Steam Trading Cards

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Steam trading cards were introduced after the games in your library were released and purchased by you and therefore placed in your library. There's no reason to assume that people will buy a game for the sole reason of potentially obtaining a trading card. Why should we assume that they will, especially when there are obvious reasons to the contrary, therefore making the assumption illogical? At best this will get people to play games that they have in their library which they never touched or replay games that they already have in their library.

That being said, the chance for discounts is nice, but i'm not going to be actively trying to obtain more cards.

Yes, because spending time and money to give people an incentive to play the games they've already bought and giving everybody a chance to get cheaper deals is sensible marketing. Do you honestly believe Steam doesn't have an endgame here? Either they introduce a system where the really good cards cost money down the line (even if it's indirectly as in the free-to-play case) or they trick people into buying games they may not necessarily want because they feel they are "saving money" (and I don't mean to impugn Steam's marketing decisions, they do what they do very well and I wish only the best for them).

And I didn't mean to insinuate that reasonable people would buy $60 games just to get trading cards, but it is entirely possible that later on they will bundle special rare trading cards with games, perhaps a limited launch deal kind of thing - I don't know.