• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Steam updates gifting, now only possible at moment of purchase

kulapik

Member
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 account. 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 feedback.

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

http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399254001159

Modbot giveaways of Steam stuff that isn't through keys is now dead, for example.
 

Toki767

Member
Declined gifts being an automatic refund is nice.

I don't know who is going to schedule a gift far off in advance when most people wait for sales to gift games though.

No more Modbot giveaways though. :(
 
That's shitty. Completely kills being able to get removed games from traders in the future. Valve keeps fixing problems that aren't really problems and making Steam worse.
 

Sch1sm

Member
Even Canada to USA is a pain.

Tried Momodora III? Nope.
Axiom Verge? Nope.
Akiba's Trip? Nope.
I Am Setsuna? Nope.

I'm not sure what fits the criteria they have now outside of AAA games anymore.
 

Krakn3Dfx

Member
That's a bummer, I like picking up some of my favorite old games when they're on sale and gifting them out over time to friends. I bought 5 copies of Titan Quest Gold when it was like $5 and would randomly gift them to people on my friend's list here and there.
 

bigzgod

Member
This is going to make gifts for friends that live in other countries a pain in the ass.

People from Canada will almost certainly not be able to gift most games to people in Europe, due to higher than 10% price difference, as an example and a significant chunk of games won't be able to be gifted to someone in the US.
 

kulapik

Member
Even Canada to USA is a pain.

Tried Momodora III? Nope.
Axiom Verge? Nope.
Akiba's Trip? Nope.
I Am Setsuna? Nope.

I'm not sure what fits the criteria they have now outside of AAA games anymore.

+10% price difference is a no no for gifting, apparently. Dumb as fuck.
 

LQX

Member
Ugh, this was the best thing about Steam. I would buy games on sale and wait until a Birthday or Christmas came along to send them. That is a ton of lost sales from me....but I guess they could give shit as I don't matter.
 
Ugh, this was the best thing about Steam. I would buy games on sale and wait until a Birthday or Christmas came along to send them. That is a ton of lost sales from me....but I guess they could give shit as I don't matter.

But you can do exactly that still, you buy the game and schedule it for said event.

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.

Still sucks however as i normally trade for my games on trading sites.
 

MUnited83

For you.
It's fucking ridiculous.

You will no longer be able to get a game gifted from a friend if a game is unavailable your country, so people in Asia are pretty fucked in regards to be able to get those PC ports of Japanese games.
The price difference from where you can gift someone something is ridiculously tiny. You barely can gift any fucking thing from Canada to the US for fucks sake.

No more being able to track down copies of games removed 5 years ago.
 

Lothars

Member
What a stupid thing for valve to do. They are making steam worst instead of better with decisions like this.
 

Ventara

Member
Like, why do this? What were the problems that this had caused? Just another restriction. The automatic refund for gifts is nice, but that's it. That's the only thing they should have added.

At the very least this doesn't affect my current gift items.

Edit: Like, really, the more I think about it the more this sucks. I buy games I'm on the fence on as gifts, as since if I change my mind later on or just decide I don't have the time, I can pass the game on easily. Now, I can't do that, and will be more selective of what I buy to only stuff I'll play immediately. Steam will lose a lot of sales from me due to this, though I guess they don't care.
 

JCG

Member
So this means I'll have to buy even more games and keys from non-Steam retailers, rather than traders, in order to not get fucked due to arbitrary and unfair regional pricing (which can be ridiculous even among nations in the same continent).
 

Werd

Member
I understand the gradual erosion of all the gifting abilities on Steam as at one point you had Russian/South American/etc. people stocking up on copies during a sale that would be extremely cheap and reselling them all year that you knew wasn't going to last forever, others doing it on price mistakes, some people with fraudulent cards and such..... expected for most of that to eventually be locked down.

Got to love the "it's for your benefit!" bit that comes with each new restriction though.
 
The reasoning behind this is that there was a extremely large amount of gifts being sold off of third-party sites such as Kinguin, G2A and even trading sites.

This would be alright if it wasn't for the price limit cap, as even Canada -> US can be blocked.

