Steamworks Documentation
Profile Features

Overview

Games that have achieved broad player engagement and some commercial success are eligible to create content that players can use in their Steam Community profile. These include Steam Trading Cards, Badges, Background, and Emoticons. Players on Steam can highlight content from their favorite games in various ways:
  • Collect, trade and market Steam Trading Cards.
  • Collect, trade, market and display emoticons and backgrounds on their profiles.
  • Craft badges to increase Steam XP and display on their profiles.
  • Use game emoticons in chat and posts on the Steam Community.
  • Include the game in their Game Collector showcase.
  • Display in-game items in the "Item Collector" and "Items To Trade" showcases.
  • Display game achievements in their Achievement Showcase.

Games that do not have these profile customization options do not count towards Game Collector or Achievement Collector totals.

Steam automatically enables profile customization features as games reach certain player and sales metrics that give confidence that a reasonable number of customers that are engaged with your game. We will automatically check whether your game qualifies several times per day.

FAQ

Q. What metrics are used to qualify a game for profile customization features?

A. Our confidence metric is based on sales and player engagement figures. We do not include data from user reviews, wishlists, total playtime, or any other judgment of the "quality" of the game. We're simply looking for a broad player base.

Q. Does this affect my game's visibility on Steam?

A. No. This status does not impact how we promote your game on the store - visibility, search, and discovery options are all independent of the Community profile.

Q. Does this mean Steam thinks my game is fake? Do you think I'm a bad actor?

A. No. Steam doesn't mark your game "bad" or "fake" - we will automatically recheck your game against our sales and player metrics several times per day.

We do not find that lack of profile customization options is a major factor for customers who are deciding whether to buy your game. In general this mainly affects games whose only value is in profile features (trading cards, emoticons, etc).