I have to wonder how much it was costing them in support tickets from people who were angry that their Steam inventories weren't empty anymore.

It is started with the Steam Animal Fest there is no free at the points shop until this steam sports fest no free items again so sad we are waiting for this fest everytime to claim the free stuff and I love to collect all of the avatar ,frames and backgrounds for now it's not free anymore what happen the excitement to collect it is gone

Things change. Free stuff helped with engagement and getting people to check out features. The need for that isn't the same and users hate change unless it directly benefits them.

Also not spending a lot of money on Steam isn't a problem Valve needs to solve for you.

Oprindeligt skrevet af BeLz:

(Steam level 270 here) When Steam launched the Points store back then i was a bit skeptical. But after getting the Level 40 badge from the Summer / Winter sales I started to like it, because imo its a free way to upgrade our Steam level. I liked the fact i could also upgrade how my steam profile look by upgrading the showcase. But what i liked the most was the fact of getting these free new items from some of the events. It made me come to the Steam store every now and then to look for the events , scroll through the active one and then get my free items. But now , looks like we need to pay 1000 points at least for these even if the event is still active. Why the free items during the events were removed? Inflation? (lol) I dont spend a lot on Steam, I dont have lot of points available, which I save to upgrade the Sale badge, which to me makes way more sense than these event things we now pay min, 1000 a pop to get. Is there any reason Steam decide to remove these freebies ? It surely not purely for the $ since these are not paid but bought with Steam points (which you get by spending money on the plateform but still...) Im probably sure a lot of you guys feeling the same way as i feel. Ive been using steam since forever (got Steam because i preordered Half-life 2 back then..) I loved the fact we had free stuff coming from Steam. Please steam bring these back for free during the event, even if they are crap no one likes / wants :csdsmile: .

Just like everything else they all do now, all about on literally everything. They don't provide anything better or greater or even give a real true reason why other than "they can"

Yeah, noticed that the past few events organized by steam no longer had any freebies.

I get the feeling that Steam is going into "austerity" mode. First they removed free summer/winter sale cards for viewing our discovery queues, now it's the freebies for events. Sure, they replaced the cards with "stickers" but I have no use for them since they can't be used in the discussion forums and I believe most of us use other chat programmes such as discord instead.

What next? Increase the spending requirement to $100 USD per free card? Heck, they might just get rid of free stickers eventually as well.

Steam is no longer as "fun" as before. We used to have events such as the race and monster invasion (salien). Sure, it caused steam to come to a crawl but it was good fun. They got rid of that, they got rid of free discovery queue cards, they got rid of freebies for events.

I was wondering where they all went... 😢😭

Oprindeligt skrevet af BeLz:

(Steam level 270 here)

And?

they're profiting billions every year, likely worth close to 100 billion dollars, but a couple free point shop items is way too much to ask.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Mountain Months:

they're profiting billions every year, likely worth close to 100 billion dollars, but a couple free point shop items is way too much to ask.

Not even close to 100 billion.

Just over 16 billion in 2025.

https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/pc-gaming/valve-makes-almost-usd50-million-per-employee-raking-in-more-cash-per-person-than-google-amazon-or-microsoft-gaming-giants-350-employees-on-track-to-generate-usd17-billion-this-year

Literally just got free event items a few days ago. The problem was almost certainly freeloaders.
Folks that just walk in, grab the free whatever, and walk right back out. They don't peruse what's on offer, or develop a positive disposition. In other words they weren't even thankful.

You can even see the sense of entitlement in this thread. Posters thinking they were just owed free stuff because. Frankly when customers start to get like that. Retailers have ample reason to cut them off. As they end up trifling actual paying customers.

Like I said you can still get free items, but you have to put in some real effort, and if anything that makes them cool. I watched a ten minute stream of a game. I'll remember the name of the game, and thanks to the free stuff I received. I now like them for their real generosity.

Steam is a store not a charity. When comps don't equal sales. They'll stop giving away comps. I don't expect stores. To just give me free stuff, because they turn a profit. The relationship is just transactional. I give them some money, and they give me a game.

There isn't a personal relationship at play. In fact it's this very warped perspective. That sees a lot of game developer become convinced. That they are owed sales of their game regardless of how they conduct themselves, or whether the game they're selling is finished or even good.

Free stuff is a bribe to get you to spend, and if you don't spend they'll stop coming. That's almost certainly the case here. Customers didn't reciprocate so the time, money, and energy. Were likely put to better use elsewhere that might actually pay off.

There's probably some kind of reason behind the scenes that we don't know about, but I doubt it's money. Getting 6,000 points to spend on 3 "free" event profile items likely has virtually no impact on generating additional sales. Like, I really doubt that any tangible number of people is going through the mentality of "I wasn't going to buy this AAA game, but now that I know I could get a free profile picture border if I do, I'm definitely dropping the $60!" The handful of people who think that way are probably handily outnumbered by the people who will now refuse to buy games on Steam because they're not getting these profile items for free.

Maybe it's indeed a support issue, or they're just trying to slowly phase out certain types of items. Only Valve knows.

Oprindeligt skrevet af rawWwRrr:

Oprindeligt skrevet af BeLz:

(Steam level 270 here)

And?

This mean im invested in the plateform. your post was useless to the topic my G.

W Thread

so its true Steam stopped giving away free Steam Events Fest so thats why the past 3 Fest didnt give anything I was super confused to why and just ignored it up until now I started searching for threads