Valve’s John McDonald Comments On New Skin Trading Restrictions and Possibility of Reverting the Decision

Valve’s John McDonald has commented on the recent decision to introduce a seven day trade ban for new items in CS:GO and made it clear that it is unlikely to ever be reverted.

For the first time in what feels like forever, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community is able to openly ask questions to a Valve developer and get a public response within days rather than months (or never).

Valve’s John McDonald has made it his personal mission to improve the developers’ community interaction and regularly answers questions on Twitter, explaining Valve’s thought processes and plans.

One of the biggest concerns within the community in recent months has been the introduction of the new seven day trading ban on new skins and items in CS:GO – a ban that has changed the face of skin trading forever.

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Most community members, including current and former professional players, have spoken out against the decision, saying that it is punishing the many in an attempt to tackle the minority of people that take advantage of the system in order to create scams.

However, McDonald has now made it clear that it is “exceedingly unlikely” that we will see the developers revert the decision as there has been a “70% decrease in the number of scamming tickets filed” since the trade ban was implemented.

Of course, the obvious counter-argument to McDonald’s statistic is that this is due to the fact that nobody is able to trade like they once could and that the scamming aspect is still there, just broken up slightly due to the wait time.

There’s probably a fairly good chance that we would also see similar percentage drops in trading of all sorts and this will potentially do nothing but hurt a game that has relied heavily on  the skin trading ecosystem in recent years.

Whether you agree or disagree with John McDonald and Valve’s decisions, it cannot be understated how refreshing it is to see some communication finally.