PlayerUknown's Battlegrounds has shut down the ability to trade items between friendly players, in order to prevent the "abuse of the system." It would appear some players were using the functionality to "gift" items to a third party PUBG item marketplace, and make money off of the feature.

All this was laid out in a new blog post on the Steam forums. PUBG Corp. insists switching off personal item trades is only temporary, "while we search for a better solution."

"Once we figure out a way to prevent abuse, the restriction will be lifted."

So essentially, the restrictions may never be lifted.

This move comes at a particularly interesting time for PUBG's items. The game is just now getting weapon skins for the first time (available through new crate types), some of which look pretty fantastic:

Players were not too happy with the news. Trading items among friends was a community-building feature, something crucial for a game of this size and notoriety. Additionally, many players who were supposedly "abusing" the system were doing it to avoid PlayerUnkown's Battlegrounds own shady microtransactions.

This shutdown does not affect the traditional Steam Marketplace, though. Players can still sell items through that - because PUBG and Valve get a cut of all those sales, of course. The Steam Marketplace for PUBG - like with other games that have trade-able items - is basically all to the benefit of Steam and PUBG; not only does Valve take a cut of every transaction done through that marketplace, but all the money changing hands never leaves Steam's system - it only becomes Steam Wallet money.

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