Wow, the double-speak in that announcement is cringe-worthy and depressing.
we want to make it easier for you to share the games you love with friends
(then proceeds to explain the new added restrictions, not added options)
These changes are now available. "Hey friend, did you know it's now available that I can't buy a gift from the store for you? You live in Australia where publishers like to price gouge, so Valve made this awesome change available today that you basically won't be able to receive gifts of certain games from literally anywhere in the world (except your own country). How do you feel about this change now being available to you?"
"Yeah, mate. I love the availability of this change!"
Ugh.
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lol, the petition has almost twice as many people on it then the blog has upvotes on it. ^^
maybe we get lucky and they actually listen.
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Signed it and all my friends signed it too. This update shall not pass! We are the clients, we bring our money to Valve and they should listen us sometimes!
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Yeah 500 Trader and 500 Resellers are crying and a handful of people who will not even realize that there was a change ^^
How many users has Steam again... 130-150 millions
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That's not true. You lowered amount of traders x10 =) This isn't only one forum with discussion about new update. And why you are talking only about traders and resellers? What about people, who were purchasing games to store them as gifts in inventories and create giveaways on this site?
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+1 this..this will fuck up all the people that gift, including me,you,,and others
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most people just give away bundle games like u me others :p
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These just were fictitious numbers to point to the absolute minority which have a problem with it
I'm just talking about traders because all the others are can still "gift", it makes absolutely no difference whether you could keep the games in the inventory or now just no more for the regular user .... steamgifts or wherever someone created giveaways are something completely different and you can be glad it was ever possible to do so and yes it is stupid that it now probably will not function properly as before but honestly the update is not even a day old ... just wait ...and look like they will adjust it ..to 100% will not stay the way it is now
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its not about resellers or traders its all about our right, from where you get this 150 millions users lol
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lol ..."our right" made my day mate ;O and just google it even if they are just embellished numbers
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i love how people toss up the amount of "users" when that really doesn't matter at all. what matters is how many "purchasers", which afaik there isn't a stat page on that info...
and what i actually meant anyways was, ~500 people upvoted the blog and was for the changes, but almost 1,000 people signed the petition. there's probably several thousand downvotes on the blog, but it's hidden from the public, so that's the best stats we can come up with for how liked vs disliked this change was.
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comon people are just pissed because another way to get cheap games is totaly gone do not interpret any other things in the comments and downvotes ... for the "numbers/users" read my answer above
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it didn't ruin a single thing for getting "way to get cheap games", i can get every single one of them just as cheap elsewhere. so no, i'm not pissed about that in the slightest bit. it makes a huge difference on gifting too not just trades and resellers like you seem to think. neighboring near currency countries can't even gift to each other anymore, i no longer can gift to a friend of mine without making the user create a steam account just so i can get them a game for their birthday. i cannot gift steam sale games to a website such as this. the list could go on but since your counter argument has simply been "quit crying, there is 150million users" i guess it's pretty pointless to try and debate with logic.
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read what i wrote already before ... the update is 1 f*cking day live and the people freak out again as if the end of the world had come
just wait and see the change will not stay like that... and read between the lines ....doesnt seem as u had understood what i wanted with it at all messages ^^
and great picture about the definition of the word and at the same time you wrote
--> " i cannot gift steam sale games to a website such as this."
so you only give away when it is as cheap as possible
If you really want to make someone happy the price plays no role and not only the price brings you to the idea of giving something away
and yes I know what you really wanted to say with that
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why are some people freaking out on those that are voicing their opinions? what harm are others doing to you voicing their complaints and opinions about a new feature? would you prefer me to voice my complaints 2years from now instead, 1day live is the appopriate time to voice complaints, not 2years from now...
okay, so it's not going to stay like that simply cause you said so.. sounds like excellent logic to me. it doesn't seem like i understand broken english very well, you would be completely accurate there.
the picture was to point out it isn't a "steam trade" its a "steam gift" and they completely thwarted actual gifting.
who said i only give away when it's as cheap as possible?
i agree, price plays no role.
