Steam’s Highest-Level User Finally Dethroned After Two Years – Info Computing

Two years ago, a Steam user going by the handle St4ck came out of nowhere and snatched the title of “highest-level Steam user” away from PalmDesert, a user who’d practically become a legend by that point. Now it’s St4ck who has been dethroned.

What does it mean to have a high Steam level? Well, not only does Steam sell games, it also turns game ownership into a game, in the hopes of persuading you to buy more games. You can gain profile XP by owning games, participating in holiday sales, and crafting trading card sets into badges. An elaborate plan involving the latter two things allowed St4ck to rocket past PalmDesert back in the day, blasting him up to the then-stratospheric level of 1,113. But that was then, and this is now. St4ck’s level is currently cracking outer space’s ceiling at 3,694.

Today, a user named Magic—full username Magic_Piska, or “Magic Penis” in Russian—topped that. Magic’s current level is 3,720. How’d he do it? At least in part by replicating St4ck’s playbook and crafting a single, apocalyptically high-level badge from holiday sale cards. Steam holiday badges don’t have level limits, and when St4ck unseated PalmDesert, he did it mostly on the strength of a preposterous level-54,000 summer badge that he crafted after buying and trading his way to 7,000 trading card sets. Magic’s newest badge positively dwarfs that: Today, Magic crafted a level 449,950 Summer Sale badge, gaining 44,995,000 profile XP in the process.

Already, Magic’s profile wall is inundated with congratulatory comments and scammy ads for CSGO and DOTA 2 items. Truly, a parade befitting a king.

You’re reading Steamed, Kotaku’s page dedicated to all things in and around Valve‘s PC gaming service.