It must be hard for the professional Steam traders. They're forced to work long hours, bartering for and upselling the best cards. They're not even allowed to take the smallest of breaks, lest they miss a chance to secure their future with a shiny foil Dale Earnhardt Jr . It's a stressful lifestyle, with only the promise of vast riches keeping them going. It'll be no small comfort for them to learn that Steam have introduced Trade Offers , a system that lets users send pre-packaged offers for their friends/business partners to accept, reject, or counter-propose.
The system lets you browse a friend's inventory, enter the trading screen, tailor the offer to your liking, and send it off as a proposal. Their are two major benefits to this system, as I see it:
- Your friend can be offline while you're making a proposal.
- People who don't care about trading cards will tell you to piss off less often when all they have to do is click a button marked "yeah, sure, whatever". Or whatever it's actually marked.
It's not just cards that can be traded. From my limited poking about, most Steam Inventory items can be offered up, including Team Fortress 2 bits. For now, offers are limited to people on your friends list. Valve say that may be extended in the future, although will always respect the privacy options in place for your Inventory.
