Steam continues to work on bettering the user experience for its digital distribution system. Just recently, Steam released Big Picture and they are continuing to produce new features. Today sees the release of a real-money marketplace designed to allow gamers to buy and sell digital items.

The marketplace has launched with support for only Team Fortress 2, but Valve is looking to expand the market to more games. Funds are traded using Steam Wallet funds and, of course, Steam and the developer of the game get to take a cut of every transaction. Diablo 3's auction house is one of the prime examples of this kind of market place.

Steam collects a mere 5 percent from each transaction and the developer can set the cut they want to take from each. For instance, Valve is taking 10 percent of all TF2 transactions. This yields a total cut of 15 percent off of the total, which is much better than Blizzard's 30 percent take.