So, if you listened to the latest Bombcast you probably have heard the Crew discussing Steam and how Valve handels the Marketplace. And I thought this was a pretty interesting discussion and was actually surprised when I couldn't find any thread about it here. So just to clarify it, I fully admit it, I am a Valve Fanboy. I have no problems with almost anything they do (except Greenlight) and I don't know if that's because I'm a blinded follower or because it's not a big deal at all, so I thought a different perspective might help.

I found it kinda weird how grossed out Patrick was about the "sell Beta Access on the Market" and the market in general (which I found particularly weird seeing how fascinated he is be EVE Online) I don't see anything particularly wrong with that, it's just a way to get into the Beta earlier. Of course you could argue, that Valve purposely limited the access so this happenes but....I bought a Beta access for 0,30 Cents. Heck, I probably made about 10€ just selling all my trading cards (cause they were worth a lot more in the early days) so I'm fine. Is Valve taking a cut out of every market transaction really that bad? Since they provide the market in the first place and guarantee for saftey I don't think that's unfair at all.

Another thing a lot of people (not necessarily the crew, at least I don't recall that) seem to complain about the whole "Hat" thing (or...whatever it is they sell in Dota 2) but again, I don't really have any problems with that. They do nothing and are completely useless but if people are willing to spend money on it.....well....why not? You can buy weapons too of course, but all the weapons drop if you just play the game or just idle around, so I don't think that's unfair.(you might wanna read RPS "20 Bucks: Team Fortress 2" article I sold a bunch of my stupid "Pre-Order hats" and earned about 25€ should I feel bad about this? But again: I might be a stupid lemming and can't tell good from bad, so what's your take on all this?

Some people are teenagers without jobs who will bitch about anything costing money. The people who complain about the hats on Steam costing money are the same people who think any and all DLC is bad if it isn't free.

I agree with your points, but I might also be considered as a "Valve fanboy". I don't see how anyone could hate the Steam Marketplace. I've personally made +20€ selling various items on it, and I even find it fascinating to monitor what is being sold and how the economy evolves.

Patrick's point of view is no surprise to me. He rarely likes things in gaming from the larger corporations, but if it's a indie game made by a "non-American" (as he refers to people not from USA or Japan) he loves it by default, and will even take up large chunks of the podcast explaining even the game's most mundane aspects in detail.

There's a sucker born every minute. Valve giving people the option to buy ephemeral hats or trading cards is hardly the worst way someone in the gaming industry has capitalized on that.

@abendlaender: I'm more curious what your reservations are about Greenlight?

My problem with the hat system is the vicarious repercussions of lowering the bar like that. The "hey if people wanna buy/sell 'em then why not?" argument is not valid in my opinion, because we're all part of the same ecosystem. When you lower the bar for some people, you bring us all down. When you allow money-grabbing bullshit like this to happen, it might thrive and negatively affect the ecosystem that birthed/allowed it.

I don't have facts or theories, I haven't thought about this too much to have enough to say, but the keyword here is "lowering the bar." When you help the shittiness take place and thrive, it will come back to bite us all in the ass.

I mean, it's not like people had hoarded all kinds of stuff since the beginning of TF2 and the hat selling system came to help them unload their inventory or whatever. No. Valve came out of nowhere with ingame hats and a system that allows them to be sold. They purposefully created this IMO disgusting economy. And that is low on their part!

The marketplace doesn't bother me since I don't buy anything from it. Also, I'm selling a bunch of TF2 stuff and made a few bucks. It's not my fault people buy this crap.

I turned a boatload of TF2 stuff that I cared little about into new copies of Skyrim, Darksiders 2, and Dark Souls. Valve are superheroes as far as I'm concerned.

I don't get why anything about the community marketplace is scummy. I think its pretty great. And as far as people buying hats in general who the fuck cares? If a hat is worth $20 to some dude then let him pay it and be happy. Its not effecting your experience in any way. Nothing of this should effect you experience in any way. And to some people paying $20 for a hat might be worth it to them. Crazy to most but the key here is that things can have different worth levels to different people. So I don't see any issue here.

