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Valve Brings Game And In-Game Item Trading To Steam With “Steam Trade”, Plus More In New Steam Client Beta Update

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None of us saw it coming, though in hindsight, it’s something so practical and useful, it’s a wonder we didn’t.

Valve Brings Game And In-Game Item Trading To Steam With “Steam Trade”, Plus More In New Steam Client Beta Update

A new beta update for the Steam client has just gone live. The beta contains a number of additions, some of which are very interesting. Valve’s very own Jason Ruymen posted about the beta update in the Steam Forums. Let’s take a look at some of the more notable additions:

– Added Steam Trade
– Added inventory view on Steam Community profiles, to see your TF2 items
– Added drag-drop of items from your inventory into chat
– Added bucketing of friends in the friends list – right-click on a friend as select ‘Tag as…’ to organize them into categories.
[…] 

Yes, let’s all welcome Steam Trade to the world. Again, no catchy valve/steam puns. “Steam Cloud” had me laughing for weeks. Allow me, Valve. Let’s try… “Steam Heat Transfer”? Selling the idea! For $60! Practically giving it away. Please buy it. I need money for tattered hats and beard dirt.

Moving on, Valve has created a very handy FAQ on the Steam Support website, answering any possible questions you might have about Steam Trade. Be sure to check it out, as it will answer most, if not all of your questions about it. They’ve also made a great little post on the TF2 blog. Let’s check that one out:

As we all know, Jonas Salk invented money in 1955 so he would have a way to earn a living from his polio vaccine.

TF2’s alternate timeline is starting to be as complex and bizarre as Fallout’s timeline.

But wait. What if we told you that you could barter for things that weren’t garbage, AND not die of polio? Steam Trading Beta lets you securely trade your in-game items for other in-game items from participating games. You can also trade Steam gifts (games on Steam that you’ve purchased but not yet added to your Games Library).

Want to try it out? In Steam, go to Steam > Settings, and opt into Steam Trading Beta. That’s it! 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.

Now that you’ve opted into the Trading Beta, you can invite people to trade through Group Chat, and trade with anybody in your Friends List who’s also opted in. Just right-click on their name and select “Invite to Trade” from the dropdown menu. Once your friend accepts your offer to trade, a trade window will open up. The first time you open the trade window, a step-by-step walkthrough will guide you through your first trade.

And there you have it. Post any feedback you’ve got in the Steam client beta thread on the Steam Forums. The FAQ mentions Portal 2 should incorporate “both Trading and Inventories”, “reasonably soon”. We’re hoping this will coincide with the addition of in-game trading for Portal 2 (and, perhaps, the Portal 2 DLC pack). Granted, there may not be much to trade for, but I’m sure traders will find something to value. Like… promotional Potato Sack game flags. Level 50, folks. Gotta have that.

The update also includes a redesigned Friends window. You have two tabs, one for Friends and one for Groups. This means the whole window is now much better optimized, and searching for groups and friends is much more practical now. You can also add friends to tags, which are sort of like categories or groups.

And in other TF2 news, the promotional QuakeCon items can now be traded, crafted, found, and purchased! In addition, the Tamrielic Relic has been renamed to the “Dragonborn Helmet”. Sounds very menacing. Almost as if the helmet will give birth to dragons if you fill up your dragon hype meter or something. You can find news on that update right here.

9 Comments

  1. 1) Go to an inventory page.
    2) (For IE users) Press F12 (For Firefox users) Install Firebug and press F12.
    3) Open Console tab.
    4) Write:
    document.getElementById(‘mainContents’).childNodes[5].innerHTML = ‘Portal 2‘ + document.getElementById(‘mainContents’).childNodes[5].innerHTML;
    5) Open Portal 2 tab (near Team Fortress 2 and Steam).
    6) Portal 2 items!
    Bonus: Information about how a player got a P2 item!

  2. @clive it’s not just tf2 items, you can trade games for games and other cosmetics in other games. Any combination of cometics-cometics, games-games, cosmetics-games works

    also, i’m really excited to trade my extra copies for something else! 😀

  3. I can see this doing well, but i dont really agree with it. I dont think acuall games should be traded for somthing as small and useless as a teddy rosevelt.

  4. So that’s why Valve hired Drunken F00l

  5. So you can’t trade games that you already have in your library? Damn, now I can’t get rid off L4D2!

  6. I spotted “trading” console command in Steam long time ago but didn’t know what does it mean.

  7. I can see it now. “Valve Complete Pack for a pair of earbuds or Unusual”

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