A new #developer-managed #storefront featuring in-game items has made a #debut on Steam. Rust, the first game to receive its own Item Store, an interface with the Community Marketplace. So players can buy, sell and trade items found in-game. And as it turns out, developers can run their own Item Stores offering random drop items for sale directly.
The difference is that when players buy direct from the developer, the company keeps the money. Where a community market purchase also benefits a fellow player, who found and elected to sell the item.
Check out the Rust Item Store, the only one that currently exists, so the listing for individual items will point players to the community marketplace, where prices may be higher or lower depending on supply and demand. Purchases from the new Item Store cannot be traded and sold for a week, which reduced the chances of market upsets.
More details showed up in a Reddit thread for the new Item Store, regarding the ability to integrate with Steam Workshop to sell user-made items. This function is similarly to Team Fortress 2 in the thread’s original notes.
“This new Item Store is designed to make it easy for developers to establish an in-game economy or to just sell individual cosmetic items, keys, or consumables. And, it’s designed to easily integrate with a curated Workshop (similar to Team Fortress 2) so you can accept user-made items, use that data to create item definitions and prices in the Steam Inventory Service, and set those items for sale via the Item Store. Steam takes care of the checkout process, splitting payments to Workshop authors as appropriate, and adding the items to users’ inventories. Your game then just needs to be able to call the Workshop to download item content in the right circumstances for your game.”
Garry Newman of Facepunch Studios updated his blog today to discuss microtransactions in the game, at the same time the store was unveiled. Explain and defending how Valve’s particular way of incorporating downloadable contents into games through Steam. Newman goes on to say that selling items to the player community is “a total no-brainer.”
“In fact, I would go as far as to say that by not being involved in the marketplace we’re screwing our community.”
Originally launched via the Early Access program and on Humble Store. Rust is currently still in an alpha state. And players have been able to buy and sell items for the survival game since last year. So items sold in the official Store are along these lines, with clothes being the primary type of item offered.
It is also likely the Item Store may eventually support community items, providing modders with a way to make money from their creations while splitting profits with developers. Which should be interesting.