Valve opens Steam Community Market

The Steam Community Market is now open for business, giving Valve yet another source of revenue on its digital distribution platform.

The service, currently in beta and available only for Team Fortress 2, lets users buy and sell in-game items using money from their Steam wallet.

Valve is currently taking a five percent transaction fee with a minimum of $0.01, which it says will go "to protect against nominal fraud incidents and cover the cost of development of this and future Steam economy features."

Developers will also be able to set their own fee for item sales from their game, giving them an additional option for the monetisation of virtual goods.

The Team Fortress 2 fee is currently set at ten per cent, bringing the total fees to beta users of the Steam Community Market to 15 percent.

These fees will be paid by the buyer rather than the seller.

Valve already allows the trade of Virtual goods to other players and Steam users currently make about 500,000 item swaps a week.