We've been hard at work, and we're proud to announce our latest feature: auctions! Although we can't prove that we invented the concept of auctions (although our media team is hard at work figuring out how to do just that), we'll say it anyways. Guys, we just invented auctions!
To kick it off, how about an auction for a Golden Frying Pan with a $100 starting bid? Check it out!
Just like the real world, auctions are best for items whose price isn't concretely known ahead of time. With that in mind, in the beginning, we're restricting auctions to the following items:
We will, of course, be expanding this list to include more types of items as time goes on. Additionally, we will add support for auctioning items from games other than TF2 soon.
We put a large amount of thought into the pricing structure for auctions, and in the end, we decided that the best solution was to go with what we already know works.
Therefore, auctions have the same 10% commission as any other sale on Marketplace.tf.
Before placing any bids, you'll need to add your phone number to your account. This is to prevent abuse of auctions and provide a safe environment for everyone. We will never spam you or sell your data.
When you place a bid with a card, you will not be charged unless you win. When you win an auction, you will have 48 hours to return to Marketplace.tf and pay for the item you won. Failure to pay within 48 hours will result in a permanent ban from placing further bids.
Additionally, to bid with a credit or debit card, you must add a card to your account that meets our verification requirements:
We understand that these requirements may inconvenience some bidders; unfortunately, these measures are necessary to prevent fraudulent transactions.
Bidding with PayPal will be available in the future.
If you have Wallet Funds on your Marketplace.tf account, which are obtainable either by selling items or by purchase, you may bid with that instead of a card.
When you place a bid with Wallet Funds, we will deduct your maximum bid from your balance immediately. This will be refunded if you are outbid.
If your winning bid is lower than your maximum bid, the difference will be refunded to you at the end of the auction.
Note: if you opt to purchase Wallet Funds to bid with, please be aware that they are NON-REFUNDABLE. For this reason, we do not recommend that you purchase Wallet Funds to place bids.
If you've been paying very careful attention over the past week, you may have picked up on a temporary glitch that caused old crates to produce unusuals 100% of the time. You can read Valve's writeup and solution here.
On Marketplace.tf's side of things, we were lucky enough to have shut down all services about 1 hour into the event, but within that timeframe, some users managed to sell some of these "glitched" unusuals to buy orders made on Marketplace.tf. To that end, we will be refunding in full any buy order filled with a "glitched" unusual. This is about 150 unusual hats that we will be refunding. Some users who sold these unusuals to buy orders have graciously agreed to return what they earned through them, but this is a minority of the unusuals; the majority will be refunded by Marketplace.tf.
While we are not responsible for Valve's mistakes, we could have done more to prepare for such an event. We will be instituting safeguards moving forward to detect similar anomalies, as well as providing safety features for those who create buy orders -- such as the ability to set a limit on the total amount spent by your buy orders within a 24 hour period. We'll let you know when this goes live.
Starting now, Marketplace.tf has full support for Dota 2 items. You can now buy and sell any tradable Dota 2 item on Marketplace.tf: Arcanas, Couriers, Weather Effects, Cosmetics, Player Cards, Wearables, and more. We've put a lot of work into this update, and we think you'll like it.
Welcome! For many, this blog post will be your first interaction with our service. We've spent the past 6 years building the absolute best TF2 cash trading website in the world (we've got seniority: we're literally the pioneers in automated Steam trading), and we're finally extending our reach.
Put simply, Marketplace.tf is the best place to buy and sell Team Fortress 2, and now Dota 2, items for cash. We've delivered over 18 million TF2 items so far, and we're larger now than we've ever been.
Our support for Dota 2 items isn't simply tacked on; we've built a great platform for Dota 2 items. Take a look:
With Dota 2 support released, it's not time for us to rest. In the immediate term, we'll be hard at work reading and acting on your feedback to provide the best experience possible.
Additionally, you can read more about our other plans for the future (including more payment methods, payout options, and more) by clicking here.
Finally, if you're interested in trading CS:GO items, please read this post and provide your feedback.
Enjoy!
If you've seen our latest blog post, you'll know that Dota 2 support is coming to Marketplace.tf soontoday
Some have asked why we chose to add Dota 2 next instead of CS:GO (or both at the same time). We think that Dota 2 traders are currently forced to deal with sub-par cash trading services, and we want to offer a high-quality, tailor-made website that Dota 2 traders will appreciate.
More importantly, there are challenges involved in supporting games like CS:GO, which have tradelocks on items post-trade. In the interest of offering a quality service for everyone, this poses a challenge: we don't want to display items that can't actually be delivered upon purchase, but we also don't want to exacerbate the negative consequences of Valve's decision by forcing sellers to wait 7 days before they have a chance to sell their items. Additionally, we have absolutely no desire or plans to attempt to circumvent these trade delays in any way (we're not trying to emulate a website that rhymes with "Flopshins" here).
