Valve announces Steam Trading Beta

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 10 August, 2011

Trade virtual items for other virtual items.

You can now trade in virtual items for other virtual items through Steam.

Steam Trading Beta lets you do that, and trade Steam gifts: games on Steam you've bought but not yet added to your Games Library.

Currently Team Fortress 2 items and Steam Gifts can be traded.

You can try it out now by going to Steam, then Settings, then opting into Steam Trading Beta.

"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.

You can invite people to trade through Group Chat, and trade with anyone in your Friends List who's also opted in.

To do so, you need to right click on their name and select Invite to Trade. Once the offer is accepted, a trade window will open up.

There's more on the Trading Beta FAQ.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (15) Latest comment 10 months ago

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  • bad09 #1 10 months ago

    Really good idea, would be nice if you could trade your games with people as well as gifts but I guess the industry would never want to give you back the ownership they've taken away thanks to digital distribution and DRM.

  • fletch273 #2 10 months ago

    It would be good to trade in my games. Thanks to steam's ridiculously low price sales I've bought some games that I've never even played. It'll never happen though.

  • Shinetop #3 10 months ago

    Announce Episode 3 instead. /obligatory

  • doragonpawwa #4 10 months ago

    I'd love to trade in Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods.

  • Dyason #5 10 months ago

    Please be a toe dipping in the pond towards trade and resale of your existing games. I guess some would be impossible, those which need serial numbers etc, but not all. A percentage could even be given to the publisher with this method and all parties could be happy.

  • Spekingur #6 10 months ago

    It would probably never end up as pure resale of your games. It would continue on this path of trading something for another - game for another game. Unless, of course, they implement the Steam Wallet into this.

  • Harmonica #7 10 months ago

    Please progress this towards games trading between friends or whatever. I hope the companies know that whilst everyone loves digital distro we're not happy about losing our resale rights.

  • Toothball #8 10 months ago

    That sounds quite handy. I've got a few spares from buying bundles here and there.

    @Dyason

    I can't really see any digital service moving into 'used' game sales, as the analogy doesn't really work when there's no difference between data that has been played and data that hasn't.

  • mcbain23 #9 10 months ago

    what Shinetop said.

  • Waffleaber #10 10 months ago

    Very clever stuff, certainly makes me more likely to buy game bundles where I already have a few of the games included if I can possibly trade them.

  • Subdominator #11 10 months ago

    AFAIK you don't get additional gift codes when you're already owning games from bundles. That only works with very few bundles, I think only those from Valve.

  • Toothball #12 10 months ago

    @Subdominator

    It does seem to vary depending on the bundle. Generally it's best to assume you won't get a spare copy unless it specifically says so.

    With this I'd be curious to see them run another bundle sale like the one last year with this mechanism. I could see myself quite tempted to pick up a 4 pack while it's on sale with the intention of trading later.

  • deadstoned #13 10 months ago

    Sounds good :)

  • Amblin #14 10 months ago

    Wait til the eve community hear about this, prepare for scamming factor 10 lol!

    So now the pc is one step closer to second hand sales. what will the future hold I wonder?

  • callum9999 #15 10 months ago

    Toothball - surely that's the reason why they'd never allow it. If they let you trade in and swap bundle games then there is no point in them making bundles whatsoever.