Steam’s digital storefront really can be difficult to resist. With the number of games on offer and frequent sales, it’s really no surprise that Statista reports more than 400 million games are sold on the service annually. Many of them, of course, will just become untouched additions to our personal backlogs, but what if we’re looking to gift a game to another Steam user instead? After all, it’s easy to spend an enormous amount on the service.
Those generous souls in the habit of regular Steam gifting might be dismayed to hear that there are additional restrictions on the process now: Users can only send or receive gifted games to or from registered Steam friends. Previously, the only requirement was an email address linked to an active account.
However, the process remains quite user-friendly and should be rather familiar to anyone who’s used the storefront before. Here’s how to send a game to a registered Steam friend.
The process of sending a Steam game as a gift
The first thing you’ll need to do is select the title you want to send as a gift. Finding it from Steam’s huge library is as simple as entering the game’s title into the store’s search bar. From the game’s page, then, this is what you’ll need to do to send it to a friend:
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Select Add to Cart.
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When prompted to purchase for yourself or purchase as a gift, select the latter.
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You’ll be taken to a list of your Steam friends. Choose the appropriate account and click Continue.
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The next page allows you to add a gift message. Fill out as many or as little of the allotted 160 characters as you wish. Since you’re giving a gift, you presumably want to say something nice, but hey, you do you. Hit Continue again.
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On the payment method screen, select the correct payment method for making Steam purchases, then complete the transaction.
Gift cards and gift recipients
Naturally, the issue with the process described above is that the gifter may not send a title to the recipient’s liking. As many of us tend to find on birthdays and other occasions, gift cards can be a much safer bet. This way, users can instead send the account funds required for their friend to choose a new game.
Physical or digital Steam gift cards can be easily redeemed by inputting the code in the Redeem A Steam Wallet Code option in the Games menu. To redeem a gifted game, users must open the 1 New Gift message in their account, then select Accept Gift to add it to their Steam library (to which you can also easily add PC Game Pass and Microsoft Store games). It’s also possible to reject it via Decline Gift, after which the price of the game in question will be credited back to the gifter.
Steam Wallet funds are available in denominations from $5 to $100. They can be purchased directly from Steam via Steam Gift Cards. Here’s how to go about it from this menu:
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Click or tap Send Through Steam.
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Choose the appropriate denomination, confirm, and select the friend the gift is intended for. Click Continue.
From there, the payment process is the same as when gifting a specific game directly: Input any desired message, confirm, then input your payment type/details as appropriate.
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