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ΓΆhmm too late people have already said everything @ the regiolock on gifts 3 years ago.... .it is exactly the same the only difference is that we all are affected now and the possibility to hoard/keep the games is gone..... sorry that my english isnt the best not everyone has the luck to come from an english speaking country
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the region lock had no effect on me personally since i was from a row region anyways (u.s.) on the first regionlock on gifting 3 years ago so I'm not familiar with what all was said, however from what i understand from reading other peoples comments this new region locking will effect me so i'm actually interested and have things to say this time around. ^^
your english was fine for the most part and i apologize for sounding snobbish by saying it was broken, i think we were both just getting tired of repeating some of the same things and not quite understanding each other caused frustration.
i really hope you are correct though and it does change. i want there to be more restrictions then it was, but this was way to strict imo. i should be allowed to gift to EU regions without fear when purchasing from US. it's not that large of a difference in currency. they really need to allow purchasing gifts to inventory even if they limit it to only 'x' copy/copies and it expires after 'x' amount of days so that we can gift to friends without spoiling it, or random strangers without even knowing who it's going to before hand.
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I've been trading on Steam for years So I'm always affected as soon as there is a change, I also come from Germany.
What makes the change even harder than for other countries because of our censorship
I think it will change...there is a lot of good criticism and points that need to be considered. Like the option
to gift to friends in the near countries ...the thing with the price difference Example solution : overpaying etc.
Maybe even to keep the games by simply dont make them tradable(with a limited amount). which does not affect the new system but still makes the users happy. But as usual, most people just want to save money and want it to remain so. So I find the statements of most here are hypocritical :P and this is simply their main reason. And this time it concerns everyone
even if you come out of one of the cheap RoW countries this time.... This does not affect new games since
a long time because they cost the "same" nearly everywhere nowdays. But the option to get an older game at the lowest
sale price after a sale is gone and that for everyone (expect keysellers and other sources) And honestly everyone has
already grabbed the cheap gifts when they were available. Especially the people here on steamgifts. When I open your
steamtrades link i see that 2 years ago we already getraded ^.^
The thing with the numbers/traders and steamusers...was only there to show the enormous difference to who has a problem
with it and who probably doesnt or never noticed this change and how little such a petition benefits even if there would be 10,000 or 100,000 signatures
It's like a MMORPG with Steam...It makes no difference as developer/publisher that you are annoying millions of users with Pay2Win elements or other stupid "gamebreaking" stuff as long as only a really small group of user always and regularly buys that shit and is happy with it ;)
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Sorry, I am not trying to be mean or anything, but that petition looks like it was written by an angry 10 year old kid.
I don't think it will be taken serious by Valve.
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no arguments here on that. ^^ lol
i dunno about them totally disregarding it either though, it just won't carry nearly as much weight since it was poorly constructed.
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Yeah, no way I'm signing that. I'm sure others think same and in this way this petition actually hurts, since it shadows better petitions (has anyone even bothered doing that?) and has about 0% chance of being taken seriously.
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So, uh, sorry to OP and anybody else who reads this...but I haven't been following this closely. Without getting into the pros and cons, can somebody explain what this means for SG gifting from a ROW (USA) country? Does it mean that I'll have to region-lock any Steam Gift giveaway to North America? Because maybe Europe or Australia won't be able to activate my gifts?
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You can't send a gift to anyone who has a Steam store price that is more than 10% higher.
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That's wrong. It has already been tested and the 10% cutoff goes both ways.
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Yes it does, as it makes gifting games and making giveaways even harder to do.
Just because I have keys and Humble Bundle Links doesn't mean anything.
Valve might screw with the packages or subs and make it to where keys can't even cross region.
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New stuff released today as part of the May Humble Monthly has some region restrictions already. :(
"Cross region trading and gifting is disabled for this item."
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Just tried, I don't get stopped gifting into a -25% region.
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Then as someone else said it might depend on the game itself.
Which game did you just try to gift?
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Wat? Since when are we talking about keys?
That was a gift test.
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I asked if you used a key or gift link because Turing Test is in the May Humble Monthly.
However if it was a gift you purchased from the Steam Store and sent it to a -25% user, that would be useful info.
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from the Steam Store
Yea, not fully purchased but past the point it stops otherwise.
