Steam has amended its scams policy and now warns that items lost will no longer be restored, where once they had been.
In an update to its “Scam FAQ” Valve explains that restoring items — Team Fortess 2 hats, skins and weapons, for example — devalues ones already held by other users. “Our community assigns an item a value that is at least partially determined by that item’s scarcity,” the FAQ says. “If more copies of the item are added to the economy through inventory rollbacks, the value of every other instance of that item would be reduced.”
Steam noted that while it sympathizes with scam victims, “we provide enough information on our website and within our trading system to help users make good trading decisions.
“All trade scams can be avoided,” it adds.
Sorting out an inventory rollback request likely took a lot of time and/or money for Steam’s customer service department — which earlier this month adopted a refund policy (under certain conditions) for games purchased online. I’d expect that in the coming months Steam will look at further changes to it’s policies in order to further streamline it’s customer service. Valve have long been the target of varying types of criticism. Which they genuinely seem to be working on.
Refunds and community curation are steps in the right direction, and while this change might initially seem like a reversal of course; it makes more sense when one considers that Steam works best as a platform of community feedback and “Caveat emptor“. Valve will likely continue this well into the future. Unless of course one of it’s competitors like GOG Galaxy can rock the boat hard enough for Valve to change.
Now if they can just fix PC gaming’s obsession with buying into broken low-quality games and “Early Access”. Lord GabeN please.