There was an interview with a lot of the steam devs talking about their plans for the storefront, one of which also talked about re-hauling the Key system so devs can easily give reputable keys but disable ones being sold almost instantly.

EDIT: Found the Interview.

Modbot is not affected, it's Gifting that is, not the Keys commonly traded with modbot
 

Trojan

Member
Damn, ModBot Steam giveaways were awesome. I'm sure there's a valid business reason for this but not sure Valve will actually get a benefit because of what was taken away from consumers.
 

KissVibes

Banned
This makes it even easier to decide if I want to buy games outside of steam or not. I will now choose to buy elsewhere and give my friends CDKeys. Great job Valve!
 

Sch1sm

Member
Damn, ModBot Steam giveaways were awesome. I'm sure there's a valid business reason for this but not sure Valve will actually get a benefit because of what was taken away from consumers.

I think most ModBot giveaways are Steam keys rather than gift links. Maybe Stumpokapow has actual stats on that, but just looking at my ModBot loot stash, there's only one gift link I've ever received in a win. We can still use ModBot, though, 100%.

That being said, I feel this is only giving more money to third parties like Humble/GMG/IndieGala, and the like. Pubs will get more money, and Steam won't get their cut. It'll be something.
 

duckroll

Member
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 account. When there is a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting won't be available and you'll know before purchase.

Definitely interested in seeing how this feature works and what "large difference" means. I've been having problems with holiday gifting between friends out aren't in Asia ever since they introduced the Singapore Dollar to the store. Hopefully this fixes it, since it's not like the prices are much lower here anyway.
 

bigzgod

Member
Definitely interested in seeing how this feature works and what "large difference" means. I've been having problems with holiday gifting between friends out aren't in Asia ever since they introduced the Singapore Dollar to the store. Hopefully this fixes it, since it's not like the prices are much lower here anyway.

It's 10%, that's the threshold.
 

SoulUnison

Banned
So you can no longer stock up on "Rainy Day Game" gifts during Steam Sales?

I don't know if I'm the average user/consumer profile, but that's going to kill a lot of the draw of Steam Sales, for me.
Hell, it flat-out kills one of the main draws of Steam as a "social gaming platform," even.

If I can't stock up on discounted indie/multiplayer/co-op games to share with my friends when we hit a gaming lull, then I'm just never going to try those games at all, and my circle of friends will never be exposed to them, either.
 

Ash735

Member
This is a very big let down, I usually like to support a game by buying multiple copies and gifting them out to people over a few weeks.
 
It's fucking ridiculous.

You will no longer be able to get a game gifted from a friend if a game is unavailable your country, so people in Asia are pretty fucked in regards to be able to get those PC ports of Japanese games.
The price difference from where you can gift someone something is ridiculously tiny. You barely can gift any fucking thing from Canada to the US for fucks sake.

No more being able to track down copies of games removed 5 years ago.

Wait, really? Where does the statement state that?
 

MUnited83

For you.
Wait, really? Where does the statement state that?
Which of the parts? Not being able to gift to unavailable countries? That's pretty much implied. If you can't gift to someone that doesn't have it available on their store there is no price comparison to be made. So they either can get the game from literally every country and can manage to get it from the cheapest one, or they just won't be able to receive it at all. I'm betting the latter, easily.
 
Which of the parts? Not being able to gift to unavailable countries? That's pretty much implied. If you can't gift to someone that doesn't have it available on their store there is no price comparison to be made. So they either can get the game from literally every country and can manage to get it from the cheapest one, or they just won't be able to receive it at all. I'm betting the latter, easily.

Aw, come on. This is ridiculous.

What's next, elimination of cd keys altogether?
 
So rather than letting you move unplayed games to your inventory to gift to others, they're now crippling the inventory. Cool, cool. Good priorities.
 

Kadin

Member
The comment section of the blog is going about as well as I expected. How often, historically, has Valve ever undone a change like this to their policies? If they get enough push back, think they'd reconsider?
 

Adnor

Banned
Hey Valve now that you basically killed regional gifting, what about forcing the price conversion guidelines? You know, the ones you did so games would be cheaper in poorer countries and every big publisher completely ignores setting prices higher than retail (Even tho there's no shipping)?

No?

Fuck off.
 
Top Bottom