Steam Community Market announced

New application launched in beta, lets users buy and sell in-game items

Posted on Dec 12, 2012 - 7:39pm EST

Valve today introduced the Steam Community Market, now in Beta with Team Fortress 2.

The Community Market is designed to expand the Steam Economy beyond trading. Players are now enabled to buy and sell in-game items with other players for Steam Wallet funds.

For the initial launch, the Market will be limited Team Fortress 2 consumables and tools, including paints, keys, and crates. Your eligible items are marked as “Marketable” in your Steam Inventory. After the beta, we may expand to include additional items from Team Fortress 2 as well as items from other games.

The Steam Community Market will be available to other titles on Steam in the New Year. Games that participate enable users to show off their items on the Steam Community and sell or trade their items to others.

The Steam Transaction Fee is collected by Steam and is used to protect against nominal fraud incidents and cover the cost of development of this and future Steam economy features. The fee will be 5% during the beta period (with a minimum fee of $0.01). This fee may be increased or decreased in the future. The buyer pays the Steam Transaction Fee.