An update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that makes a significant change to trading dropped last week in an attempt to minimise scams and fraud. Since then, a petition demanding a reversal of the changes has amassed over 100,000 signatures. 

While trading is used by all kinds of players, whether for profit or because they just really want a pretty gun, outside of the CS:GO community we typically hear about the worst elements, like automated Steam accounts or influential YouTubers endorsing gambling sites without disclosing their involvement.

“Steam trading was created to allow customers to easily exchange items with each other, and each day we see thousands of customers using Steam Trading in this way,” reads Valve’s blog post on the change. “Recently we’ve been looking into ways to reduce some negative unintended uses of trading in CS:GO (such as fraud and scams), with the goal of preserving trade between players.”

The change comes in the form of a seven-day cooldown. Trading on the Steam Community Market already comes with this cooldown, but now it will affect trades between individuals as well. Valve thinks that this will mainly prove to be an obstacle for these automated Steam accounts that mimic players, as “a given item moves between actual players no more than once a week in the vast majority of cases.”

Judging by the reaction to the update, quite a few players disagree. 

“Our whole community would like the trading rules to be completely reverted to what it was before the most previous CS:GO update on the CS:GO blog,” writes the individual who set up the petition. While one random player can’t claim to represent a whole community, the petition is still sitting at 115,376 at the time of writing. The update, according to the petition, “destroys trading interactions”. 

The tweaks to trading are still subject to change, however. “[W]e realize today’s change may also be disruptive to some players,” writes Valve. “We’ll continue to evaluate trading policies as time goes on.”