Steam Community Market Now In Beta

[Cristian_25H]

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today introduced the Steam Community Market, now in Beta with Team Fortress 2.

The Community Market is designed to expand the Steam Economy beyond trading. Players are now enabled to buy and sell in-game items with other players for Steam Wallet funds.

"With over a half million trades made every week, the trading system has been very successful," said Tony Paloma of Valve. "Extending game economies beyond trades and giving players a way to turn gameplay into funds for new items and games is a key component for moving that success forward."





The Steam Community Market, now in beta with Valve's Team Fortress 2, will be available to other titles on Steam in the New Year. Games that participate enable users to show off their items on the Steam Community and sell or trade their items to others.

Items purchased are subject to transaction fees, please see FAQ for more http://www.steamcommunity.com/market/faq.

[Jstn7477]

The days of PayPal scammers ripping off people for several hundred dollar unusual hats may soon be over.

[lyndonguitar]

Nice, its like Diablo Auction House but better!

[wickerman]

Which items are eligible to be bought and sold on the Community Market?

For the initial launch, the Market will be limited Team Fortress 2 consumables and tools, including paints, keys, and crates. Your eligible items are marked as “Marketable” in your Steam Inventory. After the beta, we may expand to include additional items from Team Fortress 2 as well as items from other games.

If you have to buy keys to be able to open crates and then sell the items you get from those crates, it is a pretty limited system and I doubt most people will profit from it. But if they do expand it to cover more items like weapons, hats, and metals I think it will really be a big hit assuming they can control item farming to prevent market manipulation.

But still, Valve is always adding features, experimenting, and willing to listen to their community so I'm sure many of us welcome their innovation to their wonderful platform.

[xBruce88x]

now if they can make it so you can trade/sell games that'd be nice

[a_ump]

^definitely

When i first read it i thought a lot of stuff like hats and whatnot, but i could see how they wouldn't really warrant a value for steam money to purchase other things. bummer as i don't believe i have any of those 3 items

[SIGSEGV]

as far as i know dota 2 has already started selling their luxurious items through a market. my friend had asked me whether i still have funds in my steam wallet to buy him some dota 2 items in last couple days ago. Nevertheless i still didn't know what market is it, because to be honest i actually just played this game once since i got the beta key.

[AphexDreamer]

It seems we are turning to an interesting point in time where by the virtual "material" (game items) are being treated like wanted real world material. Best part is those are "material" that you can get for free virtually by random drops. Its like handing out free money to everyone for doing something they were already doing for fun. Right?

[hhumas]

i hate this game ...

[punisher186]

Just put all my Crates up for 2¢.

[erixx]

market market market! does everything on earth have to be marketable!?! We are creating a race of shop-tenders! STFU all!
Yes, yesterday Ravi Shankar died, and there are still hippies* on this planet! (*generic reference to people with other priorities)

Just joking, but not absolutely... BTW, do I have items to sell? What are items? Damn amnesia....

[DannibusX]

It's a good initial step. It'll likely broaden to all other TF2 items in the near future. My bet the limitation is only so Valve can test the system for reliability before allowing the floodgate of hats and other items to be sold through the market.

I know it's only limited to in game items right now, but it would be sweet if Valve allowed people to sell games they don't play or want anymore, even if it's only for Steam Wallet funds, which would obviously go right back into the Steam ecosystem in the form of new games purchased and whatnot.

[Ikaruga]

Some Tf2 pro or broker please tell me how much a series 3-4 crates could worth?
I have lots of them but have no idea about this whole item thing. I don't really like the movement physics of the Source engine, so i rarely play tf2 and even when I do, I just use the default outfit whatever that means.

[jagd]

This is the situation for long time for MMOs ,alot of MMO items/gears etc sold for real money on ebay (when it was allowed , still can be sold if game developers allowed ) ,sweatshops builded to farm game currencies and power leveling players , latest trend is multi-player games ,and remember diablo 3 and its RMAH .But nothing is free , your time vs someone elses money

Originally Posted by AphexDreamer

It seems we are turning to an interesting point in time were by the virtual "material" (game items) are being treated like wanted real world material. Best part is those are "material" that you can get for free virtually by random drops. Its like handing out free money to everyone for doing something they were already doing for fun. Right?

[Zack]

Why do I have the biggest urge to play CS after reading that.