Valve rolls out Steam Trading feature

Steam users can now send a "prepackaged trade" to Steam friends using the new Trade Offers feature, allowing two users to trade items from their respective inventories, Valve announced today.

According to the feature's description, users select the items they want to trade from their inventory and what they'd like to receive from a friend in return, "and send it off." The second party then receives a notification where they can choose to accept, decline or make a counter offer. Both parties are not required to be online at the same to time to make a trade.

Proposals can be made from the Trade Offers page, from a friend's Inventory or from a badge page. At this stage, the feature only extends to friends and trades are not possible if a friend has their inventory set "Private." Users can also send out more than one offer featuring the same item, with the first friend to accept the offer causing other proposals containing the item to expire. Proposal expiration dates are highlighted on pending orders and "generally" have a two week lifespan.