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For the last two years, Valve has enforced our Steam Subscriber Agreement terms as described in this post.
In March 2018, we applied a seven-day trade cooldown to CS:GO trades, to fight fraud and misuse of Steam Accounts.
On June 6, OPSkins launched ExpressTrade, which uses Valve intellectual property and violates our Steam Subscriber Agreement, and is already being used by other businesses to avoid Valve policies.
Today we messaged OPSkins to cease using Valve intellectual property. We also notified them that we will lock OPSkins Steam Accounts by June 21st, 2018.
Message sent to OPSkins:
In March 2018, we applied a seven-day trade cooldown to CS:GO trades, to fight fraud and misuse of Steam Accounts.
On June 6, OPSkins launched ExpressTrade, which uses Valve intellectual property and violates our Steam Subscriber Agreement, and is already being used by other businesses to avoid Valve policies.
Today we messaged OPSkins to cease using Valve intellectual property. We also notified them that we will lock OPSkins Steam Accounts by June 21st, 2018.
Message sent to OPSkins:
I would like to assume that Valve also sent an actual letter in addition to this Twitter message, but we don't really know for sure.
OPSkins issued a response to Valve's request.
While Valve says that the reason is ExpressTrade, we expect that this is yet another effort from Valve to drive sales to Steam Community Market. ExpressTrade is a non-commercial use of Steam bots since it is free. It is designed to benefit the community by allowing free and instant trades among friends. We understand that Valve has an interest in driving sales to SCM, however customers have clearly shown that it’s their choice to use OPSkins instead.
• SCM charges 15% commission, we charge 5%-10% commission on item sales (not ExpressTrade, which is free)
• SCM has a maximum trade price of $2000 thus preventing certain items from trading at their actual value, but OPSkins has no price cap.
• SCM does not allow cashouts. OPSkins has offered this since day one.
• OPSkins has 24/7/365 customer support with an average response time of less than five minutes.
• SCM charges 15% commission, we charge 5%-10% commission on item sales (not ExpressTrade, which is free)
• SCM has a maximum trade price of $2000 thus preventing certain items from trading at their actual value, but OPSkins has no price cap.
• SCM does not allow cashouts. OPSkins has offered this since day one.
• OPSkins has 24/7/365 customer support with an average response time of less than five minutes.
OPSkins plans on putting their future into a handful of "blockchain-based games and services." Hey, remember when the only skin options were whatever you would download for free from reputable third-party websites? Some of them even had a Skin of the Day!