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i've had 10 giveaways end and get marked received in the last 24hours since the change. i think if keys were effected i'd of already had an issue tbh. ^^
edit: ahh after re-reading i think you're talking specifically about the new humble bundles keys. nevermind then, ignore me. hehe
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I'm just trying to figure out (in what situations) exactly what we can and can't gift. I really doubt Valve thought this through.
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HALLO PEOPLE WE AT VOLVO MADE SENDING GAMES TO YOUR FRIENDS EASIER AS LONG AS THEY LIVE IN THE SAME MONETARY REGION LOL, OTHERWISE YOU CAN'T. SUPPORT ORGANIC, SUPPORT LOCAL, GET LOCAL FRIENDS NAO
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Thanks for the reply...so before creating the GA, I need to check the Steam price in other regions, and region-restrict it accordingly, excluding perhaps UK, Europe, Australia.
And if I recall correctly, you also can't buy the game until you have a (valid) winner because you can't store it in your inventory then send it later.
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Yep, you have to have the winner on your friends list before you buy. It has to be sent straight away and can't be stored.
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Wow that's so incredibly annoying. I don't buy gifts via Steam Store terribly often, but this will pretty much kill it.
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You can also schedule it for delivery at a later date, say for a birthday. But same restrictions as above.
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I'm pretty much fucked in Australia in terms of people sending me anything.
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IKR? And I just checked and there isn't even an AUS/NZ region in SG. I thought I could dog-ear some non-Steam store stuff for your region, but I can't do that via SG.
Well, I guess key resellers will make out well (GMG, Humble, etc).
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Yeah, I'm boned from sending gifts to people in Australia, the EU, and the US. This is beyond idiotic on Valve's part.
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Those in the US should still be able to send a lot of the cheaper indie games to me since the price is the same and I pay in USD.
It will mostly be the bigger AAA titles that have a large price difference.
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My problem is that all of my giveaways were of the gift variety. I have some still in my Inventory, but once those are gone? Not being able to send to those 3 places takes a hefty chunk out of the people I can gift to (with regards to Group giveaways and WL giveaways).
I think we need to send the Beard Brigade to Valve's head office!;)
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Just have to buy keys when you can until they get fucked over as well.
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Yes. Yes! YES!!!! Get 'em!!!!:)
Unfortunately, as it stands right now, I have no way of purchasing keys. Steam Wallet is all I have access to (unless I find a friend to trade them, that is).
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It's not that they won't be able to activate, you won't even be able to send them. A message appears when you try, saying that you can't because their prices are higher than yours. I'll have to check steamdb to be sure if you can send a game, since each publisher set their own prices. If it's +10% lower in your regions, you won't be able to send the gift. I guess that only include a few places like EU, UK and Australia in your case.
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tbh, if I were you I'd wait to create any GA that are not keys until cg updates the region restrictions because right now, they are completely obsolete and the gifting process is a mess. You would need an option to restrict your GAs to countries with regional prices that are at least 10% lower, and we don't have it yet. Besides, you need to add the winner before buying the gift... It's truly annoying. (β―Β°β‘Β°οΌβ―οΈ΅ β»ββ»
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This is very upsetting. Not only are they removing the option to send a gift to your inventory but also only allowing you to send a gift to only the users on the friends list. Goodbye gift buying from steam. I will just buy keys from 3rd party sites instead from now on.
Having gifts in inventory to send later was one of the coolest features that made Steam really unique. It definitely feels like we were poo'ed on. I wish they would do surveys for users to get an idea of what we like before they toss in a major change. Really drains from what confidence I had.
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btw here is a free game:
16Bit Trader
PBC9R-X6J2I-M49EK
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Am I the only one who isn't really bothered by this change?
The only negative that affects me personally is that now I can't store a game in my inventory while I decide if I really want to play it or not...
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If you have no care or concern over being able to gift others with games, then I can see how you would not be bothered by this.
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Thats not really the case for me.
It was too much of a hassle to try to trade games in the past for me anyways and as far as gifting, i'm not that generous but if my friend and I want to try something out together, which is where most of my gifts ended up going, then we communicate about it and if it's a go, the simple steps of purchase and send are all I need.
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I guess i am downplaying the negative a bit. Not being able to buy something impulsively and choose to eventually activate/gift it or request a refund in a timely manner will eventually piss me off.
