Cultural context is the reason why the culture has become that way and what traditions/items lead to it. Steam's culture is unique in that there are thousands of cultures, but we are gonna focus on the big two, CS:GO and the TF2 culture. These cultures set the tone of Steam as a whole. CS:GO or Counter-Strike Global Offensives culture hasn't changed over the years. The main thing it's known for is its “toxicity,” but to be honest, unless you go on there with the goal of being rude, your team will be nice. CS:GO’s culture is like this because of the game's naturally competitive nature. In CS, people want to try and win most of the time since the rankings are unforgiving, and with the leaderboard telling you every single stat that matters, it allows people higher up to look down on others as long as their numbers are smaller. However, there is a sense of unity in the community by-annually with the counter-strike majors. Teams will compete for a huge prize pool where fans of both sides attend the events, and if there are really ballers, bring laptops and open cases in the stands. Those cases are a significant part of Steam's culture since the Counter Strikes market came with it. While the market was released with TF2, it was really used with cs the most, and this can be seen with the StatTrack Factory New AK-47 in Blue Gem(pattern 661) recently selling for 1.2 million dollars. The community respects the gambling of cases because we all want to see knives get pulled and used, which often sell for over a few grand, but of course, most cases only ever give a 3-cent case. A lot of stickers that are applied to skins have gone up in price since they were released back in 2013 when they were the first majors, and most teams had stickers made for them.

Steam's culture hasn’t changed much, but a major change occurred on September 30, 2010. In Teamfortress 2, they released the economy update, which added inter-player trading, which could earn you money. On November 20, 2013, they added the two cities update and added australiums, and later in June added unusual cosmetics. Both were rare items but still obtainable. The most expensive australium was sold for almost 8 thousand dollars. And a year ago, the most expensive unusual was traded for a a golden frying pan and 28 thousand dollars. Equating for 30k.(there are multiple of these items, but only like 3 for the unusual, and the pan has like 20 or so.).
In late July, seven months ago, someone who had recently joined the TF2 was lucky enough to get a golden frying pan quickly, but he made a mistake. He thought it was just another item, so he deleted it to make space in his backpack for a one-dollar item. Soon after this fact was made public, he was harassed by thousands of other team Fortress 2 players who had spent thousands of dollars trying to get a pan themselves. To this day, the account gregarious hasn't appeared online, whether they stopped using the account to avoid abuse or turned it into private. This is important because a golden pan is the equivalent of a bible signed by Jesus with a lock off his hair for the ribbon, and this man looked at it and thought it worthless and didn't dignify it by being cruel but just put it in the trash bin. (By the way, most players want one to use, not sell. I personally want one to use.) But TF2’s culture is different from CS:GO because while CS is competitive, TF2 is goofy, but it has its skilled players, which makes it unique: it's both something to get mad at and laugh at.

These two games have extremely different cultures but overlap at specific points, but not often. Understanding these two cultures is necessary for Steam because Steam is always set by the people in the respective game community. It's like going to a party thrown by a friend. One freind may throw a rajor while the other hosts a book club. And understanding its context is essential because if you tell a CS:GO player that opening those cases is stupid financially, get ready to have hundreds of hate comments put on your account.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8605213

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VglObw2p284&t=70s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGUd4GqK9Jg&t=196s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x_uiZ-86Ps