Valve has revealed a new Community Market system for their digital distribution service Steam, allowing players to purchase and sell in-game items with their Steam Wallet. Essentially an auction house, the only game currently supporting the new system is Team Fortress 2, with one-time consumable items being the only in-game product available for purchase/selling.

As part of our ongoing efforts to gradually phase out all Earth money in favor of Team Fortress hats, we're kicking off the TF2-only beta of our new Steam Community Market! The Market should improve trading in every way: People looking for specific items will be able to locate them faster, folks looking to sell items will find the process a lot more efficient, and best of all, we've made it easier for everybody to translate playing TF2 into buying games on Steam.

Currently Steam is taking a 15% cut on each item sold, with 10% being the actual games defined fee and a 5% cut for the "Steam Transaction Fee" that will protect against nominal fraud incidents and the cost of development of this and future Steam economy features.

A Frequently Asked Questions page is now available here for anyone with questions, and it seems that a restriction of $200 will be made on the Steam Wallet however that may change in the future. Prices will be displayed in the native country however an exchange rate will be applied for cross-country purchases. Valve has also confirmed that more games will be coming with Community Market support, however for now Team Fortress 2 will be the game used for testing.