So for Steam Gifts, this means:
The person making the giveaway will have to buy the game there and then upon knowing who the winner is, rather than having the game ready beforehand (unless it's a Steam key).
Comment has been collapsed.
And have to hope that the game costs less in the winners region, since otherwise you can be blocked from gifting it.
Comment has been collapsed.
Oh right, that's a huge hassle. Have to put in description - please only enter if you're from one of these countries...sucks even more as an Australian where AAA games are usually price discriminated against for us - for those games, pretty much can't even join the giveaways anymore.
Comment has been collapsed.
There is probably going to be a lot more region locked giveaways now. Actually, I'm not sure if SG's current region lock system is robust enough atm to deal with this (might need to be able to lock per-country instead of per-region).
Comment has been collapsed.
if SG's current region lock system is robust enough
It is not.
Comment has been collapsed.
Another comment on a previous page was from a user in Brazil. He can be gifted games by anyone in the SA region but he can only gift games for Brazil due to the extremely funky regional pricing.
Comment has been collapsed.
It means giving Steam gifts is going to be more of a hassle than DLC giveaways.
And DLC giveaways are pretty much terror material.
Comment has been collapsed.
Hmmm... after reading the news on steam website, I've came to following conclusions:
- We'll still be able to give games to our friends for their birthdays, even buy them upfront during sales... just will have have them in our friends list and to schedule gift "sending"... which may make problems if they buy the game in the meantime themselves.
- We're 100% stopped from buying gifts to unknown people by removal of e-mail and inventory options. While this will probably cut down support requests for valve from inexperienced traders getting scammed, they are basically killing gift-hoarding and gift-exchange (which will affect many websites including this one)
- Most people in my country don't have CC (it's easy to get it and all, but older people don't trust them nor want to use them online, and kids' can't get them) so gifting was the only way for many new steam users to acquire games. I myself brought at least 100-300 new members to steam over the years by gifting them games for any occasion I could find. While recently that became unnecessary with so many bundle websites, it was still nice option to have.
- Gifts were already treated as key activations regarding steam reviews, so not many changes will happen there.
- If they remove or limit steam keys next, we're (as in Steamgifts) doomed.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm from US and mostly buy my giveaways from humble and bundlestars (and very few from Steam directly), but was wondering if sites like humble and bundlestars that are also easily accessed in places like Serbia, or is Steam the primary option?
Comment has been collapsed.
They are now, and for now. They weren't until 2009/10, I don't remember when the first HiB was but you know what I mean. I wasn't talking about steamgifts but in general. We started by buying steamgifts, storing in the inventory (even before that was a thing - send to your own double/fake email, then resend later to a friend when it's their birthday) and bundle websites appeared only later.
Comment has been collapsed.
Point 2 makes me think that Valve is mostly trying to reduce their liability from those scams as the primary motivation here.
Comment has been collapsed.
Of course, but as always, they cure light cold with full body radiation.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, someone needs to think of support... nobody thinks of support. The understaffed, ill-quallified, somehow can't hire more people for support. People might think it's the worst support ever... that makes support a sad support. Support support NOW!
Comment has been collapsed.
Except they recently added a bunch of support this year: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1301948399251160549
Comment has been collapsed.
Well...this is gettig really fucked up... What sg will do against this :C steamkeygifts? :p.
Comment has been collapsed.
Why the hell did I transfer my money from my Kinguin to my Steam account?
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, that's unfortunate. I love picking up games on sale to give away later....
Comment has been collapsed.
does this mean the price of steam gifts will go through the roof? lol im RICH! now to decide if i wanna sell for 500% over value price on ebay or G2A
Comment has been collapsed.
If the game is same for both methods, what's the profit of activating a gift?
Comment has been collapsed.
as long as all gifts are still tradable. gifts jsut have more value then keys. its why if you go on g2a or other selling sites. the steam gift copies are way more expensive then a key counter part
Comment has been collapsed.
