Valve trialling Steam Trading
Valve is trialing a system that will let players swap Team Fortress 2 unlocks for full games.
The system is set up so that players trade with each other through Steam's Community features, rather than with Valve directly.
The Steam Trading trial is currently only of limited focus, allowing players to negotiate swaps of Team Fortress 2 unlocks for Steam games that have not yet been added to a player's library.
'[Now your Steam Community profile will have an item inventory, and you'll be able to view the item inventories of every public profile in the Steam community,' Valve said.
The trial also makes it possible to trade through Group Chat, allowing you to trade with anyone in your friends list - just right click their name and press 'Invite to Trade'.
Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
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Discuss in the forums ReplyIt's another feature that you can use how you like or not use at all, I think it's great.
Why would they let you do that?
because it means you're more likely to buy games (you might take a risk on more expensive games if you know you can trade then in after).
And in general means you're playing stuff on steam for longer.
I'm don't particularly like the idea of trading just TF2 stuff for games, however if they do expand it to other games, then that would be pretty awesome.
there will of course be some rules
Steam and the game dev will get either a set amount or a % of the sale.
the sale money will not actually be real money but money added to your Steam account so that it will have to be spent on more games in Steam
New releases will be exempt from the market place for a set period of time (expect 6 months) to allow the devs to get full impact of the higher price of a new release
this of course is only my person expectation/thoughts
SOMEONE GIEF ME LIMBO
I doubt very much that Valve only have one entire team working on one thing at once...
Yeah... They're doing multiple hats...
But there is no benefit to them by trading in downloaded games, yes you can trade in your old car but it leaves the dealer with something to sell on. Valve aren't going to let you trade in old games for new as it just looses them revenue.
But between users is fine, still don't think they will let it happen though as it is a lost sale to them each time a game is traded.
You can, it's just not mentioned in the article.
From RPS:
likely/possible answer in my post above :p
That's only if the game isn't already attached to an account. My original thought was for games already connected. A simple trading system where you could offer up, say 3 indie titles and someone comes back with, say, a copy of Dawn of War II, of which all four games are already attached to accounts, would be brilliant.
Valve lose nothing as there is no money being exchanged and the games are all already paid for, and essentially it is simply allowing people to move games between accounts. It can only make Valve more popular.
Kimbie
am i getting it right?
I agree it would make them more popular than they already are and I would love to see them trial it for older games, however the idea has a lot of scope to be exploited and I'd argue Valve would lose out on the sale of games that are being traded instead of bought from their store. Think about it, if you have a circle of friends you regularly trade with, you would be able to buy just one copy of a game and trade it with each person one by one instead of buying several copies of the same game. This would be particularly damaging to indie titles which can often be completed in a couple of hours and generally offer less replayability than big-budget multiplayer titles like BF3. Also, I think the main issue isn't Valve actually implementing such a system - it's getting the go-ahead from publishers to do it. They're certainly not going to be happy to see their games being traded among friends instead of being bought for each account - they're already looking at ways to profit from second hand sales and the more heavy-handed DRM systems already try to prevent it by tying games to a single online account separate from Steam.
It might be nice to have as an option for indie developers when their game goes on Steam, but I really can't see it happening and it would only hurt them in the long run.
So put a limit on how many trades a month. Even 2 or something low would be fine :)
Another thing, and relates to the limits, something would have to be done about hijackers trading off games from hijacked accounts to their own accounts (or more likely to other hijacked accounts). Perhaps limit the amount of times a game could be traded; game can't be traded until it's 6 months old, and once traded can't be traded again for another 3 months? Or something like that. Won't help too much with hijacked and traded games, but at least it wouldn't be a never ending trail for valve to 'find' your games and means that indie devs won't find groups buying 1 copy for everyone to play. Though of course, they could just buy it once and share the steam account details ...
Very welcome feature for Steam, but lots to think about. Shall be watching how this pan's out with great interest!
Only games which aren't tied to an account can be played. Things like gift passes which the holder can't play, merely has the ability to give to other accounts. No game which has been tied to an account (and therefore no game which has been installed or played) can be traded.
Trading of gift passes for money via paypal or other compensation has been happening for awhile, just look around on the forums here and there's plenty of game selling and trading. Being limited to TF2 items limits the use of this, but perhaps it'll evolve into a broader system.
TF2 for instance ;)
It was attached to HL2, I don't play it, it clutters up the "my games" section.:D
Surprised its taken them so many years to realise that.
I did read the article. You are correct, but there is nothing in the article above that mentions about the game not being tied to an account. I found that extra bit of information else where.
My apologies Sloth, that would be this bit -
"The Steam Trading trial is currently only of limited focus, allowing players to negotiate swaps of Team Fortress 2 unlocks for Steam games that have not yet been added to a player's library."