We’ve all been there: a Steam sale promises a tantalizing bundle deal, packed with games you long to play but haven’t had the budget for, all for an affordable price. But wait, you have one of the games in that bundle, rendering that all-too-tempting price drop a little less sweet. What to do? Well, it looks like Valve is addressing that problem.
In a document recently distributed to developers and obtained by PCGamesN, Valve has laid out plans to change how they handle trading and security in their digital distribution platform, Steam. Additionally it seems they are also altering how they sell game bundles to adapt to player needs.
For game bundles, Valve is changing the system so that if you buy a bundle which already has games you already own, those games will be removed from your purchase, and the price will be adjusted appropriately. Valve says they want customers to not feel cheated or pass on bundles that have some games they want, and games they already own. As the document states:
“Past Complete Packs were sometimes a bad deal for customers that already [owned] one or more of the products in the pack. Either it made bad economic sense for those customers to purchase the pack, or they just felt bad about doing so since it [looked] like they were paying for products they already [had]. The new Steam Bundles system addresses this.”
While not all of Steam’s 125+ million active users participate in service’s popular card trading feature, just last December Valve revealed rampant identity theft done for trading to the scale of 77,000 users a month.
In response to the growing issue, Valve revealed their Steam Guard Mobile Authenticator, which is now in use in 95% of trades, indicating that it has been embraced by the community as successful as a protective measure. Valve is now applying these changes to the market, after feedback and observing results of their previous security efforts. For Steam users who still aren’t using the Authenticator, they are still applying 15 day holds on trades, and they will also start implementing 15 day holds on the Community Market. If you don’t have the Authenticator, but you are trading with Steam friends, the hold dips to one day from 15 days.
Valve also revealed these efforts have proven successful, as they have seen progress on issues like identity theft and item duplication.
How do you feel about these changes? Share your thoughts with us in the comments.
