The Steam Community Market is a marketplace built into Steam where users list their in-game items for sale and buy items from others. These include skins, stickers, cases, trading cards, profile backgrounds, and other items from games that support trading. In everyday speech it is most often called simply "the market" or "the marketplace".
How it works
Every item on the market is a listing with a price. The seller chooses the price at which to list the item, and the buyer can either take a listing at the current lowest price or place a buy order at a lower price and wait until someone agrees to sell. Payments are not made directly in real money but in an internal currency: Steam Wallet funds. Money received from a sale also goes to the Steam Wallet, not to a bank card.
A fee is charged on every transaction: part goes to the Steam platform, and part goes to the game's publisher. Because of this, the amount the seller receives is always less than the price the buyer pays. The market also has restrictions: trading may be unavailable for new or recently secured accounts, and some items cannot be sold for a period of time after being received or traded.
What it is used for
Players use the market in different ways:
- to buy a specific skin without waiting for it to drop from a case;
- to sell an unwanted item and top up their Steam Wallet;
- to track prices and understand how much a given item is worth;
- to build a collection based on rarity and demand.
Item prices on the market often serve as a benchmark for third-party platforms as well: many services compare their own prices with those of the Steam marketplace.
How it differs from third-party services
The main difference is that the market is official. Transactions take place inside Steam, the item and payment are transferred automatically, and the buyer does not give anyone access to their account. Third-party sites and bots usually offer withdrawal to real currency and better rates, but in return they require Steam login authorization, exchange via trade offers, or installation of additional software, and the risk of fraud there is higher. This is exactly why players often choose the Steam market as the safest option, even if it is less profitable.
Where the name comes from
The name literally means "the Steam community's market": trading takes place between the users themselves rather than with a store. It differs from the regular Steam store, which sells games, in that the goods on the market belong to players, not to the platform.
In conversation you can hear phrases like "listed it on the market", "bought it on the market", "the price on the market dropped". These always refer specifically to this marketplace, not to any website that trades skins.