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Do you use SG? Then it affects you whether you bought gifts or not in the past. Because no gift purchases and new ridiculous gifting restrictions means no more GAs for gift copies on SG means much much less non-bundle GAs for you to enter.
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I understand your point, but I can't go much much less than zero.
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what do you mean by less than zero? you want to say that out of over 20000 GAs you entered none was for gift? Impossible.
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I admit that it is somewhat of a misrepresentation but of the 20000 i entered, i would guess with some accuracy that under 500 of these entries are for non-bundled games, and since i can't really check too easily atm, i would say that less than 10 of my wins has been in gift copy form, if any at all.
Also, not every GA explicitly states whether it is a gift or not.
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I agree. I had a habit of sometimes buying a game as a gift during a sale, to activate it later when I actually intend to play it. A habit easily replaced by my "Play Me!" library category. If I didn't have wallet credit, I'd hardly ever buy a game on Steam anyway.
So to me it's a very minor issue and I struggle to see how it can be such a big deal for everyone else.
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I understand to a point why it is such a big deal to others, but I also think there is always a bit of "Fuck Valve, Lynch Gaben" mentality that accompanies any drastic change to Steam.
Personally, the mostly mandatory mobile app and its glitchiness is what really gets me.
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Come on, the mobile app is cute when it pranks you by showing an error message even when everything works fine! :P
What I disklike about Steam is mainly the design of the website and client and Valve's decision to be less and less involved with the shop and crowdsource everything. Of course I'd be happy to be able to detach games from my library and trade/sell/gift them, or to have a global key system blending Steam, GOG, Origin, uPlay and whatnot, but this is not stuff Valve can do on their own initiative.
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That's bullshit, why are they doing this?
I've signed the petition and is now 93 people short from the 1k goal.
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Most likely two big reasons are:
1) Pressure from outside (publishers) to avoid resellers
2) Scammers (chargebacks cost money, and still somewhat common scam despite all previous restrictions)
Valve isn't stupid that they would do something like this without reason.
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Yeah it's very negative towards their consumer base, still they should make some kind of restriction instead of a complete removal of the system
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One, its kinda good that those ( if you know what i mean ) dudes that have having tons of games in their inventory either from scamming or something.. ( i had experienced it/ good thing the game was just given to me and i was scammed so no thing lost but still lost the free stuff ) , so yeah good for those pesky scammers..
Two, so if i accept a gifted game, IT WILL AUTOMATICALLY be on my library? instead of the [before update] add to library or inventory option?
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I know disabled guy who is living in place with ugly economics and his only way to earn 100-200$ monthly for food is trading steam gifts. I personally not against his "business". More than that, traders offer gifts on SteamTrades (SteamGifts' child) for OK prices and there are a lot of trustworthy traders. Mostly because of my work I missed a lot of 48 hours sales on interested for me games on Steam and got them later from trades. Steam's new update will kill whole trading community and this isn't cool.
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not everyone, but there are scammers out there who scam people like those who sell and some innocent traders.., i just feel sorry for them losing such an expensive game.. so less or no more things likely to happen in the future similar to those incidents,
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKu7TYWNxqA
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:) Well maybe is true, the Star Wars Collection suffered a price glitch, was discounted 93% and if too many buyed this for trade it later, maybe, maybe Valve said no more of this and take action on the matter, is no the first time that happens and this causes that the store lost money, I think this was going to happen late that early.
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They moved the main thread about this on steam to the help and tips section, and they're closing new threads about this topic on the main section.
This is getting worse
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When things don't go your way censor the hell out of everything.
Rule of politics & business alike.
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I'm concerned on how this is going to affect GAs. During sales, I always buy the game before I make the GAs on my own leisure. Now, if there is a good deal, GAs will have to end before the deal is over.
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It's worse then that; due to the new region locking system even if you start+end a giveaway during a sale you can't be sure the winner will be able to receive it. Until SG implements a more advanced region restiction feature, the vast majority of people wont be able to do giveaways using the steam store at all.
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As others have pointed out, SG was never part of the consideration for this change. We are an extremely small fraction of the Steam user base.
