Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress has officially launched its Steam Trading service with Portal 2 and Spiral Knights. Released in beta a few weeks ago with Team Fortress 2, Steam Trading allows gamers to exchange in-game items and game gifts. The developer discusses DOTA 2 in the video below.

The Steam Trading beta began with Team Fortress 2 items and game gifts. Now Spiral Knights, the cooperative adventure from Three Rings and Sega, and Portal 2 join the Steam economy as Steam Trading becomes available to everyone.

"The addition of Steam Trading is the latest example of how Steam continues to evolve with new features and functions developed based upon feedback," said Jason Holtman, director of business development. "We look forward to seeing how gamers and developers have fun and move this functionality forward."

During the four week beta, over 1 million items and game gifts were traded. Support for Steam Trading has been added to the Steamworks SDK.

About the Author

John Gaudiosi

Editor-in-Chief

John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.