Steam Trading Beta (Gift and TF2 item trading)

[Drac]

There's a new Steam Beta client available. To access the Beta, go to File -> Settings. On the Account tab press the Change... button to open the Beta Participation dialog. Then Select Steam Trade Beta Update, and allow Steam to restart itself. Here are the specific changes:

08/09/2011

- Added Steam Trade (see the Steam Trading Beta FAQ)
- 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.
- Added Brazilian-Portuguese and Bulgarian language support
- Added a much improved dialog for when a game is being converted to use the updated content system
- Fixed a case where Steam Guard would unnecessarily re-ask for activation in the Steam Client.
- Fixed offline mode not working if there was no remembered password.

NOTE: The ability to purchase a gift to send later will be added soon.

Source: http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=2047727

See this FAQ for full details.

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_...6748-ETSG-5417

Interesting update.

[Chief]

Probably won't use the trading stuff, but the friends list improvements are nice.

[Justin Kace]

It is interesting! I wonder (hope) that at some stage they will offer some kind of gift refunding option whereby someone who you gift a game to can return it to you (perhaps within a week) if they have played no more than an hour or something.

It's a bit of a shame when you gift a mate a game because you want to play it with them and they decide it's not really their cup of tea and don't play for more than 30 minutes ever. Would be cool if they could send it back to you so you could pass it on to someone else.

[Drac]

Can't ever see that happening JK. Publishers won't want people being able "borrow" a game for free, even if for a little while - and that's all they see such a feature as.

[Thermal Ions]

Originally Posted by Chief

Probably won't use the trading stuff, but the friends list improvements are nice.

This, and the gift later option (which I've previously worked around by gifting it to a secondary email address I have and not redeeming it, then resending it to the intended recipient for example on Christmas Eve)

[Reoh]

Of note in the Kotaku article about this, you can soon trade TF2 hats for gift copies of games, and that Valve are trying to get more companies involved in their little micro-transaction experiment / new focus.

[Bonkman]

Okay, so I activated this beta on my Steam account.

I have TF2 items, not willing to trade those at this time.

I do, however, have gift copies of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. Looking to trade these "gifts" for another couple of Steam Games, if anyone is interested and has some available.

PM me and we'll figure out how to do this.

[Rage]

I've always wanted the ability to "gift" a game after I'm done with it. I don't see it happening any time in the near future, but perhaps this could be the first step

GG Steam.

[Drac]

Originally Posted by Bonkman

I do, however, have gift copies of Half-Life 2 and Half-Life 2: Episode One. Looking to trade these "gifts" for another couple of Steam Games, if anyone is interested and has some available.

Good luck finding anyone on steam who doesn't have those already.

[Rage]

Originally Posted by Drac

Good luck finding anyone on steam who doesn't have those already.

*embarrassingly* \o