Steam is probably the most popular digital game distribution service, available for PC games today.
The game retailer offers a variety of options in addition to just buying games and downloading them.
You can buy games as gifts and send them to friends, and also collect trading cards by playing them. These cards can be used for various purposes, to craft them into a badge, to create gems and to sell them for Steam Wallet money. Steam Wallet funds can be used to buy any game on Steam. So this is why trading cards are popular.
How to get games with Steam trading cards?
There are three ways to get Steam trading cards.
1. You have to buy a game which has Steam trading cards. You can visit the Steam store page of a game and check if it has cards, by checking the sidebar on the right.
2. You can get free Steam keys from giveaways (Indiegala regularly gives away free keys). If the game has Steam trading cards.
3. Steam gives trading cards for free during some sales like the Steam Winter Sale.
How to farm for Steam trading cards?
Merely collecting a game will not give you its cards, you will have to play the game for a while to unlock the cards. But this involves two things: downloading and installing a game, playing the game. This involves both time and data bandwidth.
There is a workaround for this, and it is free. All you have to do is download a little app.
1. Download IdleMaster from the official webpage.
2. Run the app, and click on login and enter your Steam credentials.
3. Run the Steam client.
4. IdleMaster will analyse your Steam Library and Inventory.
5. It will automatically start simulating the gameplay for any game which has card drops remaining, and unlock the cards. You don't even need to download the games at all.
6. The cards will be added to your Steam inventory, and you can sell it on the Steam Community market.
Any Steam trading card in your inventory can be sold for wallet funds.
Idle Master is open source and hence safe and secure to use. It even has a Steam community which stands as proof of the app's legitimacy.