A gamer approached the community with a very special request: He wanted to get exactly one point on Steam. His wish was apparently granted personally by a Valve employee.
What was the deal with the point? Steam points are a currency with which one can purchase cosmetics for their profile and chat or reward contributions from others in the Steam Points Shop. You earn them for purchases on Steam or for contributions like reviews, guides, and workshop content that have been priced by other users.
A user recognized a special opportunity in his Steam points – but he needed help from the community to achieve it.
Even Valve CEO Gabe Newell is always up for some fun:
User recognizes the chance for a gag on his profile
What was the problem? A gamer reached out on December 24, 2023, in the Steam subreddit under the name CoffeeAndPistachios. He wanted to know how to earn exactly one point on Steam. To illustrate his point, he shared an image of his current points balance: it stood at 68,999.
Although the user did not say it explicitly, everyone could probably guess why he wanted to reach exactly that amount.
Unfortunately, the endeavor proved to be not so easy. CoffeeAndPistachios received over 500 responses – including some suggestions that he should aim for 421 or 691 additional points instead – but there was hardly a practical solution offered.
Theoretically, the gamer would just need to buy a game for 1 cent on Steam to get the point. However, the pricing policy of Steam prohibits this: a game can only be offered for a minimum of 0.99 cents, or 0.49 dollars on sale.
Others advised the player to contact support. However, as it turned out, that was completely unnecessary.
A Christmas Miracle
This was the solution: CoffeeAndPistachios returned the day after his post with a new screenshot: his points balance had magically increased to 69,000. The user couldn’t explain it himself: “I’m kind of losing my mind, I did nothing, where did the one point come from?”
On the advice of the community, the gamer checked his transaction history in the Steam Points Shop and found an adjustment that had been made by support the night before. An anonymous employee from Valve seems to have granted CoffeeAndPistachios the missing point in a covert operation.
How exactly this heroic deed was carried out is not entirely clear, as the gamer never mentioned his Steam name. It is quite possible that an employee searched the database for that exact value – so perhaps not just CoffeeAndPistachios had a surprise in his points balance the next morning.
Some Reddit users even speculated whether Steam boss GabeN might personally be behind the “Christmas miracle.” After all, he is known for unusual actions: Gabe Newell revealed the login details for his account on Steam to prove how secure his platform is
