I don't know if this made a blip on anybody's radar or not, but it's a pretty huge step and leading to another huge step for gaming.
As a little bit of background, there's been this crazy thing happening in Team Fortress 2. First, they released hats. Then, in a money grab (a pretty well planned one) Valve release the ability to buy keys for real money that give you a small chance to unlocking an Unusual hat that makes you stand out from other players. I've actually been "playing the market" with these hats, trying to figure things out and occasionally cashing out by selling hats for real money via Paypal. I won't admit to how much I've made, it's not a salary but for a screw around side job it's not bad.
Well, recently Valve started beta testing a new trade system as an expansion to the current trade system. Currently inside Team Fortress 2 you can trade up to 8 items with another person for up to 8 of their items. It's decent, but has restrictions when dealing with high value virtual goods. The system is now opened up to be able to trade items in different games that allow such trading (so I can trade my Team Fortress 2 gear for your Portal 2 gear, etc), but more importantly you can actually include Steam games as a part of any such trades. They've just moved the trading out of beta in to full release.
I gathered up some extra crap I had in my TF2 backpack, posted them as an available trade and within a few hours had somebody offering to give me either Rage or Skyrim for my stuff. I made the trade (Rage, for no other reason than it's out sooner and I intended to buy both games anyhow) and handed off 5 Team Fortress 2 items for a copy of Rage ($59.99 in the Steam Store). There's no risk to me, the system is handled by Valve and maintained by them. I put in what I'm offering, he puts in what he's offering, we both click trade and now Rage exists in my games library ready for download upon release. It's not money for virtual goods, but it's certainly a significant step from game goods for game goods.
That leads to the next piece of the puzzle, though. Valve has already (discreetly) noted that a future release of Steam Trading will most likely include the ability to use real world dollars. Blizzard's auction house for Diablo won't even scratch the surface of what Steam is looking at. Virtual goods, games, money all changing hands in a trusted secure environment with no risk to either participant? I'm assuming Steam will make a small amount on each real dollar transaction, but as a guy who has sold virtual hats for hundreds of dollars at a time and had to stomach the risk of a Paypal chargeback...I'd pay it. As would many others.
