It’s a bad position for both customers and Valve. If a reseller purchases keys in bulk with bad details, and turns the keys around quickly, then customers who get those keys are out of luck when the keys get revoked as a result of the original payment failing to process - leaving customers out of their money, and Valve then having to field the customers’ issues when it isn’t their fault. It’s a bad situation all around.

In order to remedy that, Valve’s Tony Paloma has announced a change in the gift rules. Steam users who purchase a key as a giftable item for their inventory must wait thirty days to be able to trade this gift. Users buying gifts that go directly to individuals will have no such wait time.

A majority of the posts in the - at time of writing - 127 page comment section are mixed, but seem more heavily negative. Much of the sentiment seems to suggest that this is a business-first move by Steam rather than for the safety of its users, and those who wish to trade will now have to limit themselves to an imbalanced system rather than a verified and logged trade window in which all parties must agree and exchange at the same time. A lot of the alienated base seem to suggest this is an offense worthy of leaving Steam for different outlets.

The positive users suggest that this is more in defense of the average user, and only resellers and traders are going to get the worst of it. Further, users previously affected will see that this sort of thing does not happen to than anymore. Really, a majority of Steam users will see no change save for more protections from scamming.

Hopefully this decision turns out well for everyone, because the intent to protect customers is a good one. From the onset, community reaction looks pretty negative.