If I understand correctly, crafting a summer badge gets you an ingame item for some select F2P games, the usual background/emoticon, and one of several tokens. Tokens that can drop are points boosts 500/1000, steal points 100/500/1000, or team switch (one for each team).

The tokens are rather rare.

Steam's sale seems very underwhelming to me and their little promotional trading card game is not really intended for the majority of Steam customers by the looks of it but only the most hard core money spenders and Steam addicts which is evidenced by all the hoops one has to go through to participate in it to receive ultimately something in return that is aesthetic at best and has no real world value and perhaps a one in a billion chance of winning some games.

It's way too much effort IMHO for someone to jump through all the hoops to get to level 8 if they aren't already, either fast tracking it by spending money just to do it (which is IMHO a stupid waste of money), or by jumping through hoops doing all kinds of mundane things on Steam to try to gain levels. I experimented with it last winter just to learn how it worked and understand the process and to try to understand what people get out of it. What I learned can be summed up by ... Boooooring. Snore.

They make boatloads of money from it one way or another though or they wouldn't do it every single time there is a big promo. Kudos to them for their psychologically manipulative puppeteering money making brilliance though. :)

I'm sorry but i cannot care for you anymore. I hope you will find a new home and a new new gamer, that loves you as much as i do.

Goodbye

SAL9-QNM6-XMNZ-BCDR

well, obviously someone has thick wallet and likes to collect things.

People do this with everything else besides games. Someone collects books and never reads them, another collects cars and never drives them.

Buying everything on steam is in comparison quite cheap hobby really.

I wish my ass was on the purple team, favorite color...

This Steam Sale I had 10 cents in my wallet, one summer card from Valve & level 10. Now I'm level 20 and I have 1 euro.

got pink *facepalm

There is guy named Flush about level 316
Soon i will be 40, i guess.

I don't have a fucking clue what all of you are on about...does that make me cool?

Also rocking the pink.

Well, you do have to join one to participate.

>>How do I join a team?
>>There are two ways to join a team: when you craft a badge you’ll be automatically added to a team, or you can click on the “Join a Team” button at the top of this page. You will be randomly assigned to a team. You may change teams with a Team Token.

Oh, and speaking of teams: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswGnzDazdY#t=33s

Pink and proud!

Honestly, I'm having a lot of fun with it. Yeah, I realize that cards and badges and levels don't really mean anything and blah, blah, blah... I don't care, I enjoy trading stuff. I'm having fun.
Personally, I can't justify spending money on the whole thing, but I won't judge anybody who does. I get why people do, I'm just not that hardcore.
I don't expect or even hope to win any prizes. I just get to entertain myself for twenty minutes a day for free with a simple little hobby. Win!

The people behind Steam are truly geniuses. They turned buying games into a fucking game. GOG should do something similar.

As long as it doesn't involve badges..

Why can you not vote for games now like you could during GOG's last big sale (might have been the holiday sale)
Now if they could do that and make it fun and interesting somehow.