[levemi]

> The total value of all items I've earned on Steam probably doesn't even sum to 1 Euro...

You aren't idling Bad Rats then, if you just idle the game you'll earn $0.20 cards every so often. There's a really weird underground economy in steam around cards. I don't really understand the market, it seems akin to smokes in the joint. There are farmers (people idling games), scammers (people taking more value than they're getting), there are arbitration scripts always running for the various steam and third party market places.

A lot of the value I think comes from people who want to have a really nice Steam profile. With enough cards and xp you can get a nice background and a high level. I haven't really looked into it but some people take it really serious and are willing to pay for it.

[firebird84]

Does idling Bad Rats produce more revenue than the cost of the power consumed by doing so?

[hiou]

It does when you live in a dorm or your parent's house. Same as a pizza delivery driver using their parent's car. Or Uber drivers unable to do the math on their costs.

There a lots and lots of markets where the seller almost always loses. Look at art and music.

[yarou]

You didn't answer the parent's comment, though. The answer is that the cost of electricity is greater than running this game, even if it's run in the background.

It's irrelevant if you live in a dorm or your parent's house - you just pass on the cost to whomever is the responsible party. And you finish with a rather bizarre statement about markets where the seller loses. There are markets where a large number of sellers compete for a shrinking amount of market share with an undifferentiated product. But it's irrational for someone to sell something at a loss in the medium to long term, overall (unless they are a monopolist).

[Robadob]

>The answer is that the cost of electricity is greater than running this game, even if it's run in the background.

There's a 3rd party application that most serious card idlers use, it uses negligible processing power, just pings the SteamWorks API to say you're playing the game. So if you have steam open in the background, I doubt this adds more visible cost than having a pinned tab in chrome.

http://www.steamidlemaster.com/

[TheCoelacanth]

Externalizing as many of your costs as you can is business 101.

[hiou]

The seller doesn't realize they are losing because they are not correctly calculating their costs. With art and music and things like pizza delivery / Uber churn maintains the market as the unaccounted for costs(debt, depreciation etc) finally catch up to the current participants removing them.

[Spellman]

My guess: nope