In order to put an end to scamming Steam has decided to change its game trading rules. The changes first became visible earlier this week and they now forbid users from trading games immediately that have been purchased as gifts. Steam says that this has been done to make trading gifts a better experience for those who are on the receiving end.
From now on all new games which are purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser’s inventory will be untradable for 30 days. They gift can be gifted at any time, there’s no changes to that, the only change that has been made is to trading.
It wasn’t like that previously, when a game could be purchased and traded to another user immediately. However the users to which the game was traded could find access denied if payment from the original buyer was denied.
Steam writes on the official community forums that it hopes this change will lower the number of people who trade a game only to have it revoked later due to issues with the purchaser’s payment method.
The way people used this to scam others was by using bogus payment methods to purchase Steam keys which were them resold quickly to others. However when Valve couldn’t process the original payment those purchasers became unable to access the game.
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