Only if they're not affected by this change. While those currently in your inventory can still be sent/traded, the next person who receives them from you, might not have that option anymore. Also, Valve might remove these two options after a certain transition time.
Comment has been collapsed.
I guess it's time for goggifts.com ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
edit: I (from Brazil) can't even buy a gift for a friend from Argentina and we're both from the same region. ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
Comment has been collapsed.
Never really bought gifts unless for rl friends and one ga. So not that bothered.
Comment has been collapsed.
Idiotic reasoning. Every user at this site is affected, even if you never bought a gift you were entering gift based GAs. These GAs will no longer be present at SG.
Comment has been collapsed.
Nah, I don't join any ga's anymore since I got a steady income.
Comment has been collapsed.
This sucks because while we are part of SEA region we don't have our own store currency so we use the US dollar which is not very cheap, before we can buy from sellers in other SEA countries like Indonesia or Malaysia but now it's not as easy and many people don't use cards here. I hope Valve will listen to the complains and do something, because this seems seriously flawed.
Comment has been collapsed.
This better end up being a temporary thing and the backlash that they (rightfully) receive will make them back off on this. If this remains, I'm pretty much screwed with giving away games here, as all of mine are Steam gifts.
Stupid f**king Valve. One idiotic decision after another.
Comment has been collapsed.
Already region locking.. now you not even allow gifting cross region.... THEN GIVE ME A GOD DAMN LOCAL PRICE STORE,
F%cking Valve, region lock for paying ROW price ? SCREW YOU
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah you would think they would give a Vietnames store price after region locking us too but noooo we have to pay the same expensive ROW price, and now this. Fucking frustrating :/
Comment has been collapsed.
come on we all knew this was going to happen... once valve started pushing regional locks to protect price gouging, and then put hold restrictions on tradeables, and gifting time locks unless you had the mobile app... it was only a matter of time before they started the final push to kill off trading. Trading only ever existed so as to make steam look like a fun, communal environment so as to attract its user base. Now that they are the dominant platform with a massive market share and customer base, its time to start trimming back a lot of those consumer friendly and enticing features. Expect that even gifting right from the store EXCEPT for people in the same region as you, will eventually be removed as well before long.
the sad (or hilarious, if you think about it) thing is that all this stuff valve is doing, that makes so many people upset at the features we used to have being lost.. it wont make a dent in their profitability.. if anything, they've likely figured that by destroying trading market, it'll boost sales. cant WAIT to see what they have in mind when they next target (and you know its coming) key activations... maybe you'll need to submit some kind of proof of purchase over the mobile app before the activation will go through? :D
Comment has been collapsed.
"We didn't get our cut, 30% of store-value needs to be deposited to activate key"
Comment has been collapsed.
this is almost as bad as when they removed flash deals
Comment has been collapsed.
I haven't spent as much money during the sales because flash deals are gone.
So I guess it's a semi good thing.
Comment has been collapsed.
Yeah... Valve's foot must be bleeding pretty terrible from all these changes they make that make people just spend their cash elsewhere.
Comment has been collapsed.
Most of the stuff I giveaway is from humble or bundlestars, but it seems like alot of gifters were buying directly from steam. Unsure what that ratio is though.
Comment has been collapsed.
If you live in low priced region, you can save the change by buying on your steam store and create giveaways here and get the same amount of CV as those sold at higher prices in row region. I didn't actually care about it though.
Comment has been collapsed.
Giveaways will probably last as long/as short as a sale last.
So example would be Star Wars is on sale until May 8th.
So you'd want your giveaway to end on May 7th or so if you were doing a giveaway for that.
Comment has been collapsed.
That, of course, has the risk of the winner declining the gift on May 9th. Can't reroll (unless you want to pay full price) then, only delete.
Comment has been collapsed.
same or increase for bundle games
heavy decrease of unbundled
Comment has been collapsed.
It will just reduce fun, then less interaction with other users. I wonder if they understand the reason why Steam has grown so big.
Comment has been collapsed.
valve has more market analysts and strategists than they do support staff. believe me, they know very well what theyre doing.
