[UPDATE July 30th] PSA: Cross currency/country Steam gifting is banned over VPNs

No, you can’t anymore. That was how it used to be to buy games and leave them in your inventory. But that was the primary way grey market key reselling sites also did it. The purchase has to go directly to the user, and if it’s impossible, it can’t complete the transaction. The boolean the dev sets allows them to dictate if the restriction is permanent or temporary. It’s up to them, and that supersedes the 10% rule.

GOG doesn’t always have keys. If it’s indie you may be able to find it on itch.io and get a Steam key that way.

Humble Bundle maybe. But Steam did this to PREVENT grey market key reselling, yet it’s encouraging key reselling (even though people will go for more legit sites like Humble) just to legit gift someone a game now.

To be fair, I would understand if they introduced a feature, it was abused, so they withdrew it.
I’m not as sensitive to sale prices, so would just wait it out

The point is the dev can dictate whether this is in effect, sale price or not, and no one would be of the wiser if they didn’t check that hidden boolean. You got one layer of Steam enforcing this, then another layer of the dev enforcing it.

Looks like Humble Bundle does have the game:

This means if you’re doing cross currency/country gifting, use the Humble store or any legit store front OTHER than Steam for a Steam key. *facepalm*

So uhh buy it wait for sale to end then gift not to hard

Um, unless the dev explicitly denies cross country/currency gifting. Which is a thing.

I really don’t get why this is a problem. Especially since it put the power in the devs hands.

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It makes people that want to gift across a border a criminal. Once by Valve, second by the developer who set the boolean.

Ways round that =p use PayPal international account
VPN + buy in browser

They don’t know what country paid or what currency just value

Sent games to friends accounts where it was banned in their country there are black doors ez af to get round w/o breaking tos

No it doesn’t, it just restricts gaming of the system for pricing.

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Yeah, I tried that with a VPN and if your originating PayPal account is still in a certain country… it doesn’t work.

I’m just too retarded to figure that out I guess.

Which is their goal to prevent grey market key resellers, but it means headaches for honest people.

Made my account over seas on deployment to try and get stuff I never use my pay pal other than international stuff plus having cards in one currency that transfer to another cause navy fed international currency is no fee to convert

Basically able to spoof any currency location and make the account look new

Games banned in the uae I can send to my friends there

I don’t see how gifting someone from another region is really affected here since there’s plenty of ways to transfer funds for them to get the game. I think the response you got on Twitter was warranted, and stands true for steam as well.

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Hey, don’t fucking start on that. I just protected my account because of their assholery.

It was supposed to be a surprise. That’s why I’m so fucking bitter. Transferring funds and telling them what to get is not a surprise.

Honest users don’t need this feature to give gifts and this give freedom to the devs.

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Lucky you. This is a privileged situation and gets around tons of geo-blocks.

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So it’s the user’s fault for using a broken system? It’s not honesty but retardation?

It’s the users fault for gaming the system and causing grey market to become popular enough they felt the need to do this, yes. No company is your friend and valve especially so.

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