When there is a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting won't be available and you'll know before purchase.Īgain, it's handy that Steam will tell you if a gift would be forbidden by the existing cross-region gifting restrictions. 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. Though really you should know not to give gifts that won't be accepted. 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. In the old system, a declined gift would sneak back into the giver's inventory and remain on their bill. But now those Bad Rats might not circulate endlessly.ĭeclined Gifts Resolve The Way They Should
I know for a fact that my mum has a cupboard full of stockpiled generic Christmas and birthday presents bought in the January sales (in the shops, not on Steam) without any particular recipient in mind.Īnd if you've been sitting on a stash of gifts, don't worry: existing gift copies haven't been removed. But others did simply like to stock up on cheap gifts for the future.
Sure, some folks used this to buy games on sale then trade 'em around at higher value later, undercutting Steam a bit. Before, Steamers could stockpile games - typically bought cheap in sales - then gift 'em as and when they please. Now, if you want to buy a gift, it has to be for someone specific. Less handy - and less clear - is that Valve have removed the ability to buy generic 'gift' copies of games. Go ahead and buy a gift months in advance and have it delivered to a friend on time, every time. Scheduling Gifts Is Even More Straightforward Let's go over what Valve said in the blog post put up overnight: Some changes seem intended to combat people who hoard, trade, and sell games in that weird grey market, though Valve's explanation is simply that "we want to make it easier for you to share the games you love with friends." Less helpful: gift now must be bought for someone specific, and not as nebulous 'gift copies' you can sit on. Helpful: if you send someone a gift and they decline it, you'll receive a refund rather than a copy of the game.
I've given it a lot of research, as having a game with truly free trading cards on steam would be a goldmine.įor my games, I give out copious ammounts of free keys to multiple places at once (This way they can't be sold on G2A etc, because they're all used), those free copies given out can still generate revenue from the cards.Steam has implemented several changes to how giving games as gifts works, some which are helpful and others less so. However, there's kind of an exploit to do this on steam that I've seen happen by accident a few times, where if a subscription + paid game releases and has steam authentication integration, with drop after time cards, then steam support converts it to a buy once game, then a F2P game, it will retain it's card drops for people log in with steam authentication despite them never paying In addition, users need to spend money on things before they get access to the trading card drops. You can't add steam trading cards to a game that's free/has no microtransactions.
Sometimes free games have trading cards on Steam and the developer makes money whenever a trading trade is sold or traded.