Comment has been collapsed.
which theyre reworking. better believe thats coming back eventually :D i genuinely believe they way they launched it was not just a desired feature launch, but also an experiment to see how much their users were willing to tolerate. They realise they pushed a little too hard a little too fast, so next time they'll do something a lot more subtle.. perhaps even tying it in to a sale event or something, to soften the blow and get people used to buying mods :D
Comment has been collapsed.
I am not sure. The company that was really pushing it has always been Bethesda, and they created their own separate framework to re-introduce it, even for the peasants who are used to getting fleeced for normally free features anyway. coughmonthlypaidsubscriptionformultiplayercough Steam Workshop is simply not a good content delivery service for mods more complex than new skins and levels.
Comment has been collapsed.
No competition?
And that hasn't changed, so they can do whatever they want.
If Microsoft did that they would get billion fines, but since it's video games, no politician cares.
Comment has been collapsed.
video games, no politician cares
except for signs of violence, sex ... -.-
Comment has been collapsed.
[LOL at the steam announcement post making it sound like good news]
Man.
This is going to really hurt Steamgift giveaway groups. I am quite curious what SG groups plan on doing about this.
I don't think this will hurt SG too bad. Games will still have sales, and people can always have giveaways end 24 hours or so before the giveaway ends. People should definitely have notifications about winning games on for email. And people should definitely write things like. "IF YOU WIN, ACCEPT MY FRIEND REQUEST ASAP ON STEAM".
With all that being said. I think SG should maybe make it easier to delete giveaways. Or if the user has broken a rule, give the option to REROLL or DELETE.
Because rerolling is probably going to be harder to do with this new change on steam.
Comment has been collapsed.
These are really good points about gifting from steam. I'd be very hesitant to do anything like that though with Steam.
I mostly gift from humble or bundlestars, but now it'll probably be exclusively that way. None of this accept my friend request, so I can then go in an buy the gift and give it to somebody in real time. That's too much like work. ;-)
Comment has been collapsed.
Makes me wonder if the key system itself is next on it's way out. (They almost died when Humble bundle did that weird account linking thing, but steam decided to stop doing that)
If keys are ever killed, that'd be the end of Steamgifts. But that can't happen because new Triple A games use the key system for physical releases. (Unless they only used it for those or something)
This really makes me worry about the long term future of SG. :(
Comment has been collapsed.
I'd like to see SG become a more robust Gifting site due to this change and allow GOG Redemption Codes to be sent out.
Comment has been collapsed.
I rather liked Humble's system (10 clicks instead of 10 copy+paste with Steam's horrid key-activation system that doesn't allow more than 1 at a time? Heck yeah)
Still was possible to gift them same as it is now with Humble giftlinks. I've got a few Indiegala entries not redeemed by me during the heydays of 1-click activation, I do miss that convience a LOT.
Comment has been collapsed.
10 copy+paste with Steam's horrid key-activation system that doesn't allow more than 1 at a time?
use ASF :3
Comment has been collapsed.
Simgiveaways is kinda shagged with the "no gifting for more expensive regions" rules
Comment has been collapsed.
Imagine the "fun" of a DLC giveaway. But now with an added time-limit for extra tension / frustration!
I can imagine people would give up on it (like many, including me, did with DLC).
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, couldn't see it anywhere but, since " there won't be any chance to stock steamgifts" doesn't that increase the price for the already stocked gifts?
Comment has been collapsed.
most people trade to play the games they get, so the prices will certainly increase up to a maximum of whatever their local store price is - but who knows how many gifts are out there in the market, so its hard to say how slow that process will be... so yeah, eventually theyll increase. for SOME collectors, maybe INTERESTING classic game gifts might really climb in price, because people will want to display them on their profiles. It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the collector markets.
Actually, i wonder if the still-tradeable gifts will actually remain tradeable, or if steams systems will FORCE the recipient to add it to library during the trade...hmm.. wouldnt put it past them.
