Steam To Introduce Digital Trade-Ins? [Update]

Right now, if you buy a game from Steam, finish it and don’t want it, well, you can…delete it. You can’t go trade it in. But there are whispers that the digital purchase giant is considering implementing such a scheme.

Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter, taking a break from wildly speculating about the future of the industry, has actually gone on record to say he’s heard Valve will soon be allowing those who download a game to trade it in.

“Steam is phenomenal, it’s a great service,” he told NowGamer. “Steam gives gamers enough other stuff so that they don’t resent the fact they can’t trade in their games. And you know, name all the Steam games that you’ve purchased that you’ve traded back in to somebody else for credit. Steam’s about to let you do that supposedly, you know like trade and exchange, but they’re going to take a fee from it.”

Interesting. At the moment, if you delete a game you’ve purchased, you may not get anything back in return for offloading it, but you can download it again in the future. Giving consumers the option of forsaking that convenience in exchange for credit towards future purchases would, we’d imagine, go down a treat with most of Steam’s regular users.

UPDATE – Valve’s Doug Lombardi tells us “Untrue. We’ve never actually met with Mr. Pachter.”

Rumour: Valve To Offer Steam Trade-Ins [NowGamer]