# The card economy — The Steam Dossier

> A Steam card farm is a customer: $5.00 per account, 13,876 card-issuing games and 694,673 finished sets sitting in public bot stock.

Canonical: https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy
Language: en
Publisher: PhishDestroy
Author: PhishDestroy Team

This file describes the published investigation page. The full text preserves its arguments, figures, tables, qualifications and source links. Cite the canonical page and the relevant section.

## Reading

- [Published page](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy)
- [Complete Markdown](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy.html.md)
- [Complete plain-text version](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy/llms-full.txt)
- [Investigation index](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/llms.txt)

## Sections

- [What a farm actually is, step by step](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#process)
- [Buy in](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#process)
- [Buy games](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#process)
- [Idle The tool logs the account into the Steam network headlessly, "parses your badges" , builds the list of farmable titles and starts "playing eligible game and periodically checking if game is fully farmed already." Its maintainer's description of the mechanism: it "does not do anything else than telling Steam we're playing given game."](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#process)
- [Drops run out Each title is finite. "Every game has fixed number of card drops. Once you drop all of them (around a half of the full set), the game is not a candidate for farming anymore." A farm that wants to keep producing has to keep buying titles. Card supply is throttled by purchases — by design, and in Valve's favour.](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#process)
- [Cash out The card leaves by one of three doors: sold on the Community Market, traded away, or crushed into gems. Each is a Subscription Marketplace transaction or a trade, and § 3.D reserves the charge: "Valve may charge a fee for transactions in a Subscription Marketplace." This is the step that makes the whole thing a breach — see 05 .](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#process)
- [Before a farm earns a cent, it has already paid Valve](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [How large the thing being bought actually is](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [How big a set is](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [What the licence costs](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [What the finished set returns](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [Where the 694,673 sets are sitting](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [What this floor does and does not say](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [And farming does not pay for itself at Valve's prices](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [What the farm actually props up](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [And the cash-out itself is a value sink Valve taxes twice](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [This is not a moment. It is an industry with a multi-year backbone.](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [Complete card sets held in the public bot directory, by Steam sale](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [What one sale's badge ladder looks like from the top](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [And the same fleet is there when no sale is running](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [The resting directory, bot by bot](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#scale)
- [The other product is the number next to your name](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#ladder)
- [Complete sets consumed, level 1 to 1,000](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#lvlcalc)
- [How the curve was checked, because Valve does not publish it](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#ladder)
- [The clause does not describe farming vaguely. It lists it.](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#statistics)
- ["…playtime"](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#statistics)
- ["…without genuine user input"](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#statistics)
- [Every exit from a farmed card is an exit the licence forbids — and Valve charges a fee at the door](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#licence)
- [§ 2.A — the licence](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#licence)
- [§ 2.G — the restriction](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#licence)
- [§ 3.D — the fee](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#licence)
- [Read the three together and the position closes](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#licence)
- [The fee at that door is not 15%. On a farmed card it reaches two-thirds.](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#fee-ladder)
- [Effective fee on a Community Market sale, by the seller's asking price](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#licence)
- [No notice, in waves, and it travels down the phone number](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#enforcement)
- [Case 4 — June 2025, VAC bans on idled CS2](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#enforcement)
- [How a main account dies](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#enforcement)
- [The same paragraph, five years apart, from three different agents](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#enforcement)
- [Note on sourcing — operator-scale losses](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#canvass)
- [Both sides of the same desk](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#asymmetry)
- [A customer, for trading](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#asymmetry)
- [An automated bot fleet, for volume](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#asymmetry)
- [The question this leaves, put plainly](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#asymmetry)
- [Who moderates the card economy](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#governance)
- [A Valve employee moderates the largest card-trading group Valve employee](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#governance)
- [The ban-list layer, and who administers it Volunteer moderator Third-party service](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#governance)
- [What this adds up to, and what it does not](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#governance)
- [Nobody counts. That is the finding.](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#census)
- [The 10.88M Account Census: 88.97% Untouched](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#governance)
- [Forensic Evidence & Deep Census](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#governance)
- [What was read, and what is not claimed](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#method)
- [The four datasets, and the arithmetic on them](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#method)
- [Primary sources](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#method)
- [What is not claimed](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#method)
- [Why the tool is not the subject](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/card_economy#method)

## Evidence and downloads

- [farm-economy-timeline.json](https://phishdestroy.io/steam_dossier/steam_tos_assets/farm-economy-timeline.json)