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The $3.5 Million Gun: Steam's Market Experiences a Currency Snafu

Valve was forced to take Steam trading and the Steam Community Market offline while it reverted purchases.

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Last night, Steam's Community Market was simultaneously filled with outrageously priced items and absolute bargains due to a currency error that Valve continues to work toward resolving.

At some point in the overnight hours, Steam's currency exchange rate was thrown off for anyone using Indonesia's currency, the Indonesian rupiah. According to PC Gamer, the system treated the rupiah's value as being identical to that of the US Dollar, which in fact is worth almost exactly 13,000 rupiahs.

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The effect of this was twofold. Those using rupiahs were able to buy items on the market--where players can buy and sell various things, including in-game items from Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2, among other games--at incredibly low prices. Conversely, those using USD found prices on some items to be a tad higher than usual, like a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive weapon whose starting price was $3,549,383.07 (via Reddit).

In order to deal with this, Valve took Steam trading and the Community Market offline for a period, during which time it "reverted as many of these purchases as possible," according to a message posted on Steam. "A relatively small set of users have one or more transactions where the item was restored back to the seller, but the wallet funds have not yet been returned to the buyer. We are still working to resolve this issue and appreciate your patience while we sort everything out. "

Likewise, Valve hasn't yet fixed an issue where rupiah users who used codes to add money to their Steam wallet received the wrong amount. However, Valve says that situation "will be fixed later today."

Image via Steam

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