Valve Adds Steam Points Shop To Digital Store

The Valve digital store is getting an upgrade with the addition of the Steam Points Shop.

This, according to Valve, will allow Steam players to redeem numerous items for players to customize their “Steam presence.”

When a Steam user purchases any game, DLC, application, hardware, soundtrack, or in-game item, they earn 100 points for every $1, says Steam’s guide. Those points can then be used to customize their Steam profiles, says Digital Trends.

The Steam user can then choose among animated avatars, backgrounds, frames, badges, or chat items to display. The points do not expire while items cannot be traded with other Steam users.

Currently. The Steam Points Shop offers awards like the Debut Collection that has four animated avatars, four animated frames, 15 profile backgrounds, 11 mini-profile backgrounds, and six emoticons to choose from and display. Users can purchase each avatar, frame, background, and emoticon individually at anywhere from 100 to 3,000 points.

If you’re looking for a glorious look, the Summer Golden Profile costs 5,000 points while giving a player a frame, background, and custom color theme, all of which come in gold. Users can also redeem items, backgrounds, and emoticons based on the games in their Steam library.

Community Awards will also be offered by the Steam Points Shop. These can be redeemed to “emphasize reviews and User-Generated Content on Steam with an award. The award will appear for all to see and also give the contributor a tip of 100 points.”

Valve has said that they plan to expand the set of things you can use your points on in the future, which could mean a number of things including new Avatar items and backgrounds or even other Steam content.

Since Steam has been around for some time now, it’s curious why they would open this option at this point in time. Considering the strong push they’ve been facing from Epic Games Store and their weekly barrage of free games, this could be a way to raise the level of competition between the digital platforms.

Digital Trends points out, however, that limiting rewards to Steam profile items and community feedback seems like a missed opportunity. The expansion that Valve mentions could be alluding to games or DLC on Steam in the future but that’s clearly not the case right now.