Before starting our guide on how to gift a game on Steam, we need to introduce the platform itself.
What Is Steam?
Steam was created by Valve as a way to distribute video games through digital means. Usually, Steam was made to be a standalone software client that Valve uses to update their games automatically. Specifically, they made it so that Steam is how you update games like Half-Life. However, the scope of Steam eventually grew to include games from other publishers/creators. Today, Steam has grown into a video game digital marketplace that does multitudes of things. These range from selling games, trading items managing servers, to even digital rights management, social networking services, and video streaming. In addition to this, Steam also has several community features including groups, friends list, in-game voice chat, and cloud storage. Steam also gives users the ability to use an API called Steamworks, which allows developers to add most of Steam’s functions to their games. These include microtransactions, user-created content support through their Steam Workshop, and the most important of all, Achievements. Before, Steamworks was only made for the Windows OS, but Linux and macOS versions were released later. All this and a lot of creative management turned Steam into the biggest digital distribution platform for PC games. Steam now holds around 75% of the PC gaming market share by the time 2013 rolled around. When 2019 came, Steam holds around 34.000 games and counting, almost 100 million active users monthly, and earns 2 to 4 billion USD per year. Not that it stops them from trying to go for more, as Steam Deck seems poised to try and get the market that the Nintendo Switch has a foothold on. Sign up for Steam today!
How to Add Funds on Steam?
Before you learn how to gift a game on Steam for your friend, you need to know how to buy one first and that begins with adding funds to your Steam Wallet. Of course, you also have the option to buy games using other payment options like a credit card.
After this is done, simply go to the Steam Store to choose the game that you wish to purchase.
How to Buy New Games on Steam for Yourself?
After adding funds to your Steam account, buying games is a pretty simple affair. This is how:
How to Gift a Game on Steam?
Here comes the best part. It’s time to learn how to gift a game on Steam for your best friends who love gaming.
How to Give Steam Gift Cards?
Another option to gift a game is just sending your friend some Steam Gift Cards so they can freely choose the game they want. These gift cards will them a gift card with a certain amount of money, which can then be used to top up their Steam Wallet. This is how to gift a friend some gift cards on Steam itself: There are also actual, physical Steam Gift Cards that users can redeem to gain more Steam funds. Simply go on your Steam Wallet, then select the “Redeem a Steam Gift Card or Wallet Code” option. Then the user only needs to input the code inside the gift card to redeem the funds.
How to Gift Duplicate Games on Steam?
Steam is used to allow users to gift duplicate hames on the platform. Also, for clarification, gifting a duplicate game means that you’re gifting a user a game they already own. That’s not allowed anymore, though, and we’ll talk more about this restriction below.
What Are the Restrictions When Sending Gifts on Steam?
There are a few restrictions to gifting games that make sense. For one, the user can’t gift Steam games that their friend already owns. After all, it doesn’t make sense to have multiple copies of a game. The next restriction is regional, and if you’re confused about this, here’s a more practical explanation. Let’s say that a person from the United States has a friend in another country. His friend likes 4X strategy games, so he gifts them Stellaris and all its DLCs as a birthday present. The game’s Ultimate Bundle, including the 10% discount, currently costs $202.35 in the US. Now, let’s say that the inverse is true, and it’s the friend that gifts Stellaris to his US friend. The current cost of the Stellaris Ultimate Bundle is $100.51 in some countries, literally half the price in the US. Steam doesn’t like this, at all, and thus will stop the overseas friend from gifting his US friend the game. Why? Because of the price difference. After all, each region/country price its goods differently, and games are no different.
Pros and Cons of Gifting Games via Steam
What are the advantages and disadvantages when you gift games on Steam? Well, it’s pretty simple; it’s easy to gift games on Steam due to how optimized it is. Simply pick a game you like, select how many people you want to gift the game to, pay the bill, and you’re done. However, as already mentioned, it does have its disadvantages, specifically the regional restrictions. Users can’t gift games willy-nilly depending on where they are on the planet due to regional prices and all that. Other than this, though, there are no hard disadvantages to gifting games on Steam.
Gift a Game on Steam to a Friend Today!
In conclusion, if you have the money, you can gift games on Steam easily due to how fast you can do it there. Other than the regional restrictions, there’s no downside to gifting. Thus, gift away for those Steam friends that you like!
