Steam Makes Changes To Its Gifting System

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In a bid to combat reselling on "gray market" services like G2A, Steam announced major changes to their gifting system today.

Going forward, players will only be able to make a gift purchase directly on the check-out page. The Gift to E-mail and Gift to Inventory options will be removed. Existing gift copies sitting in Steam inventories are unaffected and may become a hot commodity! How 4-packs and other multi-copy purchases are effected remains to be seen.

Steam tried to sell the changes as an improvement to the experience but the majority of the 1000+ comments to the announcement saw through that lie. One example:

You are such hypocrites. >:-[ When you make your rules a lot worse for people, at least don't pretend you are doing something good.

Steam : Nayred

Official Announcement:

STEAM GIFTING CHANGES
MAY 4 - KRISTIAN

Today we’re announcing changes to gifts on Steam. The gifting process has had a bunch of friction in it for a while, and we want to make it easier for you to share the games you love with friends. Steam Gifting will now be a system of direct exchange from gift buyer to gift receiver, and we will be retiring the Gift to E-mail and Gift to Inventory options. Here's a quick breakdown of benefits from the new system:

Scheduling Gifts Is Even More Straightforward
Go ahead and buy a gift months in advance and have it delivered to a friend on time, every time.

Declined Gifts Resolve The Way They Should
In the old system, a declined gift would sneak back into the giver's inventory and remain on their bill. Now, if a recipient already has the title, or just doesn't want it, they can click decline and the purchase is refunded directly to the gift giver.

Safe Cross-Country Gifting
No more worrying if a Gift to E-mail or Gift to Inventory is going to work for a friend, gifts sent through the new system will always work on the receiver's . When there is a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting won't be available and you'll know before purchase.

These changes are now available. Please let us know if you see any issues or have any .

Note: Pre-existing gifts will be unaffected by this change.