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This is Valve's way of building a wall around America. :(
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Correction. This is valves way of making more money.
Valve are ensuring that everyone pays the maximum amount possible so that their 30% cut is larger.
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I wish them luck. I for one will no longer be buying from the Steam Store unless it is only available on Steam.
Considering the amount of stores on IsThereAnyDeal.com and the fact we have KeyRadar to sort through gray market sellers, Valve will be getting a very small portion.
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How things have changed. I remember the days when Valve actually vouched for high discounts so that as many people as possible would buy games on sale. It has been going downhill for so long now. I guess that is just the usual corporate path. When you grow too tall, it is time to fumble down.
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To think, about six years ago Valve was being hailed as the best game/software devs ever. How far the mighty have fallen. :-(
Although just to clarify, the stricter region restriction only applies to gifts bought through Steam, correct? Keys are untouched by that part so far?
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I think it is based on sub or app id. I don't think key / gift matters.
For an example, check out GoNNER on SteamDB
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keys can be region locked too and it's been like this for a long time already (when I joined SG over 4 years ago there were already region locked keys, much less than nowadays but still present. It's up nto developer/publisher to decide whether they want to make region locked keys, and recently more and more decide to do so. Capcom, Bandai Namco, Deep Silver, Bethesda to name a few.
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I have a question though, what about the 4 pack and 6 pack games??
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What will happens them if i make a giveaway for a game and someone declines it because he already won/buy it on the sale, and them i have to reroll and when i get the new winner the sale already ended?
I will them need to pay the full price for the game just because now you will not be able to get the gift copy and gift it later.
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Yes.
So most likely no rerolls anymore but GA deletions.
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the sad things are that the 4packs are also gone now with this new rule
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Thatès really too bad, I like being able to keep gift in my inventory till I decide what to do with them... Ah well yet another bad decision from Valve...
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Just because I'm curious: does anyone know, how you get your refund in case a gift gets declined? Let's say you paid with Paypal, will you get a Papal refund as well, or will they just put it into your Steam Wallet, so you can't use the funds outside Steam any more?
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They just put it directly into your Steam Wallet, so it's not a real refund.
They're essentially holding your money hostage.
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Yeah, I kinda suspected that. I wonder if that's even legal? I mean, with every other legitimate business, if they fail to provide the service you paid for, you get your money back (so you could spend it somewhere else, if you wanted to). In this case you effectively get a voucher to buy something else from their store. They even let you deal with any change left on your balance in case you can't find something for exactly the same price. Seems shady at best.
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It makes sense that they wouldn't want to be offering so many potential refunds to anything other than wallet because they lose in fees when a transaction is made through something like paypal then reversed (refunded). Super shady that they're not upfront about that and will just hide that in the fine print. I would guess it's not legal for them to call it a refund if they're unwilling to return the money via the original payment method. They should say if the gift is declined store credit is granted instead, or at least "refunded to the gift giver's wallet".
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The thong is here they do not fail to provide service, they did provide it, the third party declined it. Like idk you're in a pub you order a drink for this gorgeous lady you dont know and she refuses a drink. Ofc in normal circumstances you should be able to give drink to someone else, but my point being from legal standpoint they did provide you a service and cannot be held accountable for third party refusing your gift. Also since it's internet shop i believe they want to protect themselvea from ezploitation. Like people trolling them by ordering and refusing over and over again and them having to pay fees for every refund. Lile when Digital Homicide wanted to raise money to sue Jim Sterling and ppl trolled them by donating 1 cent over and over again so they would have to pay massive fees.
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I still say that what you actually you pay for, is providing the subscription, if they cannot provide it (either for technical reasons or because the recipient refuses) they should not keep your money. In your example with the gorgeous lady, you could ask her before ordering the drink and in case she refuses you wouldn't pay or order anything at all. Of course, they could do the same, and only charge for a gift once it's been accepted and only deliver a gift once it's been paid (unless it's paid entirely from Steam Wallet, in which case they could deliver it right away). It would take a little longer in some cases, but it would be the customer friendly approach. But hey, in that case someone could decide take the money elsewhere...