If you would like to provide your thoughts, please answer this strawpoll, leave a comment, or let us know on our Discord.
This blog post is meant to give an idea of our current plans for the future, but plans can always change. The order of this list is not intended to represent the order in which these features may ship. This list is not necessarily exhaustive.
Surprise! Soon, you'll be able to buy and sell Dota 2 items on Marketplace.tf.
We've put a significant amount of work into this update, and we're really excited about it. Our goal for any game we support on Marketplace.tf is to provide the best service for that game that we possibly can. If we add support for a game, we don't want it to feel like a tacked-on feature; it should be a first-class citizen amongst the other games we support. For example, we've invested a lot of time in our search functionality, offering features nobody else matches (style and gem filters anyone?), and we think you'll like it.
Expect Dota 2 to be available on Marketplace.tf within 1-2 weeks.
We offer the best TF2 trading platform in the world, and that's what we plan to do for Dota 2 as well.
Nope! Marketplace.tf is doing better than ever in the TF2 trading scene, and we don't intend to slow down any time soon. Our TF2 support will continue to get better, with new features and services specific to TF2 (such as the ability to filter by killstreak effects, coming in this update). Additionally, a fair amount of the work we've done to support Dota 2 allows us to improve the TF2 experience on Marketplace as well.
We're working on supporting a number of new payment methods to better serve our international customers. This includes, but is not limited to:
Think something's missing from this list? Let us know!
Marketplace.tf already offers feeless, instant PayPal payouts for all our users, but we can do more. We're investigating multiple options for providing new payout methods -- specifically ones that better serve our international users -- and we'll share more specific information when we can.
Of course, PayPal payouts won't be going away with these changes.
We're working on a brand new help center that will guide our users through all of Marketplace.tf's features and services.
It will contain a number of neatly-categorized, searchable articles that go into specific detail on the usage of the website. The creation of these articles represents a fair amount of work on our end, but will serve to greatly improve user experience. We hope you find it useful!
Although we're not yet ready to talk about it, you can expect Marketplace.tf to continue to innovate in unexpected ways. We're extremely excited for what's to come, and can't wait to show you what we mean. Big plans.
This is a "Patch Notes" post, where we summarize many of the user-facing changes we've made over the past few weeks. Many of these changes are not individually large enough to receive their own blog posts, but still deserve to be formally announced.
tl;dr: You can now see if an item you're selling is priced higher than what others are selling it for. You can also now see the lowest price an item is being sold for in the Set Price dialog.
We're releasing a change to the seller dashboard today that will improve your selling experience and ease the burden of selling large amounts of items at once.
If an item you're selling is priced higher than others are selling it for, you will now see an alert icon next to the item's price informing you of this discrepancy. Opening the Set Price menu will display the lowest price the item is selling for on Marketplace.tf, allowing you to price yours to match if you like.
We've been hesitant to provide this information due to concerns about scripting and automation (you can read our stance on that here). Scripts that automatically undercut legitimate sellers who are pricing their items manually harm our platform and are strictly against the rules and will result in the permanent ban of an account.
However, these bad actors cannot outweigh the positive Quality-of-Life improvements that legitimate sellers would benefit from. Withholding information that is genuinely useful to good-faith sellers in an attempt to thwart bad-faith sellers is something that must be done very sparingly, and in this instance, we feel the benefits of providing this information outweigh the risks.
However, this does not change our stance on the use of scripts to automate the pricing of items on Marketplace.tf. Additionally, we are actively investigating solutions that would neutralize the necessity and effectiveness of such scripts, to the benefit of all.
Please read this post for important context relating to this announcement. This blog post is a direct follow-up.
Last week, we announced that we would be requiring that sellers add and verify a phone number in order to deposit items. Since then, we've been reading your comments and listening to what you have to say. We'd like to offer this follow-up to show you what we've learned, what actions we're taking, and provide some clarity on the reason we're making these changes.
tl;dr: Following your feedback, we will allow verified addresses as an optional alternative to verifying a phone number. In addition, we are delaying this change until May 7th, 2019 in order to allow time for affected sellers to verify their address or phone number.
When we made the decision to require phone number verification, we did so under the assumption that our sellers all had access to a phone number capable of receiving texts. We assumed this because, in order to deposit items, sellers need to register a phone number with Steam and use the Steam Mobile Authenticator. However, we learned that some of our users do not have access to a phone number presently, even if they had one in the past to set up Steam.
Additionally, many users are understandably trepidatious about providing a phone number to a third-party website. While we guarantee never to spam or solicit our users via SMS or robocalls, we understand that many users have a very strict personal security policy whereby they simply do not share their number with third-party websites.
