Steam trading cards will now be available to all steam users. So, when you play certain games you will get up to five cards dropped while playing the game. what's the deal. well, you can sell or trade them via the community market. Foil cards for example have been selling for up to £40 each, though now the cards are open to all the prices will probably drop significantly as there will be millions available.
When you collect a full set of cards for any game you can craft them into a Steam badge that is displayed on your profile. You'll also get at least one background and an emicon that can be used with Steam messenger; plus you'll get a discount voucher for a game. These can range from 25% to 75% off recent games. Each game has five levels of badges, each time you craft a badge you get all of the above again, plus you get experience points that boost your Steam level. Experience points are being given for various things such as years of service, the number of games you have (1exp per game), plus for other things.
The list of games so far included in the trading card 'game' are:
Team Fortress 2
CounterStrike: GO
DOTA2
L4D2
Portal 2
Borderlands 2
Don't Starve
Half Life 2
Faerie Solitaire
FTL: Faster than...
Cubemen 2
Really big Sky
123 that...
Monster Loves You
Tower Wars
Sanctum 2
Bit Trip Runner 2
Strike Suit Infinity
Triple Town
Go Home Dinosaur
Zak Zero
Defenders Quest
They Bleed Pixels
Monaco
A.R.E.S.
Blocks that Matter
TR1NE 2
SuperMeatBoy
Brutal Legend
Guns of Icarus Online
Jagged Alliance - Back in Action
Zombie Driver HD
Offspring Fling!
Magicka
Binding of Isaac
Company of Heroes 2
GRID 2
Warframe
Crusader Kings II
Penny Arcade's On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 4
Psychonauts
There are a couple more that were added on Tuesday (I think one of them is Killing floor), butr I've been too busy to bother recently.
The catch with these cards and crafting is, you only get a limited number of card drops for each game (usually between 4 or 5 depending on how many cards are in a set). but you only get drops for the first level, so effectively you will need to purchase or trade for most of the cards to complete sets.
Whats the point? as far as I can see the only point is for Kudos at collecting cards,badges, emicons and profile backgrounds as well as attaining Steam levels. They have no real meaning at the moment.
Ah yes, you could say getting the vouchers for money off games is one positive, but too be honest, at the moment, you'd end up paying more for the cards than what you'd save on the games. Of course that is going to change now that more cards will come up for sale.
Just seems like another Valve trick to con gamers out of their cash.