Hate
December 29th, 2022I hate steam trading cards.
I hate them so so much. With every fiber of my being. It's not healthy to hate a minor UI inconvenience as much as I do but I do. I loathe these wretched things. I hate the implied insult that I should be excited to receive one. To collect a set. To cash them in for gems!!!?? I hate that I can't turn them off. I hate that I can't even turn the notification off. I hate that, if I google "how to turn off Steam Trading Cards" real, living, breathing motherfuckers will have the gall to be like "Why would you want do that? Hey you could just sell them. You know they make Valve a lot of money right? ;)". I fucking hate that I should, for some reason, be excited that a company is making a money while providing no meaningful value.
I HATE THAT TO SELL THEM I have to confirm every sale on a fucking awful, trash phone app, because my steam account is valuable when it really shouldn't be. I hate that some people think I should be EXCITED because valve made a fucking nickle and dime stock market for psychos. I hate the idea that I'd want to collect this shit to "unlock emotes" or "to have more friends", as if I should need to do that on a service that is ALREADY FUNDED BY ME SPENDING FUCKING MONEY
I hate them. I hate that, if given the option, I will add Cards to Brave Earth Prologue, and people will purchase my game, with real money, to get fake cards, to maybe sell for money? I hate that I will be excited for people to buy my game so they can turn it into an idler for monopoly cards. I hate the idea that I will make money, for making a game, without people actually wanting to play the game. I hate that I'm not financially secure enough to take a principled stance on this.
I hate that, after years of accepting "Yeah, when I play a new game, I'm just gonna get a bunch of dumb notifications in like the first few hours of a game", that valve decided, IN THEIR GENEROSITY to randomly give me a notification EVERY DAY, RANDOMLY for what amounts to spam because idk, it's fucking christmas?? I hate valve almost as much as I hate their fucking trading cards.
The one good thing about them -- the fact that my poor friends can get small subsidies toward purchasing games -- I also hate. I hate that my poor friends have to do the digital version of redeeming soda cans. I hate that shit in the world is so bad, that this infinitesimal way to leach money from weirdos is worth the time of my friends. I hate that it's a pain in the ass for me to even just give them all my cards, like handing a bag of cans to someone on the side of the road. I hate that, even if I do that, the thing that annoys me the most -- the random notifications an intrusive pop-ups -- still happen. I hate that I need a whole ass fucking chostblog post cause putting all this in a twitter thread, a thousand angry little tweets, would be an act of violence toward my twitter followers that even they could not forgive and they fucking follow my dumb ass so their standards are already low.
I cannot escape. There is no reprieve from gamification. One might say "But Kay, why get so mad. This is just a papercut".
To that I would say... it is because it is a papercut, so small, so needless, so inescapably sharp, that I hate them so much. If it was worse I'd probably eventually go numb. But these things, these wretched little pieces of digital trash are so small, so minor, that the inconvenience of every one rattles in my brain like a fly that can't escape a room.
I HATE steam trading cards