Finally, we learned that our reasoning for making these changes was not presented in the best way. Many users do not feel they received an adequate explanation for why we are adding additional verification requirements.
In response to user feedback, we realize that we need to provide an alternative verification measure that does not require a phone or phone number.
To that end, a verified address will now suffice as an alternative to a verified phone number. We think this is an acceptable compromise for those few users who are unable to verify a phone number: verification is still required, but entirely possible without a phone.
Verifying your address is extremely simple:
Domestic (US) postcard deliveries typically take under a week, while international deliveries are less predictable and may take longer.
Marketplace.tf has grown considerably since we initially opened up the ability for any Steam user to sell items. Since that time, we have seen numerous instances of scammers and fraudsters stealing items and liquidating them on Marketplace.tf. While we work to ban these users and delist their items, we often cannot do this before the items have sold. Additionally, banning seller accounts does not prevent them from creating another account.
In order to effectively combat scammers, and ensure that only legitimate users are selling items on Marketplace.tf, we need to have some form of verification on sellers. We need to be able to link accounts together using physical attributes -- phone number, address, etc. -- so that we can enforce bans on seller accounts. We cannot in good faith ban an account while doing nothing to ensure an alt account is not immediately created by the banned user.
Quite frankly, Marketplace.tf deals with real money, and so must be held to a higher standard than other TF2-related websites. This demands that we take our position seriously; this is not just a TF2 website, but an e-commerce platform. With that comes additional moral and technical responsibilities that we must take seriously.
We have no interest in providing scammers or fraudsters a safe haven. We owe it to our legitimate users to prevent illegitimate users from liquidating their ill-gotten goods.
These new restrictions apply solely to depositing items. That is, you will not in any way be locked out of your account, the funds you've earned, or the items you've already deposited. You will be free to withdraw or sell items already on your account; the only restriction is that you must verify to deposit more items.
All sensitive user information is encrypted using extremely strong industry-standard cryptography. We do not believe in "security through obscurity". We do not roll our own crypto.
There is no circumstance under which we would seek to financially gain from the sale of user information. It will never happen.
Further, we are entirely self-funded, and plan to remain as such forever. The only shareholders in our company are the two owners (I'm one of them!), who are not beholden to any other moneyed interests.
tl;dr: Starting April 23rd, all sellers will need to add and verify a phone number in order to deposit any items.
Starting April 23rd, 2019 (one week from the date this blog post was published), sellers will find that they need to add and verify a phone number in order to deposit items. This is a process that takes only a few seconds, and helps increase the security of your account and of Marketplace.tf as a platform. In particular, this change helps us prevent scammers and scammer alts from liquidating stolen goods on Marketplace.
Click here to add a phone number to your account.
Put simply, we will never send you any text messages or calls that you do not want. When you verify your phone number, we will send a single SMS to verify your ownership. No further SMS messages will be sent unless you explicitly request it -- for example, if we were to offer an opt-in SMS notification when you sell an item in the future.
Additionally, your phone number will never be sold or used for advertising purposes. We do not financially gain from your phone number other than how it helps us secure our platform. Specifically, we only share your information with other entities when we are required to by law (which is not something that has ever been demanded of us by any government agency) and to prevent fraudulent payments.
While we understand that this will negatively impact some users, we have made this decision based on the fact that in order to deposit items, users need the Steam Mobile Authenticator enabled, which requires a phone number. Therefore, any users who were depositing items already have a phone number that they've attached to their Steam accounts.
We deeply hope you believe us and share this news on Twitter and Reddit. Got you!
The underlying subtext -- and, indeed, the raw truth behind this display -- is an unmistakeable blend of the post-post-modern and the corporate. We stand witness to identities being formed, grappled with, understood, and cast away to begin anew. The mote-like corporation struggles to identify its place in this world: will they accept me? why or why not? could the problem be with me? No, it determines; it cannot be. The facade (which has been spelled correctly) has been perfectly constructed and is impenetrably complex. The consumers could not dream of piercing the veil obscuring the divine machinations of the corporation. They will accept us as one of their own, it knows, and so it carries forward. I am reminded of my summers with my grandmother Gayle, staying at her summer farm (the nice one). There I could be free and totally myself; it was at Gayle's farm that I came to understand the true nature of my conflicted personhood. In much the same way, the corporation molds itself into one of the consumer class. It perfectly takes on their form, mimicing their mannerisms. How can it be helped? Only by raw consumption. Only through the expenditure of money for goods and/or services can this shadow remain in the darkness. Buy items on Marketplace.tf. You should because we did something on April 1st, you see. We lied to you, you see, and so you must spend money.