PUBG Disables Personal Item Trades Citing Abuse of System

The ability to trade and sell cosmetic items has always been a major part in the experience for players in games that operate on the Steam Marketplace such as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), H1Z1, Player Unknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) and others. However, developers have recently been cracking down on third party sites who allow players to utilize the trading system to sell their cosmetic items for a profit. One of the most recent instances of this came yesterday with PUBG Corp. announcing that it has temporarily disabled the ability for players to use the "Personal trade" system. The decision was announced on a Steam blog post by the developer. 

"Hi everyone,

Starting today, we're going to temporarily turn off access to "personal trades" for all PUBG items. 

Some context: Normally, players can trade items using either the "Market trade" or "Personal trade" features. "Market trade" lets you sell items through the Steam market system. "Personal trade’" is supposed to allow friends to trade items without any costs attached.

Recently, though, we’ve seen a few cases of players using the personal trade function to sell items using third party sites. This is essentially an abuse of the system. To prevent this, we're temporarily turning off personal trades while we search for a better solution. Once we figure out a way to prevent abuse, the restriction will be lifted. 

Thanks for reading, and we hope you understand!
PUBG Corp."

The developer of PUBG did not give an estimate as to when the "Personal trade" feature will be added back into the battle royale title. With a multitude of third party sites that conduct business in cosmetic item selling, it could very well be a substantial amount of time until PUBG Corp. figures out a soltuion to prevent this abuse of their system.

CS:GO developer Valve recently implemented a seven day wait period for personal trades of in-game cosmetic items to prevent players from using the feature to sell items on third part sites. However, the decision was met with a great deal of backlash from the community. With a clear example showing that implementing a waiting period for skin trades to process is not something players are too fond of, PUBG. Corp. may be hesistant to follow Valve's example. 

Unfortunately, for the time being players will now only have the ability to sell their PUBG cosmetic items on the Steam Marketplace.

(cover photo courtesy of PUBG Corp.)