing for this event, I guess Ill be sitting this one out watching all the rich kids get all the gifts.

I like the events that steam creates it keeps it interesting but not this one, not this time.

[claiminglight]

At least I'll have the chance to delete some of this crap in my inventory. And sure, I have no idea how these guys got so many gems. I have quite a few games by my estimation-- and have no where near that many.

[Nilfsen]

By buying cheap stuff from market, not so long ago there was tones of profile backgrounds for 3-4 cents, and many of them are worth 80 gems.

So in my opinion idea behind this "event" is not only to clean up inventory of your own but to clean up market also from things that would be probably never sold other way ( and profit 0.01 euro from each sell :P ).

[Dark|»♦«|Knight]

It's not a bad idea, I admit, but you can't go wrong with a nice steam sale that everyone can enjoy. The moment i read the rules for this auction, first thing i thought was "Well... i guess all the rich folk will be getting free games again.... just like that summer sale".

I'm keeping my stuff and playing the games i have till a real sale pops up, these auctions just aren't worth the effort.

[ArthurPoondragon]

I'm pretty sure the traditional Holiday Sale will still be happening as this auction ends in a few days and the HS usually doesn't start until the third week of December anyways. So I'm just crafting all my useless crap into gems to clear out my inventory, like claiminglight and Nilfsen seem to have done, then crafting those into booster packs to help me with other things. I'm also just avoiding the auctions all together because from what I calculated they're not cost effective at all. So I'm with Dark Knight on this one, just going to wait until the real sales pop up.

[Nilfsen]

It's a bit hard to tell about costs of games for now. Probably first few games will be won with riddiculus bids cause of huge amounts of gems in pockets now. But when most desperated will use up their supplay then we might get much lower prices.
And ofc if someone bought lots of 80 gem worth things for 0.01 euro each then it could be quite nice deal for games.
Only thing that scares me in that idea is amount of clicks needed to convert enough things to get gems amounts like 100k+ ...

[Sagrim]

I just dont get few things.
Why I have the only option of getting HS card from buying things on market 10$ per card?
Why playing games is not actually rewarding people (except the cards, that comes from purchases)?
Why people that tend to hoard badges => get lots of useless stuff => turn it into gems => overbid with those high stakes of tens of thousands of gems on games like Sid Meier's Beyond Earth and common folks are dead in the water with well ... like 500 gems or so?
Why can I buy booster pack with gems? The cost is usually 600+ per booster. I mean, I had a lot of stuff to get gems and can afford like 3-4. I might turn in one badge eventually, just to get higher level of my Steam account (which is in itself useless) and receive background and emoticon that would turn into hopefully 40 gems I can not use for booster pack nor card nor bid.
Why people can't get anything from the actual time spent ingame? Be it card, item or something of similar value. Not even Dota 2 drops items now for playing and all of the leveling in it is pointless as hell.
Valve has great ways how to screw things up.
They find a problem (emoticons in large quantities that are not good even for collecting) with market overflowing with garbage and make an auction sale. But they don't see they just managed to replace one problem with another. Ok, so now we will have spare gems. Even if the cool buy a booster pack thing stays over, it's not like You would buy crap to turn it into gems to get booster, when You just can buy it for fraction of the cost.

[Major Hustlin']

I guess if someone's accumulated lots of items in their inventory, then it'll be nice to clear some things they don't want, but i disagree with the whole 'auction' thing, as many people have stated here. It just reduces competition, as people who can go out of their way just to buy items to turn into 'gems' will always beat people who are just clearing out their inventory and just want to buy a low-priced game. Personally, even if i did have a lot of items, then I would be forced to spend all of my gems on only a few games. It kind of brings out that competition-killing side of human nature.

It's a good idea, just delivered in the worst way possible.

[Bishop]

I baught 60 backgrounds and sold all my inventory, took me 2 hours for this only to end up with 6k gems that would not even budge all these 50k+ bids, its unfair and I am not going to pay 50% more for an item just to over bid or atleast get my bid close. Thanks steam but no thanks, Id rather just have a good ol holiday event sale.

[Casey Ryback]

Ummm....you guys are missing the point of this who gem event. Of course the average normal gamer, even with a fair amount of piled up inventory isnt going to have a chance against rich people.

The whole point of this sale is so Steam can reduce the number of active items in everyones inventory, thus pushing up the market price of each item that is 'recyclable', this in turn will mean more profit for Steam when things are sold on the market place.

People who intended to buy anything on the market will still buy, only at a higher price now that there will be less availability, it all falls under Supply and Demand.

Have a read of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand

At the end of the day, its all about economic equilibrium.

[Casey Ryback]

I forgot to add, dont be fooled and recycle any of your inventory...just let it sit there or sell it on the marketplace instead.

[Spastic]

theoreticaly. the gem sale will increase the cost of cards due to "rich" people needing more cards to recycle.

[Mask1992]

winter sales will start after the auction ends. the auction is targeting auction the increase market prices.

if you are not rich wait for our event which will start 18 dec

https://twitter.com/SteamDB/status/543190614809268224

[Remon]

People who grabbed up all the backgrounds for 4 cents at the beginning of the auction are the only ones who actually profited off of this. And they needed to buy thousands of those backgrounds to profit at all. I can't imagine that was a quick process, and now all the community market prices are driven up, so basically no one can profit. You're losing money on most things if you buy gems now.

So yeah, this auction is useless.