This is not about Valve's earnings at all. Not facilitating copyright infringement is Valve's obligation to the publishers.

edit: seriously, give it a page and people will start arguing Valve must allow pirate torrent links on the forums as long as users pinky swear to keep their ratios above 1.5.

That's actually totally beside the point. Either it is allowed, or it isn't.

What's so bad about killing people as long as one does it not in the large scale (say less than 1 per month)?

Steam never used to inform people if a game was usable in the region they were sending it to. I had someone gift me a game once that was from a "normal price" region, i.e., it cost 60USD but said game was PLAY LOCKED* in my region. Friend wasn't informed of this when they sent the gift. Had I not known of several work arounds to get that game playable they would have basically been out of pocket for sending a digital brick.

If the game is priced higher in your region than you're friends region, you *can* gift to them as long as your region is not classed as a "cheap" region. Example cheap regions: Russia and Brazil. And gifting from those regions hasn't technically been possible for several years now.

* Do note that play locked games now only remain so for three months from the date of activation. After that, they lose their lock and become normal playable games. Although that never used to be the case. But with the changes to gifting, this only applies now to third party sold keys (and any existing applicable inventory games).

Yeah, gifting on Steam has been a mess for ages now. But why haven't they fixed it with the introduction of direct gifting? I've seen a gif of the current process and it's an atrocity.

I am in Russia (cheap region) where the game costs 7 USD. My friend is in the UK (expensive region) where the game costs 25 GBP. I pick the game. I indicate I want to send it as a gift. Now I must choose the friend from my existing friends list. I choose the British guy. Now I'm offered a form to fill with congratulations and possibly dickbutts. I do so, click next, and THEN I'm informed "lololol no gift-buying for you, third-worlder". WHY? Why can't it be, "sure, now pay 25 GBP and you're done"?

Hmm, comparing trading of some cards on Steam with killing people is... hilarious, tasteless, crazy?

And it's nonsense that things are either allowed or they aren't. You can perfectly well allow a certain small amount and forbid everything else at the same time. There are millions of real life examples for it and your example to the contrary is ... just crazy and just one example and we know that a single example doesn't mean something is true.

Valve sells Hasslehoff? How much does he cost? And if I buy him... can I slap him in the face everytime he starts singing that he`s looking for freedom?

I don't do any trading myself (I buy what I want, and that's it), but why is trading of keys considered bad and harmful? It isn't the same as making copies of keys, right?

Is it because of the sites like Humble Bundle who offer several versions (e.g. the HB version, and a Steam key) with one purchase? Or what?

If the problem is people hoarding (buying) cheap keys when some game is offered at discount and later selling(?) them for profit, wouldn't a better approach be to limit the number of extra-cheap keys (for a given game) that one user can buy?

Isn`t buying cheap and selling expensive the core principle of capitalism? Why is a company, that makes profit in a capitalistic way, against customers who do the same?

Well. if the digital store sells keys for one cent or gives them out for free in order to get more new users, I can understand they don't necessarily want single users to hoard lots of free keys, in order to sell them later. I guess that is why I also receive only one free GOG key sometimes when GOG has such promotions.

One thing that is not quite clear to me either: when people talk about "trading keys", does that include also the ability to sell them for money? So can you make money by "trading" keys (the correct term would be that you SELL the keys then), or is it restricted to the idea that you only can trade it to a key of another game?

Yeah yeah, one can play with words and say that "trading for money" is the same as selling something...

Well, if you buy something, you have the right to sell it, too! When the seller sells it very cheap, then it is not your fault, you can re-sell it legally for more money, if you want and find a buyer.

Both and more. Reselling is copyright infringement. When you "buy" a digital game, you buy the permission to play it yourself, as an end-user.

Not possible - identities are cheap.

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Now, I'm a utilitarian and a pirate, so I don't think there's any fundamental human right reason that the law should work this (or any other) way. Why isn't a game like a physical book? Books could never be traded instantly, but games under an identical rights managing scheme could be. As of this writing, I have 1596 games in my GOG account, and I'm not playing any of them. If lending was possble, I could launch a sharing p2p service that allowed people to play idle copies. I'd even implement an option for myself to kick a player out of a game I personally wanted to play.

This is when the likes of Rick Falkvinge shout, "No one owes you profit! Corporations don't have human rights! If you can't make money in the modern world, get off the market!" And from a utilitarian standpoint, that's correct when talking about corporations vs collective action. When we the people overthrow the Mouse, I'm going to celebrate. But while international corporations are still writing laws and toses, individual "be the change you want to see in the world" action is leeching and it doesn't fucking work.

Free trading will not hurt corporations in the slightest, because they'll come up with more legal and technical obstacles to it, but it will kill indie gaming. The only reason indie gaming exists right now is that games are cheap and trying to pirate them is a waste of time. Humble can offer their extreme discounts because said discounts are time-limited so people can miss a bundle AND they're getting games they might not necessarily want to play. If offering your game in a bundle means there will be a functionally unlimited supply of cheap codes on the global trading market, that'll be the end of bundles. If offering your game at a discount means the price can never go higher, that'll be the end of discounts.

Supposedly, but it seems as though Valve/Steam & the publishers believe that only they and not others (customers) should be able to benefit from arbitrage.

Apparently, Valve considers anything more than a 10% regional price difference to be a "major difference" that warrants gift-blocking. Of course, they didn't mention this little detail in their announcement. What a ridiculous, anti-consumer policy.

But this is about inventory gifts, not keys, or am I missing something?

Ok, so "trading" in this context means also selling (for money).