Just Ahead of Steam Fall Sale, Valve Changes Policy on Trading Games

Valve has gone ahead and changed its policy on trading games on Steam right ahead of the Steam Fall Sale. For the uninitiated, Valve allows you to trade anything that is in your inventory (which is separate from your library of games that you can play), which includes games that you have bought but not yet ‘redeemed;’ the new policy change is ostensibly done to promote better trading practices.

Essentially, trading games now has a 30 day waiting period associated with it, meaning you have to wait that long before you can trade the game for other items.

Valve’s defense for this change was that often, users who get a gifted game traded to them have their access to the game revoked, because of invalid payment methods used by the one who bought the game, and so on. It sounds like a fair change to me, although I can imagine that there are those who won’t welcome it.