Steam removes inventory gifting

Regrettably, Valve will merrily cock a virtual leg over this petition, and any others which rise up after it.

Until the petition consists of a sizeable number of regular game purchasing Valve users, publicly stating their user names, and provably refusing to spend another cent in the Valve store until something changes, nothing will change.

It's easy to get a petition signed by a batallion of internet warriors, but until people vote with their wallets (and are demonstrably proven to do so), it will have no impact. Actions and $$$s speak louder than the near-silent mouse-clicks required to sign a petition.

I suspect the vast majority of petition signatories will carry on using Steam, buying games, and selling trading cards etc in the Valve store. Even in the cases of those who don't, Valve will have little idea of why they stopped buying, and will probably neither notice nor care that a handful of users have ceased activity. I am certain more active Steam users die every day, leaving their accounts to gather dust, than users who signed this petition and will boycott Steam until this change is reversed.

This undoubtedly sucks, but if the customer doesn't care enough to change their habits, you can be damn sure the corporation who sells to them won't, no matter how many people add their names to a meaningless list on the internet, which takes no commitment to sign, and isn't backed up by any sort of tangible actions.

what will happen with existing games in inventory or dlc's ??

So it's been a full week. Looks to be there may be no changes huh? :/

Pretty much this.
This change on the gift system depressed me to no end.

The lack of feedback, the mods on the steam forums hiding every post about it, the steam zealots there defending the impossible, the way they presented this with lies, half truths and total disrespect to the customer. The damage that this cause on this community that I've learnt to love.

Idk, what do you people feel about this?

This is good news for key sellers like Instant Gaming and cdkeys.
I for sure will buy less games directly from Steam for giveaways. Probably just some games I want for myself.

They will notice at the next major sale. But I'm sure Valve knows this. I wonder why this could be good for them.

And about the petition... I've signed quite a few and there wasnt a single one succesful. Not gonna bother as its useless imo.

EDIT: This probably means goodbye to summersale and secret santa events... a pity really

awesome news! <3333333

Well. I'm late to the party here, but I still want to add my two cents. I've been living under a rock, and I only noticed this change when my first GA in so many months ended an hour ago. I had to go back and forth a few times to make sure "store in my inventory" wasn't accidentally missing or something. Nope.

For me this sucks because there's no longer an option to stock up on gifts during sales, then distribute them at a later time, unless I make a day job out of tracking IsThereAnyDeal, scouring key sites and reading the fine print on the region locks very carefully. Spoilers: I don't have time for that. Even during sales, the hassle of making sure you time it just right so you don't get screwed with pricing differences means that doing a lot of gifts like these at once is pretty much out of the question. Sure, I could restrict myself to bundle GAs or something, but is there ever any shortage of those? No.

I had already planned to keep my return modest, but now it looks like Valve is imposing these conditions on me anyway. No more trains, subway lines or birthday bashes for me. I think I'll stick to wishlist GAs. I've never minded that occasionally I pay full money on a big game for those, since I know I'm getting something from someone's wishlist. They're just not going to be very frequent.

Greed. It's why we can't have nice things.

Lazy community received what it deserves. Next update will be even more bad, but still people will sit quiet. Shame.

While this doesn't affect me much as a Steam user, since I don't play CS:GO or any of those games where people trade games for items, it's disappointing to me as a member of SG, since I like to do the occasional non bundle GA or even a train. I can understand though how this is a lot more upsetting for a lot of people. Not sure if this will change the way I buy or not.

Today I've found few games in Steam on sale and was like "Oh, great! I'm gonna buy few copies of this games", but then I faced this new "very cool for users" option where I can't store purchased gifts in my inventory. Ok. Thanks Valve you saved my 35$ =)

This makes me so angry. I just found out today when i saw The Silent Age on sale, and i was like "Awesome i'm going to buy 3 copies and put them on steam gifts!" SO i went to steam gifts and put it up there first, just to check and make sure it wasn't one of those no-no games (you know the ones they wont let you list because it was previously free or something). Anyway i had the listing active and then went to purchase 3 copies and lo behold, no save to inventory!!! AH HOW TERRRIBLE IS THIS! so i'm hoping that 2 of the 3 winners add me before the sale runs out because i have like, no extra cash to buy it at full price.

I think this may force me to never spend money on steam directly in the future, and go to places like humble bundle, or even GOG.

Will that make SG a bundled game giveaway website, right? Do the rules about bundled games have any sense right now?

Looks like gifts are automatically declined too after 30 days:

View attached image.

What i'm mostly interested in, and have found very little information about (though i'll be honest, i didn't exactly read all 13 pages of this discussion), is the whole "Multi-Pack" thing.

For example (since maybe someone has already done this after the whole "new gifting policy" implementation on Steam's behalf), what if i buy a 3-pack containing the same game 3 times?

Will the remaining 2 copies still be treated as a gift like in the case of a single game being bought as a gift?

I mean i understood the main thing - namely that if i buy "DOOM" as a gift (for example), i must set a date AND a specific person who will receive it.

TL;DR?

• HOWEVER, if i buy that 3-pack and am left with 2 more copies of the same game from that pack, will i have to set dates and specific people to receive them, or will they remain in my inventory like before?

(if this HAS already been answered, i'm sorry for not properly paying attention)

This needs a Bump

Here's what Valve should have done instead:

1. To prevent cross region abuse - allow gifts to be stored in the inventory and sent to anyone, but if the recipient is in a region where gifts are more expensive, require the sender to pay the difference. If they don't, abort the transfer.
2. To prevent mass reselling - allow buying only 5 copies of a game during sales
3. To prevent bots from bypassing the second point - require accounts to have minimum value of $50 (or the equivalent regional value) before the user can store gifts in the inventory. To prevent users from buying cheap bundles to get there, only single games (not 4-packs etc) that were bought on Steam should be counted, not key activations. Value should be calculated based on the actual price paid, not the price of the games when not on sale.

Usually I'd buy something for my friends birthdays now and hold onto it in my inventory until their birthdays.
Since inventory gifting is removed there's only the option of chosing a delivery date.

Does someone know what happens if the person buys the game I scheduled to send in a few months until then?

I now really understand. I hate this new gift system. Three bundles I wish to buy. I own one item in each bundle so these bundles can only be bought as gift. I wanted to gift this to myself. If I buy what is missing seperataly it cost literally 80% more then buying the bundles to complete my sets. now I will buy nothing.

can we re vote i think not many people knew about it.
I know volvo did to prevent people from buying or getting gifted by other people in other country but that is sad what happen if I buy multiple copys and I dont want to send to my friends immidiatly what if I buy multple dlc what happen to those keys. this system sucks that why I might stop buying from steam.