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and in example of Steam the same way you can ask your friend before orgering a gift. I don't see how asking a lady and asking a friend before you make purchase is any different ;)
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The difference is, that the lady is sitting right beside you on the bar, making the situation much more transparent. With your Steam gift, there's a much higher chance, that the recipient of your gift might have gotten the same game from someone else meanwhile (probably the most common reason for declining a gift). So yes, I agree, it's probably best to ask and make very sure that your friends going to accept your gift. But, in case they're just sloppy, forgetful or whatever, you might still end up with some extra Steam Wallet funds, which you may or may not find useful.
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You got me wrong. Im not defending Valve, im just saying you may not be right about legal part thus comparison and explanation. And gorgeous lady may be getting drink from another secret admirer and for that reason refuse your the same way friend may be getting gift from someone else ;) so in both cases best way not to lose money is to ask b4 you spend money ;)
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Oh, I wasn't implying that you're defending Valve. Still the situation in the bar is more transparent: you ask the lady if she wants a drink she accepts or declines. End of story. You usually get your answer right away, that's the difference. Now with Steam there may be a few days in between, a friend may agree to accept the same gift twice when asked (but obviously can accept only one) and so forth. You may argue all of that isn't Valve's fault. You're right of course, but still it would be more customer friendly if they only charged for gifts that are actually delivered. Technically it would be no problem at all, but of course, as they handle it now, it's better for them.
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you assume you ask the lady, i'm talking about a situstion of surprise drink - barman serves a dring "from this gentleman over there" - like in the movies ;p You may wish to order a surporise drink thje same way you may wish to make surprise gift to your friend without asking him first ;) As for charging later - there may be a problem, what if when your friend accept the gift you no longer have money on your PP for example? And they can no longer charge you? From their perspective the safest way is to charge money in the first place to make sure you have money before they send gift.
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As I said to d3m4n: "If, for some reason you can't pay, after your gift has been accepted, the gift won't be delivered.".
Unlike the barkeep in your example, they don't even have to prepare a drink, they simply don't deliver, in case you can't pay. You miss out the opportunity to get that gift at a sale price, but that's about it. It's easier to handle than a chargeback on PP or credit card, because they don't even have to deactivate your game.
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thewn it would still be exploitable - people with no money ordering hundreds of gifts over and over just to screw up with Steam. To put stress on their services, to mess up with their sale data etc. Don't underestimate ppl willing to do basically anything just to screw with a company they have some problem with.
EDIT: To give more specific example - trolling not just valve but developer you don't like. Devs very often respond to their publishers, investors etc. When game gets released what's most important are two things - sale numbers and reception. Based on initial sales which are usually the highest of whole game lifespann it is decided if and how much money devs will get, sometimes even if dev studio will survive. Now imagine that a studio that is commonly hated is releasing new game. Big group of people decide to troll them - they create countless alt accounts, they order thousands upon thousands of gifts on release day artifically boosting sell numbers sky-high. Then exactly 1 week later they decline all these gifts, the sale numbers drop like crazy - it may very well mean death of an entire studio. All based on these imaginary numbers of items that weren't even charged for.
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Then add an extra layer of security, like "you may only gift once you spent at least $5 on the Steam Store or topped up your Steam account with $5" - same as with community market access. Also sales don't have to count until the gift goes through. They, probably don't count either, if someone chooses to refund (e.g. No Man's Sky probably had a lot of refunds).
From a legal point of view, I still have my doubts that their current approach is completely legit. You pay them to deliver a digital subscription, if they can't deliver - for whatever reason - they can't just give you back something else (Wallet funds) and call it a "refund". They need to make sure that, they either don't take your money, unless they can deliver or give you back your part of the deal the same way they got it.
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they do track and show in charts when someone refunds and yes, number of refunds can also influence your financial result as a studio ;) And again - they do deliver, it'sd just 2nd party who didn't accept, another real life comparison - you buy a real life gift online, pay postal fees to send gift to someone, this someone declines package - in no case will your postal fee be given back to you and in most cases you will not get full monetary refund either but product will be delivered to you instead.
