Inventory Privacy Settings That Block Deliveries

Steam has several privacy controls that interact with trading, and two of them will stop a delivery without any obvious error message. If a purchase is not arriving, check these before anything else.

1. Inventory privacy

Found under Profile → Edit Profile → Privacy Settings. If your inventory is set to Private or Friends Only, trade offers involving it can fail. Set it to Public while you are receiving items. You can change it back afterwards.

2. Profile privacy

A fully private profile restricts what can be verified about the account and interferes with trading. Public is the safe setting for the duration of a purchase.

3. Trade URL and trade offer settings

Your trade URL is in Inventory → Trade Offers → Who can send me trade offers. If you have regenerated the URL recently, the old one no longer works — a common cause of “the offer never arrived”. Copy the current one when you order.

4. Family View

Family View can block trading entirely, and it fails silently for the person who does not know it is on. Check Settings → Family in the Steam client.

Other blockers worth knowing

• Trade ban or account restriction — a limited account cannot receive trades at all.
• Full inventory — Steam inventories have a capacity limit; if it is full, items cannot arrive.
• No mobile authenticator — a 15-day hold rather than a block, but it looks like a block from the outside.

The five-minute pre-purchase check

1. Inventory: Public
2. Profile: Public
3. Mobile authenticator: enabled, more than seven days ago
4. Trade URL: current, copied fresh
5. Family View: off

Run through that list once before your first purchase and you will not have to think about it again. If something still does not arrive, send us your order number through the contact form and we will trace it from our side.