The Steam Elite.

i recall, the first one (holz) was a little over 1 million gems...

It's fine to spend thousands on new games and steam deals and buy hundreds of games that you'll never even open, but $500 for a badge is insane. That's almost a week's worth of minimum wage salary, they must be like billionaires!

Badge will stay forever, and it's 5000 xp. But yea, still crazy to spend money on this

"Oh boo hoo, people spending money in a way I wouldn't."

You can't put a price on swag.

Lots of money spent? Probably, but I also think that gems are still being exploited. I doubt there quite as many money wasters on Steam as there are overspending bids in the auctions.

Edit: Holy shit, didn't see the badge exp on that until now. That's just getting stupid.

i bet they didnt realize that the profile will switch back to normal, after the 16th of january

Is there a special badge for winning the Holiday Profile?

I still don't understand the point of leveling up your steam profile....even less than paying money to do it.

My goodness..

Thanks for da gibs and viva la synchronisation! :D

That's way too much experience for a single badge. Valve are pretty cray cray.

Then again, what's more crazy, the fact that it exists, or the fact that people paid so much money for it? If the background at least stick around until next year, then maybe it might have been worth it. Either way, I got my win in the bidding war and didn't have to spend more than $3, so I'm already a happy camper. :)

Not being tradable or marketable is one thing but item expiry? Lame.

Whales is the word you're looking for..? "Steam whales" has a nice ring to it, too.

If EA did this, there'd be a shitstorm right now.

seems stupid to me.

i wouldn't go to Wal-Mart and buy a crown with their logo on it for $500 so i certainly can't justify this.

My wallet cries when she sees this

So basically there are suckers throwing money at Valve for meaningless virtual items?

Stop the presses!

"This item is good for a limited time and will expire Jan 16th, 2015."

Happy holidays!

who cares.....right..no one except people that got nothing else in life to compensate their low self esteem

why doing charity when you can waste lots of money in useless cosmetic stuff? :O

not only referring to steam bullcrap..

Is participating in the auction event even worth it?

"elite" :P

that is pretty much the definition of idiot right there.

I wouldn't have a beer with any of them :3