Comment has been collapsed.
True to that!
On the other hand, since it seems that steam's trying to get rid of "collected gifts in inventory" I only can hope that steam doesn't come with a rule like "You have to add your steamgift to your librarby within dada days or dadadadada". Then the fun would really start =))
Comment has been collapsed.
I just remembered that TB, in his video after he visited Valve, when talking about changes to Greenlight and Steam in general, he mentioned that review copies would be obtainable from devs flagging specific accounts rather than devs giving keys.
This would indicate to me that they're to likely move away from the key system for games after a certain point to restrict 3rd party distribution. If they really do that they'll kill G2A and sites like that, but Steamgifts might be a casualty of this war :/
Comment has been collapsed.
That sounds like it'd be getting into antitrust to me if Steam cut off access to keys for their site. Economically Steam makes money even from 3rd party sellers, so I'd have to think about incentives, but perhaps this is an effort to offload lots of support requests on the key resellers? I really wish Steam would communicate their true intent and issues they're trying to address, because it doesn't make sense to a game buyer like me. I really hope they don't try to squeeze out humble, bundlestars, wingamestore, etc though.
Maybe a place like GOG is becoming more relevant in this scenario, also.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm probably just not seeing the issue here because I already didn't really buy many games from the steam store I get most of my stuff from Humble Bundle, Indiegala, GMG, Bundlestars, etc, and always just entered the keys for my giveaways here. I only ever buy games on steam for myself and if they're really really good prices, which is rarely the case.
Comment has been collapsed.
I wonder if the trends shown in that graph (success of key gifting) is actually behind Steam's decision?
Comment has been collapsed.
I would be more interested in region-locked giveaway stats for those months.
Or their percentage in general.
Comment has been collapsed.
I'm from ru-region and i can't buy gift to my friend from CIS if "there is a large difference in pricing between countries"
So RIP region-locked giveaways 🌷
Or we will see 2 extra Region Restrictions when create giveaways: for CIS and for RU.
Comment has been collapsed.
I know. Regional pricings are actually incredibly unfair and they don't even hide that the CIS region actually only favours Russia or South America means actually Brazil. The BRICS countries are pretty privileged on Steam.
The solution is actually slowly turning into changing the regions on SG completely and do a per-country checklist.
I am also expecting a lot more CIS+group combinations pop up for those smaller Russian trading/gifting groups who now have to remain within country (even though right now they seemed to be less compared to simple CIS+level variants).
Comment has been collapsed.
Even Brazil prices aren't great anymore. Most publishers are pushing ridiculous prices, specially the AAA ones.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well, your wages are pretty much the exact same as here (my salary is roughly 2000 BRL, which seems to be the average there), so it is still a little better.
Then again, we only pay a roughly 35-50% markup on electronics compared to USD prices, not… where are you right now, 300-400%? I know the import tax alone more than doubles the price.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well... Electronics? To purchase them legally on a store you usually pay 2-3x the original USD price.
Through direct import it varies around 1.8~2x and takes ages to deliver if everything goes well.
Also shipping costs get in the way, and you pay import tax over it too.
Comment has been collapsed.
Well,guess i can't buy games to gift later,it's either "do it now" or "get fucked"
Comment has been collapsed.
Translation: we're cutting away the gifting through email for everyone because people are using the grey markets instead of buying on the Steam store.
Comment has been collapsed.
They just forgot to put that in their announcement.
Comment has been collapsed.
And not a word on if declined gifts will be automaticallly refunded, since you can no longer store them for someone else who might be interested.
Well, Valve won't get my money anymore when it comes to buying stuff for giveaways.
Comment has been collapsed.
It'll be refunded. From the announcement:
"Now, if a recipient already has the title, or just doesn't want it, they can click decline and the purchase is refunded directly to the gift giver. "
Comment has been collapsed.
Ah, I somehow overlooked that. Must be because I haven 't had my morning coffee yet.
Comment has been collapsed.
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
Comment has been collapsed.