"fair trades" on Steam

glennmagusharvey

So I was recently invited to join the group "Fair Trade".

I know the group probably exists because people like the idea of fairness, and also feel that adopting standards of fairness makes it harder for scammers to get lots of stuff for very little.

However, I'm actually not interested in "fair trades".  Here's why:

* If I were to trade fairly based on value (such as the approximate price of the game or in-game item), then I would have had to acquire something of comparable value first.  This assumes that I would actually go out and get something of comparable value that I don't actually want in the first place, only to trade it for something else.  Obviously I would want to trade only if I somehow acquired of lesser utility to me and could get something of greater utility by trading the item(s) of lesser utility away.  However, I am not willing to pay much of anything for a game, with few exceptions, so it's likely that anything I do have will be something that's not comparable in value to something I'm willing to accept in a trade for giving it up.  And I pretty much never get games just for giving them away.  Considering that Steam's giveaways are few and far between, I pretty much have nothing to give away.

* If I were to trade unfairly, to my advantage, of course I'd do it.  If someone's willing to trade me something very valuable (say Mirror's Edge) for something extremely cheap (such as Fortix), I'd gladly do it.

* If I were to trade unfairly, to my disadvantage, I wouldn't do it anyway, unless I trusted the person I'm trading with.  Generally this means I'm gifting something to a friend or someone I somehow already know, and maybe they're throwing in a few items to sweeten the deal.  And if that's the case, then I want to do the trade anyway.

BlackHumor

I think the point is insurance against C in return for giving up B.

glennmagusharvey

But what's the point of trading if you can acquire something you want for the same amount of money/time/effort you put into acquiring something you don't actually want?

IanExMachina

Perhaps because you were gifted something/won something and so have it available.
Or are for some reason unable to buy the game you want yourself (parents saying no if you are a child) so you trade?