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.
The only "good" thing in this
RIP
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Recently, The Long Dark was on sale on Steam, and in the Humble Store. I bought a copy in each place. With this new rule in place, I would simply buy two copies from the Humble Store.
And I can't imagine that I'm the only one with an example like this.
Just a strange decision.
As with most Valve decisions, though, I suspect there's a kernel of sense somewhere, but the final decision goes way, way too far.
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probably want to stop people from buying gifts during sales, then undercutting valve at later dates by selling the game for slightly cheaper than it's regular price, but not as low as the sale price..
valve doesn't want people cutting into their profits... That's what I see this change as being..
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One fuck up after another, steam is dying as this retardness is continuing, and my idiot ex friend is still going to defend steam and act like a digital platform elitist, he doesn't care about what happens to you or me as steam users, he is that selfish, yes. I guess I would have given way that Killing Floor copy from a friend's gift while I still could, don't know what will I do now...This is a horrible joke...Why would they retire their leader role, so retarded...
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Region locks weren't enough, right, Val?
Gonnal save my money for my little PS3 collection. Already got enough AAA's on Steam anyways.
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When there is a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting won't be available and you'll know before purchase.
So, it is not clear for which countries the cross-country gifting will work... Maybe only for the same region?
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same region, and probably only for a few countries. I don't know how it works i other regions, but in South America there is a big difference in pricing between countries, more than 10% in some cases
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So I'm probably not able to get stuff from Mexico any more,
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It's not same regions. It's from countries with a smal difference in pricing. I can't gift from from Argentina and Uruguay and I'm from Brazil because their store still use dollars. According to steamdb I should be able to gift someone from Phillipines. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
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My favorite part of that announcement... "we want to make it easier for you to share the games you love with friends." LOL, do they think their customers are stupid? This clearly isn't a change to make things easier. Soon they'll get rid of Steam gifting altogether - I can't wait! Pfft, no wonder people purchase from other online stores.
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Of course they think their customers are. Haven't you seen their support?
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Honestly, no. I've never dealt with support. I'm sure it's horrendous though.
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Sorry if I'm in a hater mood, but lately Valve decisions make me feel angry (the way they almost destroyed the mod community dividing it in 2 sides still makes me feel bad).
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I don't blame you for being upset about Valve's asinine decisions. This latest one is one of the worst.
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Nothing easier than jumping through dozens of hoops, right? RIGHT?
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I want to see how much this is going to affect Valve's income during the next summer sale.
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during the sale it will be lower for sure but overall any full price purchase will give them 2x or 4x summer sale gift money (multiply that with 2x or 4x if that is a cheaper region gift). tbh, I'm sure they made the math and I don't think they will lose any money at all, unless they lose their market share to another competitor.
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during the sale it will be lower for sure but overall any full price purchase will give them 2x or 4x summer sale gift money (multiply that with 2x or 4x if that is a cheaper region gift)
That's assuming they sell at least 1/4th as much outside sales. I don't have source, so I might as well be pulling it out of my ass, but I recall reading somewhere that the major sales make considerably more money compared to the rest of the year, just because of the quantity alone. I also doubt most people who buy gift copies do it at full price anyway. (this part I did pull out of my ass) This isn't going to kill Steam, Valve had been making plenty of money on sales before trading was even a thing, but maybe it's still something they would reconsider.
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it will be the same, still they will sell most of the copies during big sales, only difference will be from those buying the games for their inventory (I'm pretty sure most of those are for trade profit, we can only make assumptions but unlike us steam has actual data on this).
So only loss will be from the extra inventory copies bought during the sale and they hope to compensate that with the copies sold throughout the year. Most likely those people who bought their games from traders or gift resellers for cheaper prices will make the purchase one way or another anyway. We haven't even considered how much money steam was losing from hundreds of extra copies bought during price glitches, now they don't have to worry about it either.
While this is pretty bad for the casual gifters or traders, I doubt if steam will lose anything at all, I wouldn't be surprised if they make profit from this change.
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Most likely those people who bought their games from traders or gift resellers for cheaper prices will make the purchase one way or another anyway.
From 3rd party sites, like Humble. Many people who buy from resellers are just stingy, sure, but plenty of others simply have limited funds that they will have to spend on less (or pirate if they're not against it morally), and potential resellers will just spend their own money elsewhere. As for the stingy people, Valve basically made gifting through Steam a less convenient alternative to Humble Store, which is ironic considering Gaben's statement on piracy.
We haven't even considered how much money steam was losing from hundreds of extra copies bought during price glitches, now they don't have to worry about it either.
Good point, I hadn't considered the price glitches.
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The people that were buying games at price glitch prices are most likely not going to buy them at full price now. They might buy at another deep discount but hardly anyone will att full price. This is somewhat comparable to the situation regarding piracy and how much money "the industry" is loosing from that.
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tencent is coming... and somehow steam is trying its best to lose the market they already own. A few days ago everybody was saying, WeGame had no chance, now everybody should reconsider ;)
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Maybe this is an step in eliminate keys and key market stores in a next move? Because if not, this is nonsense
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Hmm I will now have to delete some giveaways I made this morning for games that are on sale right now as I made the end date after the sale ends...
