Steam Community Market (Beta)

[Shradow]

[url="http://steamcommunity.com/market/"][img]http://media.steampowered.com/apps/tf2/market_blog.jpg[/img][/url]

[quote]Joystiq

The Steam Community Market, currently in beta with [i]Team Fortress 2[/i], is designed to allow members to buy and sell items using their Steam Wallet funds. This is an expansion of Steam's previous trading policy and its surprisingly complex [i]TF2[/i] economy. The beta is only available for [i]TF2 [/i]at the moment, but more games will be added in the new year.

"With over a half million trades made every week, the trading system has been very successful," Valve's Tony Paloma says. "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."

All consumable [i]TF2 [/i]goods and tools are up for selling and purchasing, including paints, keys and crates; all compatible items are now labeled as "Marketable" in Steam inventories. During the beta, Steam takes 5 percent of each transaction amount to cover the cost of development and to prevent fraud. for more in-depth questions, consult the Steam Community Market [url="https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6088-UDXM-7214"]FAQ[/url] or the [url="http://steamcommunity.com/groups/community_market"]discussion group[/url].[/quote]

[quote]Valve

As part of our ongoing efforts to gradually phase out all Earth money in favor of Team Fortress hats, we're kicking off the TF2-only beat of our new Steam Community Market! The Market should improve trading in every way: People looking for specific items will be able to locate them faster, folks looking to sell items will find the process a lot more efficient, and best of all, we've made it easier for everybody to translate playing TF2 into buying games on Steam.[/quote]

While severely limited right now, when it's fully functional and you can buy and sell all sorts of things, this is going to be really cool.