Valve has released a huge update to the Steam Community Market, which is ostensibly in beta though it has already been enabled for all Steam users (you can choose to opt-out). It is a big change in how the whole thing looks, feels and works, with a bunch of significant upgrades along with more granular tweaks to the whole experience of buying a virtual gun.
PC Gamer’s already covered the changes, though I’ll go over some of them again, but the main reason I noticed the update was that a Counter-Strike gun I’ve had listed for ages, and had long since forgotten about, somehow sold earlier this week. It was an M4A1-S Guardian skin in “Field Tested” condition, and I’d stuck it up years ago for $40 and promptly forgotten about the whole thing.
As for the wider marketplace changes, a quick whistle stop tour. Item listings are nice and all, but you know what’s better? BIGGER item listings. These now include more images, more detailed descriptions, and callouts for specific item information “wear/float, pattern template, applied accessories, etc.”
Counter-Strike items now have automatically generated images for each listing showing the particular item rather than a generic version. The most obvious benefit of this, in the case of Counter-Strike 2, is that you used to have to start up and view the item in-game to see this information, and now it’s all there on the marketplace. Valve also notes this is not just about new listings: “As part of our internal testing we generated over 27,000,000 unique images to backfill existing Counter-Strike listings.”
If you’re after a super-specific item, you’ll now get a larger listing view of it and be able to easily flip through the variants to make comparisons. Similar items will all be grouped on one page to this end, with tabs to filter them / preview details. All of this extra data is also worked into the new marketplace’s “filtering, grouping, and visibility”, unique item properties can be added to listings, and attached items like stickers and charms have their information surfaced “to show better images and current values.”
Alongside the major changes are a slew of quality of life updates, including: “automatic loading of listings while scrolling, broader access to advanced search from more page headers, breadcrumb navigation, and text entry support across long lists.”
There’s no two ways about it, this is just a vast improvement to the experience of browsing the Steam marketplace: which has always been functional but not the most friction-free and pleasant experience, with stuff tucked away in all sorts of nooks and crannies. And I do think that my M4A1-S suddenly selling after being on there for so long is thanks to this update. Either way I’m halfway towards my new Steam controller: Thanks Gabe!
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