Also as for actual legality - all they have to do is just write sth like that in their TOS, you agree with it the moment you make a purchase, so unless the TOS itself is brought to court and this part is proven to be against the law they can legally give you refunds in form of wallet credit, because you agreed on it ;)
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Your real life example doesn't quite match, because as you said, they already provided shipping services for you, of course you'd have to pay for them, even if someone declines the package. In this case, they aren't providing any service until the recipient accepts, so it should be be easier. It would be interesting to check how other digital services handle that kind of situation, e.g. if you wanted to gift an Amazon Prime membership, or a Netflix subscription to a friend and they decline your gift.
You do have a point with your argument about their TOS. It's still misleading to call it "refund", but you may have accepted it with the TOS. Personally I don't care, I only ever used gifts for giveaways. Now that I can't store the gifts, it's far too risky and I won't buy gifts anymore anyway.
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yeah, same here, only 2 reasons I ever bought gifts were either for GAs, which I won't do anymore, or to make surprise presents to my fiancee, and I doubt she will reject a gift from me so I won't have to deal with forced wallet refund ;p
Also one can argue (Valve surely would ;p) - they are providing service as well, they provide servers, gift and sending platform, social platform for you and your friend to use and so on and on. Ofc it's a bulshit argument because these are hardly "services" and Steam main service is DL an purchase platform and rejected game cannot be DLed anyway, but they could still argument that using their servers bandwitch was the service same way real life store consider postal a service. Again it's not me defending Valve, it's me saying why Valve can pretty much get away with all of this with no consequences unless users start to vote with their wallets and we know they wont ;p
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Of course they are providing a service with their servers and platform, but that service is free. Even though it's funded by their storefront, you could still use it without ever spending a dime directly in Steam (by buying your keys elsewhere). So actually no, they can't argue that they provided any additional service with that gift-option unless the gift is actually delivered. Unlike a real shipment where where the costs of shipping are considerable, a declined gift probably doesn't cost them more than someone browsing their store or using their forums.
And yes, I totally agree, people will not vote with their wallets. In fact, many of them are probably happy about the change, because it "only hurts a few exploiters and gray-market traders", many don't even think about giveaways. Just take a look at that change.org petition, after 3 days, it's not even 1500 supporters (I remember, when they wanted to turn mods into paid DLCS, there was a huge shitstorm with several petitions having several thousand supporters each within of a few hours ... and rightfully so.). People don't care, they read that gifting is safer now (as you know beforehand whether a gift for a particular friend is available at all - which is a good thing after all) and they are happy about that. Publishers are certainly happy with the change.
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from their perspective - no difference between for example this service being "free" and let's say "free shipping" in onl;ine shop ;) If someone declined gift and you were to be refunded money I doubt shop would not cut you on actual shipoping costs ;) As for " you could still use it without ever spending a dime directly in Steam" that's because someone else - developer or publisher - paid them in the first place, so you can get "free" service. here we're taslking about situation where noone pays them and they still provide service - quite different situation. And it doesn't really matter if declined service costs them 2 cents, 2 dollars or 20 dollars, the fact that matters is that it generates ANY cost and it can be used as LEGAL argument while they can charge if it fails. In this case charge baing making sure you don't just do it in a way that cost them fees, so adding money to your wallet - if you pay with wallet over and over again making fake gifts there are no fees, if you pay with your PP over and over again making fake gifts, each purchase have fees.
As for ppl not caring - ppl who purchased gifts for GAs are very small minority compared to ppl who purchased gifts to trade/sell on grey market. Whole SG is less than 1mil users, that's less than 0.5% of Steam userbase. Contributors on SGT are just over 20000, ppl who made non-bundle GA so maybe purchased a gift are less than 10k, it is 0.00$% of Steam userbase - minority so small Valve won't give two shits about it. Their main target were big professional traders - be their trasding on things like ST or shady sites like G2A, these are like 99% of ppl who were purchasing gifts and it will hit them. In the process they hit ppl who were purchasing gifts to make GAs for strangers, but all things considered they're willing to take these innocent casualties if it means getting rid of traders they wanted to get rid of.
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here we're talking about situation where noone pays them and they still provide service - quite different situation.
