Valve has added a new feature to the Steam Store, in the form of game-specific “item stores”. The Christmas sweater page – and all item pages – even has the current market price (starting at $7.21, in this instance) and how many were sold in the last 24 hours.
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This is going to be a very good medium to create in-game economies as Valve puts it, and if you are interested, there is also this example of Steam Item Stores that Valve Corporation has provided. Rust has been chosen to introduce Item Stores on Steam. There you can buy cosmetic items, like a festive $2.50 Christmas sweater, you might otherwise find randomly in the game, or buy in the Community Market. The items sold in the official Store are now along these lines, with clothes the primary items offered.
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These are the 100 best mods on PC. “It’s not a choice that should be made by us, or Valve or by the neckbeards on Reddit”.
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The effect this will have on item prices, and the ability for players to sell items on Steam, has yet to be seen. Now it looks like the groundwork for a second attempt has already been laid on Steam in the form of Item Stores – places where developers cannot only sell microtransactions and manage in-game economies, but split the sales proceeds of user-made items with their creators. The most important fact is that all of the items you can purchase are only cosmetically different from their regular in-game counterparts.
