Barter.vg will not support trade offers in 2025

[ellipsism]

The site will remain online with bundle, giveaway, and game updates, but the offer section will close. After 25 December 2024, offer creation will be disabled. Anyone with pending offers will have until the end of the year to complete or fail all offers. Therefore, exchanges and activation of keys should be completed before the end of the year.

On 1 January 2025, offers will be read-only (except for revoked game disputes) and collection pages will switch to private like it is now with Reserve and Watchlist.

The offer expiration maximum is reduced to 7 days from 15 days. Trades that require more time or have a higher likelihood of mediation should be initiated elsewhere.

This is unrelated to the domain renewal lapse. See this topic for an explanation of why a failed domain renewal led to a security warning.

Why? Barter.vg was started as a get-it-working-quickly experiment over ten years ago. Thanks to help of volunteers and motivated users, the site helped 11k users exchange around 1.7 million games and Steam items. Yet, given that get-it-working-quickly foundation, it's difficult to maintain and the underlying systems are already past EOL. There is volunteer fatigue also. There have been requests to volunteer and replenish the site's human capital, but at this point, those effort are best directed at other sites or new projects. Rather than wait for an unexpected yet inevitable disaster to end things, there's this planned ending. The timing seems sudden because I took a long time to post this.

What's the purpose of Barter.vg now? Although it had far fewer users, the original site did not have offers. The idea was to trade elsewhere and merely manage tradable lists. Hopefully, the non-offer parts of the site such as bundles and giveaways will remain useful.

What happens to Discord or Steam forum? Like the rest of Barter.vg, there is no plan to shutdown. The end-of-life announcement affects the offer section.

Will events still happen? There's an event on Saturday (7 December 2024).[discord.com]

[gr4yw4rd3n]

Very sad news indeed

[Comiclove]

Thanks for giving us the heads up. I've fallen off of playing games in general, let alone trading, so this might be my cue to hang up that hat.

[Cockney Rhyming Jedi]

It's sad to see this feature being retired. Thank you for the excellent service, and I wish you all the best for the future

[Bigshrimp]

Very sad news. You made a very useful site for offers that I enjoyed immensely. Thank you and the volunteers for all of your efforts to keep the site up and working all of this time.

I wish there were less unscrupulous users that would have made it easier for the offers to be less contentious for administrators and volunteers having to deal with the conflict of bad trades, offers, etc.

[hvlkk]

Originally posted by Zach Fett:

Giving a 20 day heads up is pretty crap, not gonna lie.

I don't even really get the reasoning for this. You say there's volunteer fatigue, yet there's also people who want to volunteer? It's not even like the moderation aspect of the site is that necessary, I can't remember the last time a moderator stepped in when I've received terrible offers of half the value of what they were asking for from me, even though I have the moderator setting enabled. And that's okay, the site works fine without moderator intervention.

You say the people who want to volunteer, their efforts are better spent on "other sites," what other sites? There's nothing as convenient and easy to use as Barter. Lestrades is close, but not quite. SteamTrades is horrid. What else is there?

Unless the site is actively shitting the bed and falling apart because of the trading system, why not leave it until a proper successor is (hopefully) made?

Edit: Also why was the Barter alternatives thread locked and moved to Graveyard?

I echo everything mentioned. What a joke.

One other thing I want to add, which others have already mentioned; why on earth would you switch the collection page to private? At least let it remain open and let us negotiate trades elsewhere, be it steamtrades or another place. I don't get a single one of the "points" of this update.

Side-note: if the actual reason (which would be one of the few that would make sense) is that the owner got tired of the website and/or felt its original purpose got derailed, why not organise a "brother website" exclusively about trading? There are tons of people (me included) who would be interested in developing/helping develop one. I simply do not understand.

[Papa_Faf]

The fact that this thread had gotten 80 comments and they haven't responded to a single one of them is very telling. They are not going to listen to any of us. They made a decision, a really shitty one, gave us a pathetic half-assed excuse that makes zero sense, and that's that. Saying it's difficult to maintain and past EOL is a cop-out.

[eagletorch]

Can the administrators open source their code or trade algorithms? Or at least outline a vision for how trading should be improved in a replacement site?

[dirtyoldhippie89]

Peace everyone thanks for the trades.

[Pika! Pika!]

Thank you for all the great trading years that your website made possible! I know I have had policy disagreements at times, but your website did create a great community and helped many during all those years! Thanks for being there!

[Pika! Pika!]

Originally posted by Tauri141:

Are there any alternative sites that are convenient like this one?
steamtrades.com doesn't count

Lestrades.com comes closest to it. It was developed in the past when it was thought that the Barter.vg website had died, but then got resurrected at the last minute.

Lestrades is different in some ways in which are design features:

- There is no moderation or ability to block users.
- Offers do not expire.
- There is an integrated forum to discuss things.
- Lestrades has the ability to search your own library of games for specific games in ways that Steam is not even able to offer (if say you are looking for a certain kind of game to play).

[C4nn1b4l]

sad news, but honestly i'm not gonna miss it. in a few month i never get accepted offers users started becoming elitist expecting too much for bundled games. Thanks for all the hard work!

[cowbutt6]

Sad news, but heartfelt thanks to all those involved in running barter.vg for so long.

See you all on Lestrades, I guess!

[Vervaticus]

So where do we trade games now? :(

[Kubazzpolski]

Noooooo

[klikzg]

Sad news, but if you want someone to participate & keep the Barter moving forward. I am willing to put some time and / or money, to keep it working. As a member which has done ~2k trades, I have some experiences in trades. & the whole site was greatly done, given the inputs of bundles, trades, negotiations, setup, WL inport, TL managing, etc. So I would like to see Barter keep on running.

I do hope there will be some alternative or newer-project that is continuation of Barter, as other alternatives are not so appealing to me (ST or LT).

If it doesn't work out, wishing you best of luck & thank you for some ~2k trades with some ~2,5k exchanged items. 👍