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Note: Pre-existing gifts will be unaffected by this change.
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The pricing cutoff seems to be 10%.
As someone from the US, I can't buy PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and gift it to someone in the UK.
A friend of mine in Canada just tried to buy Civ VI to gift to someone in Europe and was denied.
This will be a huge hassle for gifting in general via steam gifts.
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Good to know. I guess I don't need to check the store section of Steam anymore then for gifts, ever, since I'll never know if I can gift something to a winner from there. I'll just pre-purchase on Humble or another retailer from now on.
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I'm a trader myself, sometimes, but I'm indifferent. I don't see Steam as my source of revenue, so that's probably why.
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I would imagine only a very small percentage of Steam users utilize it as their primary source of revenue.
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I didn't write primary, don't add any word that can twist my original intention. Any source of revenue means profit, and if the source is hit, people would be upset.
There are people that genuinely affected because they can't gift to family / friends in other region, of course. It's a collateral damage as Valve surely only target people who trade (with profit involved).
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FWIW, "my source of revenue" is easily interpreted as your only source. As opposed to "a source of revenue" which specifies it isn't primary.
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What about all the giftable copies that are floating around all the people's Steam inventories? Will that change affect them? I am kinda worried as I was keeping a lot of them as well...
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This sentence is missing in the automatically translated German version.
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Haven't there been many users on this site complaining about getting scammed where a steam gift gets revoked from their inventory? I imagine it is in Valve's best interest (from a support and revenue perspective) to focus on the store and the community market and keep trades to a minimum - only low value items
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Games can still be revoked from someone's library, so this can't be the reason behind their decision.
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Sure, but the same scammer couldn't do it over and over again to unsuspecting users until support gets around to banning them ... right? I could clearly be missing something because I don't trade like that so I'm not sure how it all works
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Yeah, I just stick to bundle keys when trading too.
I'm just saying I don't think they changed the gifting system due to scams, cause it's the same for the owner if a game gets removed from their library or inventory (unless a gift is re-traded). These type of scams are done when someone buys a game, trades it (for keys, paypal) and makes a chargeback to get their money back. I'm not sure how chargebacks work, can they be made for multiple purchases at the same time? If so, they could still scam with the new gifting system.
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Most of these were keys (I had it happen myself with 2 Indiegala games); always by accident. So that wont change.
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I could see users who use ITAD a lot adding Steam to their ignored stores. That way Valve reaps the benefits of their latest bad decision.
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They will obviously lose sales, at least from the Steamgifts users who often bought cheap games during discounts and give then away later on events, cakedays and such. And I can not see how this would get any extra sales to even try to cover for the (globally not too many) missed sales. Or is Valve this desperate against any trading? o.O
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But... cutting out safe game trading will not do anything about scammed reports. Infact it'll likely rise since all have to be done outside of the client now, no security whatsoever... just... hope for the best.
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This thread/announcement could easily be called "share your favourite "what" gifs"...
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Thats disappointing :( I just liked having the game in my inventory so if I made a giveaway, or was going to trade it, people would know I already had it on hand and ready to go.
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This is ridiculous. While I probably understand why they did this (Unauthorized gift sellers from other regions? Price glitches?), this heavily impacts the Steam User experience. Unplanningly buying a game on sale for a future event, as example a birthday, is not possible anymore, now you have to plan sending something for a future event, as example a birthday.
Valve seriously needs a big competitor (as example a big gaming platform by Amazon) so they finally get their shit together again.
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I understand what you're saying about the workaround, but even that has issues.
You buy your friend a gift a month in advance because it's on sale now.
Your friend also buys the game because they really want it.
You're left looking like you have no gift for their birthday.
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Yeah but that happens with physical items as well.
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Yes it does, however your friend can return the physical item to the store and pick something out that they would like.
In this case the cost of the item purchased gets refunded to you, and not the recipient of said gift.
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On the other hand; the game is on sale now, bd is one month. Can't pre-gift it, friend doesn't buy it, and a month later on his birthday you have to pay the full price.
Likely you'll say "fuck it" and buy something else NOT from the Steam Store instead.
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So, does this mean we have to use the trade function instead after waiting 30 days from the purchase date? That sucks :(
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No. You can't now store giftable Steam copies of games in your inventory at all thus You won't even be able to trade the games using common trading on Steam.
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Well, guess that means more business for 3rd party stores :(
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Definitely. I hope people will make enough complains etc. that they will give up with this change same as they gave up with paid mods (at least for some time).
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no it means there won't be anything to trade because you can't buy any games for your inventory. It is the end of inventory gifts. Only option will be buying the gift directly for a particular friend's game library.
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Some games are only available through the Steam store though, so that means there's now no way to ever gift them other then buying them for the winner of a giveaway after they've won...
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And just pray the gods that the "region lock" doesn't trigger. Which it obviously will.
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https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791457287600/announcements/detail/1301948399254001159
You can now only buy something directly for another steam user and if they decline, your money gets refunded.
"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."
"Note: Pre-existing gifts will be unaffected by this change."
here's a change.org petition created by another user in the thread,
https://www.change.org/p/valve-corporation-valve-please-bring-back-previous-gift-system-on-steam
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