Ehh..I just don't hear a lot of good stuff about it. Indies are not happy, there are some weird stories floating around and nobody really knows how it works anyway (on the one hand they claim that every game needs to go through the Greenlight process on the other hand games like Fez can just skip it). But Valve is not happy with it either, at least Newell said they are looking to change it:

Greenlight is a bad example of an election process. We came to the conclusion pretty quickly that we could just do away with Greenlight completely, because it was a bottleneck rather than a way for people to communicate choice

Okay, now I want to know how that works :D

@jouseldelka said:

For a brief period of a few months, TF2 had hats but no trading (and thus no way to move any inventory item from your account to anyone else's). Almost as soon as item trading was enabled, there was a grey market for hats and other TF2 items. Maybe Valve could send all those sites C&D letters, but shady Russians/Chinese are gonna be shady Russians/Chinese and not give a fuck. All Valve did is make an official market where there is basically no chance of users getting jacked by some shady dude who doesn't hold up his end of the bargain.

Then again, I don't think I even get what you're saying. Just saying "lowering the bar" over and over isn't as clear as you might think. Lowering which bar, exactly? Is the existence of the marketplace lowering the bar, or is the existence of hats (pointless cosmetic items that cost money) in general lowering the bar? Is it degrading Valve's reputation, or the userbase's dignity, or both?

They obviously decided at some point to make TF2 a free-to-play game, and the TF2 store, and hats, Steam Inventory trading, and the Steam Marketplace are all pretty inoffensive things that enable TF2 to be free-to-play. Buying keys for TF2 crates/Dota chests is really the only scummy part of the whole system, as it does prey upon people's gambling urges, but that doesn't seem to be your focus.

If people want to make and sell cosmetic items for games, let them. If they want to sell the crap in their inventory, let them.

There is demand for those items. Someone will exploit that demand. I don't see a good argument for Steam abolishing the official system for selling and trading items and leaving those transactions to random internet assholes.

There is a core idea that is going on in this market that playing the game gives someone "credit" which can be used to buy the next game which is different than the real world analog.

The only facet that bothers me are keys to locked boxes. I would rather there be some way to gain keys by playing games than only being able to buy them.

Someone paid me $180 for the full Sam and Max preorder set.

That was before the market, and before keys. It was a super shady Paypal transaction with a trusted middle man. Now the market makes thing easier which I appreciate.

Can keys be traded? Seems like that would be the other way of getting them.

The only issue I see here is that I remember a lot of people complaining about the real-money auction house in Diablo 3 and how Blizzard was taking a cut of the sales. This seems like a very similar issue, but I don't see people complaining about Valve's cut. I don't care if people want to spend money on these things, and I applaud Blizzard and Valve for creating a safe process to allow for that because people have been doing this through much shadier avenues in the past. However, I feel that if people are going to be making money off of these things, then the developers have every right to take a commission from the environment they created that allowed those transactions to happen. It's a transaction security tax

I think its great, I sell my cards to people so I make some money from playing games. If people want to pay for this stuff then fine, nothing wrong with that!

The only downside I can see is that the effort put into developing this could be put into videogames, But I dont think thats a problem at Valve.

Hmm, no the reason why people complained about the Real Money Auction House on Diablo 3 was that it effected the item distribution. You could farm up the millions of gold faster and buy the gear you needed than farming bosses for gear.

@extomar said:

Yeah, that was my understanding as well. It seems to be that as a result of the RMAH, the drop rates for great items are dramatically lower in D3 compared to D2, so that going on boss runs for gear, even with a bunch of magic find, doesn't yield very good stuff. So you're all but forced to go to the auction house (regular or real money) to get the uniques, set items, and rares that were much more easily obtainable in D2.

