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Steam Community Market bug priced items at millions of dollars
A little bug affecting exchange rates between Indonesian rupiahs and the U.S. dollar caused a bit of a problem early this morning on the Steam Community Market by causing some items to be priced at the equivalent of millions of dollars.
The problem occurred when the rupiah was incorrectly set as being equal to the U.S. dollar, when in reality 1 USD is roughly equivalent to about 13,000 rupiahs. Most virtual items on the market, such as weapons or item skins, sell for a few dollars at most, but the exchange rate error caused some items to be listed at millions.
Steam responds to exchange rate error
The error also allowed players who paid using rupiahs to buy items at enormously discounted prices. While the error was caught early, there were still many users who managed to buy relatively expensive items at a fraction of the cost. As with the Steam holiday auction fiasco, however, Valve quickly reverted all of the sales.
Steam addressed user concerns in an update on the market:
“Early this morning, a problem with our currency exchange rate data allowed users who use Indonesian Rupiahs in their Steam wallet to make purchases on the Community Market at heavily discounted prices. We have reverted as many of these purchases as possible. Steam Trading and the Community Market were both disabled while this rollback process was occurring, but are now enabled once again.
“A relatively small set of users have one or more transactions where the item was restored back to the seller, but the wallet funds have not yet been returned to the buyer. We are still working to resolve this issue and appreciate your patience while we sort everything out.
“Users using codes to add Indonesian Rupiahs to their Steam Wallets may have noticed that the wrong amount was added. These credits will be fixed later today.”
As a virtual marketplace, Steam deals with dozens of different currencies, all of which are exchanged at different rates. This bug illustrates just how important keeping track of those rates is for a digital platform like Steam.
Screenshot via Steam Community Market
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