The Steam Holiday Auction

[Robomoto]

http://steamcommunity.com/auction

 

So It seems Valve has created a new way to make people do silly things with their items. The idea of the Steam Holiday Auction is to take Steam items, such as cards, emoticons, and backgrounds and convert them into gems which you then use to bid on games.

 

Personally I think it is quite silly, as the Steam Holiday sale is just around the corner so why not buy games then? The floor is now open to discussion.

[Cedarbox]

Gems? What is this, Gaia Online? It sounds like it could be fun but I don't think it's for me.

[nosoop]

Definitely a tactic for Valve to clean out the existing flood of emoticons and backgrounds.

 

After grinding to level 50, I'd say this is worth it for me to get rid of my spare community thingies.

 

Mainly looking forward to the 45 minute auctions. That'll be hectic.

[K2.]

the last auction round ends on Dec 18 @ 1:00pm

aka just before/after the sale starts but atleast it is a way to get rid of the junk you dont want and make booster packs for the games you do

[Robomoto]

Honestly, this seems like madness now. Right now CSGO has a top bid of 6 million gems, SIX F***ING MILLION! The only thing more insane is that the 2014 holiday profile thing is 7 million gems and at .03 for 1000 gems that is 210 dollars, for a profile thingie. I don't care if there is only 100 of them it is not worth it.

[Red]

Everything is priced high because of an exploit giving people millions of gems for low low market prices. From what I hear Valve made gems and whatnot untradeable/unmarketable to try and remedy this. Only way to fix this mess is to rollback. All i've seen so far are community bans.

[Robomoto]

Everything is priced high because of an exploit giving people millions of gems for low low market prices. From what I hear Valve made gems and whatnot untradeable/unmarketable to try and remedy this. Only way to fix this mess is to rollback. All i've seen so far are community bans.

 

This is all nuts, maybe they should have made the gems untradeable and unmarketable from the start. It would have made things a lot less insane. Though this seems to be a lesson that Valve always seems to forget.

 

Update: The Steam Auction banner is gone from the top of the Steam store page ( at least on mine), gems gone from market. Looks like they are trying to stem the tide a bit.

[nosoop]

This popcorn is pretty good.

 

Also, if you missed it, here's the comic.

 

And here's how the gem duplication bug was discovered:

 

... all you had to do was put your bags for sale, but hold one and then buy one emoticon. When you got back on your inventory you would have all the bags you had before + the ones on the market.

 

Source: Since a lot of people were saying most guys duping are BR, i went to a BR BR HUE imageboard and found a tutorial there.

[K2.]

also people found out it was a lot more reasonable to make a pack of cards sell it buy a gem pack and repeat= money

[Robomoto]

So, think they'll actually bring the auction back or did everyone just waste a bunch of items for nothing?

[nosoop]

also people found out it was a lot more reasonable to make a pack of cards sell it buy a gem pack and repeat= money

 

Well, yeah -- it works when you have dupers driving the price of gem sacks down.  If it kept going, booster packs would drop down and so would trading cards.

 

Also, gems will remain useful outside of auctions:

 

 

Gems will not disappear from your Inventory after the Holiday Auction event ends. You can continue making and using it to create Booster Packs.

[Robomoto]

Update: Valve has stated the following about the Auction

 

• All Gems created personally by users will be returned to their inventories
• All Market Gem purcheses will be reimbursed
• All Auction bids have been cancelled and the Auction will be reset, so sqaure one
• all Trades involving gems will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis

So it seems that things have been fixed...sort of. A little foresight in the begining might have kept this from happening, but that's just my opinion.

[William Dogood]

Gem prices are already back up to useless levels.

[Robomoto]

Gem prices are already back up to useless levels.

 

Yeah, figured as much. At least gems can be used to make cards, gets rid of the useless junk I have no use for.

 

Update: Apparently you can get the Holiday Sale trading cards already, I got one for crafting a badge. Didn't think they would be avalible until the sale

[Robomoto]

I just noticed Gems are back on the market, at about 70 cents per sack on the low end and 75 on the high end. I'm wondering if it would make sense to just sell the gems I made or turn them into cards, seeing as you can't come close in most auctions to getting anything.