In a move similar to the recent news of Blizzard's Diablo III allowing items to be officially traded, Valve announces it is in the process of creating a trading service for Steam that will allow item-based trading.
Unlike Diablo III allowing cash for items, Valve's plan will not allow cash to be used and only items ranging from Team Fortress 2 hats to actual retail games to other in-game collectibles.
The service is being called "Steam Trading beta" and will only allow trades to be done with people on a friend's list. As of now only Team Fortress 2 items use the service but Portal 2 is expected to be included soon.
Also revealed are games received as gifts in Steam can be traded away while potentially the service could expand to any game in a person's collection. However, Valve is restricting potential game trading to only games that were never played or never registered to prevent issues with DRM and other security features.
http://www.giantbomb.com/news/valve-...ing-beta/3574/
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Quick News Round-Up:
1) OnLive expects to make its UK debut next month following the Eurogamer Expo with the rest of Europe being done between the rest of the year to most of 2012. The company also announced their UK and eventual European services will be integrated with the US services to create a centralized service for OnLive.
2) Ubisoft announces the Assassin's Creed Revelations beta for the time being will be exclusive to the PS3 but hints they could expand it later to include the Xbox 360. The beta will focus on the multiplayer aspect of the upcoming game with 9 characters and 3 maps included for play testing.
3) Today is the last day to register for the 3DS Ambassador program to get the 20 eShop games for free for those who bought the system before the official price drop begins. Starting tomorrow 10 games will be available with the final 10 GBA games released by the end of the year.