Glitch on Steam market's exchange rate forces Valve to shut down the system to fix it

Published: May 1, 2015 10:34 AM /

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Steam Machine

Those of you that make often use of the Steam Market or the Steam trading system, probably noticed that both the systems went down earlier. The cause of that has been a glitch in the way the market calculates the exchange rates between USD and Indonesian Rupiahs. The problem was severe enough that Valve was forced to temporarily close both the services to fix it, as you can read on the top of Steam's Market page right now.

Steam market warning

The glitch caused the system to set the dollar to indonesian rupiah exchange rate to 1:1. That basically meant that you could buy a 400$ CS:GO knife for 400 ruphias. Considered that at the time of writing the actual dollar to rupiah exchange rate is 1 : 12987.013, you can see where the problem is. A user that use indonesian ruphias as its currency, was in the position to buy virtually anything in the market for close to free.

Image courtesy of
Image courtesy of reddit and /u/himmatsj

While the bug was in the system, several transactions were processed at heavily discounted prices. Valve announced that any trade or sale made taking advantage of the glitch will be reversed in the shortest possible time. The issue in the exchange rate also affected those users that use ruphias and added new funds to their Steam wallet. Said users noticed that the incorrect amount of funds has been added. Valve is working to correct that as well.

This is one time where we can see the value behind Valve's decision to allow trades and currency exchange between users only using Steam wallet funds. If the purchases were made via bank or other online services like Paypal, it would have been nightmare fuel for anyone that had to reverse the trades. Having all the money moving exclusively inside their area of control, Valve assures the optimal way to fix any problems that may occur, with minimal hassle for both them and their costumers. And when we talk of a system of the size of Steam's trade market, glitches like that can and will occur.

It has been a hard couple of hours for Steam market traders, but the system is back up and running and any problems that users may be still experiencing will hopefully be resolved in a short time.

Do you use the Steam Market system? Did this bug affect you? Let us know in the comments

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Luigi Savinelli profile picture
| Former Staff Writer

Gamer since I can remember and now writer for your enjoyment. Can't say more. Those games will not play themselves