Steam

Introduction

Steam is a marketplace for Steam items, particularly for CS2 skins and items. The platform was founded about 21 years ago, on September 12th, 2003. Steam is currently operated by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, with headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, US. The Steam marketplace and company have been vetted by CSGOSKINS.GG and deemed trustworthy by all our standards.

Popularity

Steam is rated 1.8 out of 5 with over 3.6K reviews on Trustpilot. The Steam platform received approximately 158.3M visits during the last month. There are currently 21.6K different items available on the marketplace, with a total of 34.9M listed offers. Additionally, the combined value of all CS2 skins that are currently available on the Steam market amounts to $8.2M.

Market Type

Steam is a P2P (peer-to-peer) marketplace. That means when an item is sold on Steam, it is traded directly from the seller’s Steam inventory to the buyer’s Steam inventory. This has the advantage that sellers can list their items on multiple marketplaces at the same time, since they don’t need to deposit the skins to a single marketplace. The downside is that when an item is sold, the seller must manually approve the trade which causes a delay for the buyer. P2P marketplaces have some benefits for sellers but the buyer experience is not as smooth.

The Only Official Marketplace

The Steam Community Market (SCM) is a virtual trading platform by Valve and the only official market for CS2 weapon skins and all other Steam items including trading cards, Steam emoticons, backgrounds, or game-specific items. The Steam Market was released in May 2013 alongside the release of Steam trading cards that are used to level up Steam profiles. It is also considered to be the safest place to purchase or sell CS2 skins since the market is owned by Valve themselves and the chances of getting scammed are practically null.

Users And Popularity

It goes without saying that the Steam Community Market is the most popular marketplace to purchase or sell skins for CS2 or any other Steam game. Millions of players use the platform every day to buy and sell virtual items from all games across Steam. The Steam market is preferred by a huge portion of big and small traders alike due to its swift and hassle-free process and an ever-growing user count. Items in the Steam Community Market are generally priced at anywhere between $0.03 to thousands of dollars.

Seller Fee

The Steam Community Market charges a "Steam Transaction Fee" for 5% of the item value for every item sold on the Market. On top of that, there’s also a "game-specific fee" of 10% for certain games like CS2 and DOTA 2, which stacks on top of the 5% Steam fee. The combined fee of about 15% discourages many users from transacting on the Steam Community Market since a bunch of third-party websites like BUFF163 allow players to sell skins with significantly lesser penalties.

Buying & Selling Items

The Steam Community Market enables its users to buy and sell items in a simple and hassle-free way which makes the platform a great choice for traders who are looking to sell their items for some quick wallet funds. Buyers can top up their wallets through real money and spend their wallet balance to buy skins from the market, while sellers can place any marketable item from their Steam inventory for sale on the market at their will. Once an item is sold, the funds are automatically added to the seller’s Steam wallet in their native currency.

These Steam wallet funds can then be used to purchase other skins from the marketplace, games from the Steam store, or any other content available for purchase on Steam, but can’t be converted into real money.

Advantages Of Using The SCM

There are plenty of advantages that users enjoy when buying or selling skins on the Steam Community Market. These include:

Fast Selling Times

Since the Steam Market is the most popular marketplace for trading skins, items are sold at a much faster pace than other third-party marketplaces. Users also have the option to "quick sell" items at "buy order" prices to instantly sell their items at a lesser value, which is an extremely useful feature when in need of urgent funds.

Wide Variety Of Skins

With the exception of some extremely high-tier skins, almost all items can be easily found in the Steam Marketplace in significant volumes, making the platform a great choice for users who face difficulties in finding their desired skins on other third-party marketplaces.

Risk-Free

The SCM being the only official market for trading CS2 items, it enables users to trade skins in a risk-free environment. Trading on third-party marketplaces can often put newer users at risk of getting scammed, which is why many users choose to spend the extra transaction fee for a hassle-free trading experience.

Easiest Way To Trade Skins

Trading on the Steam Community Market doesn't require users to input their account information on any third-party websites as the marketplace can be operated through the Steam client itself. This is why many consider SCM to be the easiest way of trading skins, and it’s also one of the key reasons behind the widespread popularity of the Steam Market.

Disadvantages Of Using The SCM

The list of advantages users enjoy when using the Steam Community Market can certainly be appealing to new traders at first, but there are also a good number of reasons to look for other alternatives. Let’s take a look at the disadvantages of using the Steam Community Market for buying and selling skins:

High Transaction Fees

The whopping 15% transaction fee on selling any CS2 skin on the Steam Community Market is undoubtedly the biggest reason that pushes traders away from the Valve-owned marketplace. As mentioned earlier, third-party marketplaces often offer users a much lighter transaction fee, which make them better alternatives for traders who are looking to make the most amount of profit per transaction. The largest third-party skin marketplace, BUFF163 allows users to sell items with a measly 2.5% selling fee per transaction.

Inability To Cash Out

The Steam Community Market doesn't allow users to cash out their Steam Wallet for real money, which means that users are limited to using their wallet funds for purchasing items through Steam. On the other hand, most third-party marketplaces enable users to cash out their funds in real money, which make them better alternatives for traders who are looking to sell their inventory to make some cash.

More Expensive Skins

Generally speaking, items on the Steam Community Market are more expensive than on other third-party marketplaces. This is a direct result of the fact that users can’t cash out their Steam Wallet funds but can do so when trading on other marketplaces. Due to the aforementioned reason, cashing in your real money on Steam Wallet funds to purchase skins might not be the best idea. Items on the Steam marketplace being higher priced than other marketplaces, purchasing weapon skins from third-party markets using real money is likely to provide more value for your money than cashing in through Steam itself.

Unavailability of Certain Skins

High-tier CS2 skins like the AWP Dragon Lore or Medusa are often seen to be out of stock on the Steam Community Market. However, they’re available in abundance on some third-party marketplaces like BUFF163. This forces high-tier skin traders to avoid the Steam Marketplace and resort to websites like BUFF to make trades.