Let's say you browse their store every day and have lengthy conversations on their forums (like this one... haha) but you never buy anything. Exactly the same situation. They still offer those services, because eventually there's enough customers to make it worthwhile. Or publishers pay them, in case everyone would switch to rather buying keys (not likely). I know that "free for me" is not "free out of the goodness of their heart" - someone eventually pays for everything. :-)
And yes, I am well aware that giveaways are only a concern for a very small minority of Steam users. What they wanted to do is stop/cripple trading gifts ... that's what I meant when saying "publishers are certainly happy about the change." Funny enough, first thing I did after the change was reinstall my Sims 3 on Origin and buy DLCs on G2A/G2play (because they only trade Origin keys). I never used that shady site before, but I felt that both EA and Valve deserved it, because their EU pricing is completely messed up (like $4.80 compared to β¬15 for some packages, when both are on sale). Before the change I just had a friend buy them for me in the US store - which is the only time I ever did any "trading".
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well, tbh ppl who say "this thing is 4,80$, otherwise I'd have to pay 15$" are the problem who cause this trouble. it is 4.80$, because people who bought for that much earn 5-10 times less than you, yet you cry that you gotta pay 3 times as much as them while earning 10 times more. So now everyone is screwed ;)
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I would agree, if we were talking about countries like Brazil, Russia, South East Asia, vs. Europe or U.S. But we're talking about Europe (β¬15) vs. U.S. ($4.80) And no, we don't earn 10 times as much as Americans. Here for me, wages may be about the same (or just slightly higher), but there's also countries in the same EU1 geozone who certainly earn a lot less than Americans. In this particular case, it's just that EA just doesn't care to adjust the regional prices for their old games. There's also a few EA products on Steam where it's the other way round. I don't condone exploiting special prices for regions with lower income, as I said, I never used that shady site before, but that's not what it's about here.
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you got me wrong, I'm in EU zone as well, my country avg wage is 1/4th of what German ppl earn, yet I pay the same for games, but it's nothing new. It's been like this for years, so now it doesn't change much in this aspect, we've been screwed for half a decade at least, it only uses the fact that we've been screwed as an excuse to screw us even more. We will still pay same monies for games, we wont be able to trade for them, and we will cry over not being to buy them from third party, while in the first place we should cry why can't we buy them for the prices we should in the first place.
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if they cannot provide it (either for technical reasons or because the recipient refuses) they should not keep your money.
woah woah, what? doesn't the pub (steam) give you (gifter) your money back instead of giving it to the girl that declined (recipient)???
edit: nevermind, after reading it over again you meant it as "steam wallet =/= money"
i certainly wouldn't want to be charged after the gift is accepted, because then someone may wait to accept it after the sale ends just to force me to spend 2-4x as much $ on it.
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Of course the price would the same as if you paid in advance. You agree to gift something for let's say $5, you pay $5 once the recipient accepts. You'd probably even do the whole payment process in advance, e.g. give them your credit card or Paypal, but it wouldn't be charged until your friend accepts. If the recipient refuses, you pay nothing. If, for some reason you can't pay, after your gift has been accepted, the gift won't be delivered.
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ahh, okay.. i see what you mean now. yeah i could go for a setup like that. xD
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you get Steam Wallet refund no matter what payment method you used to buy a gift. Idk thou what happens if your Steam Wallet is full (aka you have 2000$ in it somehow) and you get a forced refund due to declined gift.
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That could be a way to "store" Steam wallet if you get too close to the limit.
Send a gift to a dummy account, then reject the gift from that account when you need the money returned to your wallet.
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not really - I read somewhere that if your "friend" don't accept gift in rather short timeframe - few days - it's automatically refunded, so managing all the wallet money to be almost daily sant via gifts to dummy accounts would be too much hassle I believe ;p
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Oh well then, I will have to keep my wallet under the limit. It shouldn't be that hard since well... I can't afford money anyway.
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A bit more to reach 1500 supporters. Share the petition guys and girls! https://www.change.org/p/valve-corporation-valve-please-bring-back-previous-gift-system-on-steam?source_location=minibar
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Has anyone with existing gifts tried gifting them through email since the changes happened? I was under the impression they weren't affected by any of these changes, but someone else just told me the new region restrictions (10% difference) do in fact affect them. I have a giveaway going on atm and now I don't know if email will work, I have to add the winner as a friend before sending it, or if it has to be cancelled :(
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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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