What is Trade protection?
Valve Update
In July 2025, Valve introduced the Trade Protection feature — a mechanism designed to help safeguard items if an account owner loses access to their account or becomes a fraud victim.
In Steam, the trade protection period lasts for 7 days from the moment a trade is successfully completed. During this time, items are protected: they cannot be modified or transferred to other users.
After 7 days, trade protection is removed, and it is no longer possible to cancel the trade or return the items. You can learn more in Valve’s official FAQ.
How Trade Protection Works on Market.CSGO
The site implements additional features related to Trade protection:
In the Trade section, a Trade protection status is displayed for both participants after a trade is successfully completed.
On the site, the Trade protection period lasts 7 days 22 hours 39 minutes.
After the Trade protection period ends, the system performs an additional verification of the trade details. This verification may take up to 5 hours.
Money from the sale are automatically credited to the seller’s balance once the verification is complete.
Penalty System for Trade Cancellations
Important! A new system for identifying the responsible party in canceled trades has been launched on the site.
It is currently operating in a test and partially manual mode — we are collecting statistics for further improve and optimization. If you encounter any issues with a canceled trade, please contact Support. We will review each case individually.
Cancellation Due to Buyer’s Fault:
A penalty of 30% of the trade amount is applied:
20% is compensated to the seller
10% is the Market’s commission
The buyer’s trades are blocked on Steam for 30 days
Cancellation Due to Seller’s Fault:
The buyer receives 100% of the trade amount back
The item is returned to the seller
The seller’s trades are blocked on Steam for 30 days
Cancellation via BuyFor System (Recipient’s Fault):
A penalty of 30% of the trade amount is applied:
20% is compensated to the seller
10% is the Market’s commission
We recommend marking such trades as successful. 70% of the trade amount remains with you — you can distribute it at your discretion.
API Changes:
The get-money API method is available with the money_settlement parameter to check frozen balance.
If settlement ≠ 0 and the operation status is “Canceled”, you can identify the responsible party using the causer parameter.
Information about penalties and compensations has also been added to the following methods: history, operation-history, get-buy-info-by-custom-id, get-list-buy-info-by-custom-id.
Stay tuned for updates in our Telegram dev channel (@market_csgo_dota2).
We wish you many successful trades!