Steam opens up Community Market for the sale of virtual goods ...

If ever there was such a thing as a win-win-win situation in the world of digital video game distribution, the new ?Community Market? within Valve?s Steam platform would pretty much nail the definition right on the head. Although it?s still very much just a beta idea right now, it opens up the floodgates to grant extra money to game developers, to Valve, and even directly to gamers themselves.

The basic concept behind the Community Market is that players will be able to sell their in-game items directly to other players. Valve will get a cut of the transaction, as will the publisher of the game, and then the player who?s selling the item gets to pocket the rest.

Of course, the money is only available to the player?s Steam Wallet which makes it an even bigger revenue booster to Valve and, by extension, all other publishers on Steam.

Right now, the Community Market is only available in the game Team Fortress 2, one of the most popular titles on Steam. Even within TF2, only certain eligible items are available to be sold from player to player. Of course, Valve says that once the kinks are ironed out and it has a chance to evaluate the program, if everything is successful it will roll it out to more items within TF2 and then eventually to more Steam games.

Other limitations of the beta include the fact that players can have no more than $200 in their Steam Wallet at any time. As such, the maximum amount they can charge for any item is $200.

As for the nitty gritty details, all Community Market transactions will be subjected to a 5% transaction fee, which the buyer will pay, as well as a 10% Team Fortress 2 Fee. So a total of 15% goes to Valve and the publisher ? not a bad deal for the kind of transaction that usually takes place outside of the game servers. Instead of Ebay getting a cut of the sale, why not let the people who made the game get in on the action?

There is no timeline for when Valve expects to expand the Community Market, but the limited accessibility within TF2 is now available for all users.

Steam Support and Market, via Gamasutra

Source: http://www.geek.com/articles/games/steam-opens-up-community-market-20121213/

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