That would be different. The angry rants I was seeing related entirely to an existence of the RMAH and how Blizzard was making money off of it, which they should have no right to do. I remember someone actually using the term 'slave labour' to describe the scenario.

I made £12 selling a hat from a game that probably didn't even cost me £12, so I really like the market place. I would much rather Valve continue to give important content for free and then let people buy hats.

I guess my problem with the whole thing isn't very thought through. It just seems a bit of a mean spirited thing to do, right? £12 for a useless hat is a lot of money, and just because someone exists who's willing to buy it doesn't make it right to charge them that for it. Though, perhaps some would disagree with me on that.

Also, when people say "you can get things for free too, so it must be fine", they forget that (in all cases that I know of) adding in the ability to pay for things with real money messes up the game mechanics around those things. Take the item system in TF2 for instance - initially, all the (admitedly fewer) items in the game were tied to the achievements, so you earned the items you wanted by doing the achievements for the class the item was for. That system made sense. But then they replaced it with a random drop system, where you get totally random items at random intervals, and all but never get hats - and I'm positive that they would have found a more elegant solution were it not for thefact that the thing's designed to increase custom to the TF2 store.

In what way does the marketplace stuff bring "everyone" down? You have to elaborate on that a little ... I have no interest in the marketplace, I ignore it totally, I only traded some stuff to friends for free, thats about it. So how is the marketplace affecting me? Why should I care when steam for me still is the same and does what I want it to do? It feels like you are outraged over something that won't affect you at all if you choose to not participate in it.

I see no problem with hats. Actually I think that they are a very cool thing as you support the developers without doing any detriment to the balance of the game. Valve to me is so far on the other side of bad free to play transactions that I see no problem with any of it. And as far as the market goes, they are providing it and guaranteeing your safety, so what if they take just a little either way you are getting money for something that is not even real.

@2headedninja: It does affect your experience insofar as the item drop system was obviously designed with the TF2 store in mind - I have a feeling the system would've been designed very differently if they'd been focusing on creating a fun item distribution curve rather than on encouraging people into the arms of the TF2 store. Now, it might be that if the current system isn't the way it is there'd just be no hats at all, and whether that's better or worse is another question. However, I don't think you can argue that because you have no interest in the marketplace, it's existance didn't affect your time with the game.

(Not sure if that was the point @jouseldelka was making)

What bar are they lowering? Games like Dota2 and TF2 are great games completely independent of this economy system and they have no negative effect if you wish to ignore it. I just don't understand how this can be considered bad if they

a). never withhold real content (ie heroes or levels) from the base game

b). keep their policy of only cosmetic and aesthetic purchases.

if you're able to exercise a modicum of self-control, i find it really easy to ignore cosmetic microtransactions. and i also find valve adept at building a thriving community with a stake (be it financial or otherwise) in the games they play. i think the marketplace is a natural evolution of systems they've been toying with for years, so i have no problems with that.

i mean, i've just managed to sell a bunch of tf2 hats (aquired as preorder bonuses over the years) for steam credit, and with that i bought the complete alan wake. if that's not a win, i don't know what is.

I can make a few bucks selling digital things I put no effort into getting, and I'm always going to buy more games so I don't care about not being able to pull money out. They also don't hide their cut when you put an item up for sale, or anything. I think it's fine.

When it comes to stupid cosmetics such as hats I'm not in the least bit bothered. When it comes to weapons and sets, I am. The drops for new stuff are rare, and unlike the previous releases which released new gear over a modest amount of time there's so little time to keep load outs up to date and learn how to deal with classes and their new gear. Also the Norman Rockwell inspired aesthetic is gone in these days of the Demopan, that I find the item 'effects' (floating hears, bright light, etc) to be really ugly, out of place, and annoying.

I'm okay with the drop system, except for the abundant of crates in my inventory, which always felt like a slap in the face to me because I don't want to spend $2.50 for a higher chance of getting a hat, I just want an item. Sure, I could probably trade to gain what I want, but I never bought TF2 to do that. I bought TF2 to play TF2.