Would you ever consider NOT delivering a gift?

Try to get a copy for a decent prize. If that doesn't work, apologize for the mishap and suck up the "not received" - that's up to and including updating the GA's description to explain the goof.

Everybody makes mistakes, but in general people are more acceptng/forgiving if you own up to yours.

If he agrees, contact support and get the GA deleted.

P.s... I'm blacklisted by you, may I know what I did to offend you. I apologise in advance.

had the same thing some time ago from different sight of view:
won a game, it was regionlocked, guy asked me if he could cive me a nother game and that he's very sorry.

i said okay and marked as recived, nowi am on some blacklists because people think i didn't activate the game

Have you tried the steam trading page of the game. There are people willing to trade. You might get it for a good price

Had the same thing. 6 days before the summer sale. so i waited, and ofcourse it was only 1-2$ when the sale started :)

Four of my last giveaways were hijacked by someone who got onto my Humble account. I apologised and bought new copies. It sucks, but....

If it was 15$ or more, though, I'd be hesistant

Is it a game that you really liked? That you feel is worth $15 even if you don't want to spend that? Or do you feel the game is overpriced and should only cost about $5 for what it offers?

If it's a game that's worth $15 then I'd say bite the bullet and get it for him, it hurts but at the same time maybe the dev deserves the little extra money they'd be getting as well.

If it's a crap game that should actually only cost $5 then eat the Not Received and do whatever.

Something else :
don't quote me on that, you'd have to ask support to confirm, but maybe the winner can either mark "not received" and you can gift it someday when you have the occasion to buy the game at a discounted price,

or

the winner doesn't mark as "received" or "not received", and you gift it to him someday when you have the occasion to buy the game at a discounted price. I don't think that would break any rules - but I might br wrong.

Did you even read my former reply stating 5 people have this game for trade on Barter?

Well, there are 3 options:

1. buy the game at the best deal you can find right now
2. try to get a cheap copy from a trade or a "spooky" website
3. let the winner mark it as not-recieved & wait until you can find that game at a decent price or in another bundle and send the gift with a delay (better late than never ;p)

I've had the same problem over a year ago, i bought GTA complete pack from Nuuvem (which was the old GTA pack that included every single GTA game on steam, even the ones that aren't in the store anymore). Problem with this purchase was that GTA SA, if i'm not mistaking was region locked and couldn't be activated in ASIA and few other places from what i remember.

So originally i had planned on buying a new game for this person, any game of their choice, they picked TWD Season 2, i bought it and right after i bought it i checked the storepage for GTA collection and it was tagged with 30€ (40% discount at the time i think), so i thought to myself (might aswell do the right thing and gift him the original gift). So i apologized again to this person for asking him what other game he would like as i decided to buy the original gift directly from steam. I ended up buying both in the end.

As for the restricted GTA complete package code, i dropped it on a "Canadian dispenser" (a friend of mine i usually drop spares in, yes it's a nickname i call him because he get's a crapton of bundle spares from me, or well used to, since i stopped buying games lately).

I would post image proof of my purchases, but i'm the lazy-type guy so here's copy-paste instead:

1 Jun, 2014 29,99€ Purchase
GTA Collection (ROW)

1 Jun, 2014 22,99€ Purchase
The Walking Dead Season 2

Giveaway can be found on page 3 in my profile.

tl;dr If you can afford the right gift without much of a problem, do it then! Otherwise apologize and ask the person a game he would enjoy with a certain value limit. Of course you will be marked as not received, but at least you won't leave the person "hanging".

Failing all else, you could try G2A. If it has previously been bundled, people are sometimes looking to offload copies they don't want (and either either too lazy to trade, or ignorant of goodwill places like this). Buying the guard service means you'll get a replacement if the key is bunk, and you'll probably save money on a direct steam purchase.

Though personally, I would go for the honest approach. Explain your mistake, apologise, and ask if they're okay with a cancellation of the giveaway (as already suggested).

It sucks though. I feel you.

For anybody who is interested in the dramatic conclusion, due to generosity from everybody's favorite Barbie fan, patience from the winner, and a little luck on my part, the situation is happily resolved for all parties. Thank you all for your thoughts, time, investigation, etc.
It was actually very enlightening, in many ways!

Oh, and if anybody wants Ironclad Tactics for him or herself, there are still two more untested keys that were bequeathed to me. They may or may not work-- maybe you will be lucky too. But for obvious reasons, I'm not going to create a giveaway for them. ;-)

Yes , if my winner is a Regifter , and there was NO way to reroll it.
I Will NOT deliver it .

I know its resolved, but if it were me, and I weren't in a position to replace the key immediately, I'd apologize and take the Not Received, and then buy a key as soon as it went on sale or the funds were otherwise available. They won it fair and square, so I'd hope they'd change it to Received whenever that happened, but if not, so be it.

This happened to me. Messed up somehow similar to you and had a used key in my "unused game keys list.txt". In that case, I lucked out as it was in a running bundle, so I got another set of keys, and made GA's with the rest of the new keys too. Were it not in a bundle or on sale like your case? I might have just taken then "unreceived" hit, but winners can change received/unreceived at any time I think. You can give them the game later and they might mark it.

I would perhaps explain the situation, and tell them I owed them $15 and let them pick out their own game at that point. Its not their fault you already used the key.