Oh no! Everything is gone!
You’ve just logged in toCounter-Strike 2after a few days of not playing, only to find that some hacker managed to sneak in and milk your account for all it was worth. In the past, getting everything back could be… a pain. Sometimes, the best option you had available was ‘cry about it.’
But cry no longer! Thatthousand-dollar digital guncan be yours again with one neat trick - you call Take-Backsies, and Valve’s omnipotent hands reverse the flow of time to give you back your toys.
‘Trade Protected Items’ are now a thing that exist - it’s a new feature ofSteamthat Valve is trying out for Counter-Strike 2. And, if all goes well, it could make it to any game that uses the Steam inventory system.
“Today we are introducing a new feature to help keep your Counter-Strike items secure,” reads theofficial update postfor the game’s third season launch. “In the unlikely event that you lose control of your account or were the target of a scam by a bad actor, you may reverse all Counter-Strike item trades from the last 7 days.”
That post links out to Valve’sFAQ on the topic, which offers greater insight into what this new trade protection system actually does.
The Nitty-Gritty Of Counter-Strike 2 Trade Protection
After an item with trade protection changes hands, it’s effectively frozen for a week. It can still be equipped and used just like normal, but you can’t (for example) trade it forward, until you spend a week with it first.
While the item has this protection tag (it’ll be flagged with a big yellow icon), the original owner has the option to reverse the trade - along with every single other trade-protected transaction they’ve made in the past 7 days.
After this point, if you’ve had to use this little safety feature, you’ll be locked out from trading entirely for a month.
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PC Gamershared a concern that this feature could be used to reverse regretted trades as well, rather than just scammed ones. And well, yes. That could totally happen.
It’s likely that the month-long self-inflicted trade ban, plus the all-or-nothing approach to getting protected items returned, was designed to reduce exactly this. People who regret a one-off trade might have had other trades they intend to keep, and may want to keep trading in the near future.
The FAQ also notes that trade-protected items cannot be combined with unprotected items in a single trade. If you want to swap protected and unprotected goods with similar items from another player, you’ll have to do it in batches.
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