Valve has just launched the new "Trading" feature for the Steam client. Basically, you can now trade the items you have from games that support the feature easily with other players. Not only that, you can now store copies of games from the store when they are purchased as "gifts". This feature is definitely very early in its infancy but the potential is definitely there. Just imagine being able to unlock a hard to acquire in-game item that everybody wants and then demanding that it can only be traded with a copy of say Dead Island? The developers can definitely benefit from this - if they feature unlockable and tradable Steam items in their games, that could generate some excitement and even sales for those games. I really don't see this going to encourage people to buy extra copy of digital games though because everyone on Steam has access to the sales promotion so it's redundant to stock up when others can easily just get the games themselves. Still, a very interesting feature that further separates Steam from other gaming networks and clients.
The Steam innovation continues...
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