A game on Steam suddenly has 11,000 players and reaches its own record. But why are thousands of people suddenly playing an ancient game? Players from the community explain: These are bots farming an item to sell it later.
What kind of game is this? Secret of Magia is an “RPG Maker” game that was released on Steam in August 2015. The price is about 2 euros and the reviews are rather mixed.
Most of the time, the player numbers fluctuate in the low hundreds, but no large player counts. However, at the beginning of December 2025, things suddenly looked different: From December 4 to 9, 2025, the game according to SteamDB had over 11,000 players at the same time and even reached its highest player count ever. But why does a game suddenly have so many players after 10 years?
Bots are farming Steam trading cards from a game and selling them for cents
Where are all the players coming from? Both on Reddit and on Steam there are discussions about why such an old and rather mixed game suddenly has so many users. But the answer is surprisingly simple. The vast majority of them are said to be bots that start the game to farm Steam trading cards.
These cards have a sale value of only 1 to 2 cents, but this can still be worthwhile for certain individuals in countries with low income. Players buy a key for one cent, let the game run for 2 hours, and collect the trading cards. They then sell these cards for one cent. The cards can be obtained multiple times. One user explains on Reddit:
The [selling of the cards] yields a profit of 2-4 cents – not much, right? Now scale that: 9,000 bots buy the game for 0.01 cents and bring you each 3 cents – boom, then you have 270 US dollars from an investment of 90 dollars.
The trading cards on Steam are a feature that most users probably don’t pay much attention to, as the trading cards are usually worth almost nothing. A gamer has now earned a Steam Deck with it: A gamer forces the Steam economy to its knees, buying a Steam Deck with cents
