With today's Steamworks SDK update, we've released The Steam Inventory Service beta, a new feature available to developers with games or software on Steam. The Steam Inventory Service is a set of new Steamworks APIs and tools that allow a game to enable persistent items that have been purchase or unlocked by individual users without having to run special servers to keep track of these user's inventory.

With this service, a game can easily drop items to customers based on playtime or can grant items based on specific situations or actions within the game. These items can be marked as tradable through Steam or sellable via the Steam Marketplace. Developers can also configure recipes for crafting different combinations of items that result in more rare, unique, or valuable items.

This new service adds to the list of APIs available for free to Steamworks developers, including achievements, cloud saves, authentication services, error reporting, leaderboards, matchmaking, Steam Workshop, peer-to-peer networking, in-game overlay, downloadable content, and much more.

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Hamster Plugin said:

Of course. Valve will make even more money when they have sellable items in every single game that they can take a cut from!

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Hamster Plugin said:

Of course. Valve will make even more money when they have sellable items in every single game that they can take a cut from!

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Nzyme32 said:

Really curious to see how this ends up working over time. More interestingly I wonder if they will get to the point where some items can move between games



I think they only get the market cut of transactions, which is 15% iirc. The brunt of the profit should go to the developers

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Baconsaurus Rex said:

HATS

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H3XAntiStyle said:

That was my first thought too. Imagine a game where its split into two games, and you need to solve puzzles by finding items between the games.

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