Hate the new layout. Hate the forced economy.

New layout de-personalizes each user, reducing us to mere pawns in an effort to boost sales and hype. Focus is taken away from our comments, profile summary, screenshots, and directed towards XP, Levels , Achievements and the number of games we own.

I bought into the premise of steam for the ease of buying and playing games with friends. A simple social network. Now it's just a spastic gold dig- all the perils and cheese of TF2 hats but with the added insult of elitism that stems from how many hours your spend mining. There's something odd about btc and ltc miners- that frustration and desperation. Combine that with the spastic TF2 junkie. That's what Steam Trading Card system is trying to make us all into.

Achievement frenzy already places an unnatural emphasis on the wrong aspects of gameplay- grinding. The item/hat crazy teaches speculation and getting ahead of others by all means; hyper-capitalism

Steam Trading Cards finally combines both of these things into one lesson for gamers, that your time is worthless. Gaming is work, and rewards are arbitrary and luck based. You need to get ahead, play the market. You're not here for games and socialization. You're here to accumulate petty rewards by working hard to hype up the system. Think of how much minimum wage is, then think of the work you'd have to do launching games you arn't actually in the mood to play just to get some little trinket or game you could have just bought outright and waste much less time.

Sure young kids with no jobs and free time could play the system, but then wouldn't they be better off playing the GAMES? If they arn't in the mood to game or interact with friends then go do something else. Don't rot away here and invest time off your life for things of imaginary value.