What are Steam Points and How it Works?
The Steam Points system was introduced to reward users that purchase products on the Steam platform. The points are given to users who make a purchase on Steam and later on these points can be used for different cosmetics or awards. Many users that are unfamiliar with Steam Points can learn about it in this article. We will discuss everything that you should know about Steam Points in this article.
What are Steam Points?
The Steam Points are given to all those users that make a purchase on Steam Store or in-game. The purchases can be games, DLC, applications, hardware, in-game items, or soundtracks on steam. Now you can have the item that you wanted to buy and plus the bonus Steam Points. The Steam Points will be added to your balance whenever you purchase a game or item. You can view your balance in the Points Shop. If you refund any game, the points will be deducted from your balance. If your Steam Points balance goes into minus, then Steam will remove the most recent items and awards purchased through Steam Points.
How to Earn Steam Points?
As mentioned above, the Steam Points can be earned by buying items from Steam. The Steam Market is an exception and won’t give any points if you purchase anything from there. A $1.00 USD worth of items/games will give you 100 Steam Points.
However, there are also other methods through which you can earn Steam Points. The other method is earning points through the Awards. You can simply give awards to someone and they will get 1/3 points of the award given. The awards can be given directly through a profile, a comment, or on a screenshot/artwork. It is kind of similar to the Reddit awards.
Note: The games or items bought with a discount will only give you the points equal to the discount amount of the game and not full.
How to Use Steam Points?
There is a Point Shop on Steam where you can get different cosmetics for your Steam Profile. You can find the Point Shop in Store page or under the Store context menu. You can buy Emoticons, Profile Backgrounds, Avatars, Mini Backgrounds, and many more by using Steam Points. There are static and animated cosmetics that can really make your profile look amazing.
Every item in Point Shop has a different price. Steam adds new items to the Point Shop every year. Here are some prices of the items:
- Game Profile: 10,000 Points
- Profile Showcase Upgrade: 6,000/3,000 Points
- Seasonal Profile: 5,000 Points
- Animated Avatar: 3,000 Points
Avatar Frame: 2,000 Points - Animated Background Profile: 2,000 Points
- Mini-Profile Background: 2,000 Points
- Chat Effect: 1,500
- Animated Sticker: 1,000 Points
- Seasonal Badge: 1,000 Points per level (20 levels every season)
- Still Profile Background: 500 Points
- Emoticon: 100 Points
The Seasonal Profile can be bought for 30 days and will expire later on. Every season will have a different theme and the seasonal profile will change accordingly. The season badge works similarly to game badges on Steam Profile. It provides Steam profile level experience to level up.
All the other items will stay in the account inventory and users can use them anytime. However, the items from the Point Shop are not tradeable or marketable.
