News Valve trialling Steam Trading

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2011/08/10/valve-trialling-steam-trading/1

 

As others have commented, Blizzard have seen the future in real money for in-game trading. Valve as another forward thinking company has done the same.
It's another feature that you can use how you like or not use at all, I think it's great.

 

DAMN! I thought they were allowing you to trade in older games on your account! Bring that in, and I'll love you long time, Valve!

 

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.

 

From gold farming to hat farming :3

 

i still expect this to evolve further in to game trading, and have said so a few times, i believe that within the next 2-3 years (max) you will have some sort of steam marketplace, where people can 'sell' their old games, once they no longer want them.

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

 

Finally, a use for those 9 crates I've amassed.

SOMEONE GIEF ME LIMBO

 

As its player to player trading, why stop at in game items for games? Why not do games for games trading?

 

I have this odd memory that valve used to mean something different...something about making games...involved a guy with a crowbar...Maybe its just me, but I'm sure they used to do something other than hats.

 

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

 

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.

 

Though they could let you trade games for an admin fee of £5 or so, 50% to Valve 50% to the orginal dev is still around if not chuck it at some charity

Kimbie

 

Meh, this doesn't interest me, I really don't like TF2 so I'll sit and watch how this pans out.

 

so people can trade games from their lists for hats in tf2?
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.