Another roadblock for my giveaways. 🥹

Sorry about your situation, but steam will ban folks for mentioning steamgifts and such, so sending them that info probably isn't going to help your situation.

The joy of a world ran by AI (and a very poor one in this case) and where support agents just repeat like a machine what the computer tells them... :x And then they'll complain when they get replaced by computers 😐

I guess the main takeaway here is that it's best to contact winners via Steamgifts if at all possible. If Steam needs to be used, avoid using the profile comment section (prefer adding as friend and then use the chat), but if you really must put a comment there, don't ever use keywords like "steamgifts", "giveaway", "prize" and the like, and don't ever put a link. I mean, I've seen people somehow get way with it, but it's quite a big gamble IMO.

It's not a good idea to comment on SG on Steam; it's better not to post anything other than in the chat. I'm sorry about the situation; I always make all of this clear in my gifts so no one says or does anything on my profile. I hope this gets resolved.

Join the leechers!

Sorry for your troubles. If and when you get your gifting ability back, obviously you should slow down on it big time. Even if support understands and gives it back to you, you'll be right back to square one with it and run the risk of this happening again, only then it will be strike two and you could be screwed.

My advice is stick to keys, and do the Steam gifting thing maybe once or twice a month. For keys, Green Man Gaming is pretty great. Very easy to check region restrictions, and you know the keys are going to be legit.

I wish you luck with your problem. Hopefully Valve support will be cool.

Best option is just sending keys, since gifting is currently not allowed. After thousands of giveaway, it's very rare I have trouble.

You are not alone in this. I've been affected too. I guess they upgraded some algorithm and no human is double-checking.

1. Only use keys. Sending Gifts (Steam) or Gift Links (Humble Bundle) is dangerous because there are too many people at these companies that treat charitable users like crooks.

2. Never comment on someone's Steam profile, for anything, ever. Valve's automated systems are incredibly flawed and will community ban people for all sorts of benign comments.

3. For each game you give away check ALL packages for it listed on Steam.db , and if ANY of them are region restricted assume all of them are.

Fanatical has a drop down box that shows who can redeem an individual game, before you order. Kind of a pain to look through though. Sorry, seems dumb that Steam has to crack down on people buying things. There must be a market for reselling games to higher priced regions, for them to be a pain like that.

First of all don't feel sorry. This is not on you. What can you do when being generous equals "unusual activity".

Sadly this is also why I would never gift directly through Steam. Just stick to keys, do research on region restrictions as best as you can and if unsure restrict GA to your region.

That is depressing. I am sorry that you had to went through all of these.
It is especially annoying when they just close the tickets or they lack simple empathy.

Sorry to hear about your troubles Dobkey. For the least amount of issues, it would indeed be best to use keys where possible.

SteamDB can help give you an idea if keys really are global, or "global" minus Russia for example.

That's really tough luck, particulaly from a serious gifter as you. Between region restrictions, stoe restrictions, and payment restrictions, it's becoming more and more difficult to gift.

Let's hope the next answer will be more positive, but I know that some others had the same issue and it's still the case today.

Try to just use keys for a time (if you can). And indeed don't comment on steam profile. I've done it too, and I've been spared, but I don't do it anymore.

What happens in SG stays in SG.

A friend has gone through the same problem. I don't understand. They're simply losing a lot of potential income. Surely the AI who flags this behaviour could also be programmed to see that you're not abusing the system and sending gifts to countries with same game price, lower price and higher price. That's not abusing the system. Blocking gifts to people like you and my friend is a total loss for Steam, because I think these are not isolated cases.
But at the same time, I think that they saw how much income could they lose in the worst case and it was acceptable. Murky waters there, users and we gamers are the ones with least rights of the gaming industry. We're in hands who are happy to take our money and deny us anything they want happily too.
I've spent €4,500 in Steam approximately, and I deeply regret it. Because they can terminate the contract and delete my acount with thousand of games without warning nor reason. It's in the TOS. Sometimes I think I'm going to end ragequitting, never spend a dime in games again, and go back to coughing.

As a suggestion to you, I know keys are not the same as gifts, but Fanatical has usually same or better Steam prices, they clearly list in which countries the key will activate, and in 5 years I've only had one dupe; which was promptly replaced. But I guess your problem might not be getting a dupe key, but getting an user who says the key is dupe/invalid/whatever, which is a totally different problem due to the nature of humankind. So in the end, if you're not comfortable with this alt solution, you owe nothing, you don't have to prove anything, you don't have to make giveaways if it makes you feel uncomfortable.

probably best to go to just keys, region locks can be painful at times but it gets around all of steams rules... and less annoying to send(as you just click send key). Steam is allergic to generosity(likely because the number of bad actors is greater than overly generous people).

also is it gifting in total or just gifting with wallet funds(I hear people lose gifting with wallet funds more often, but paying credit card/paypal still works for gifting for them)

You really have nothing to apologize for. You have made awesome giveaways and you're not obligated to continue if Steam is being a pain.
Honestly it feels like you're worrying too much about region restrictions. Get your keys on a trustworthy reseller like Fanatical, Gamesplanet or GreenManGaming. They are pretty transparent on region locks so you'll know what to expect.
And even if you end up with a winner who can't activate the key, well it's part of being a gifter. I have been on both ends of this problem and I can tell you nobody is going to blame you if it happens.

Regardless I hope it doesn't stop you from sticking around and enjoying SG.

Also, I see you're playing Quantum Break! Are you enjoying it? It's such a good game.

I've always heard everyone praising steam support but recently I've heard a lot of strange situations so I don't know anymore. As for your problems, if you don't want to write to anyone in the comments on their profile which can get you banned because steam doesn't like hearing the word giveaway you can just wait a few days until the person collects the key because this is how it works if you win a game on this site the notification lights up on the screen and until you collect the game it's always on the right at the top of the screen apart from that they get a notification by email so they should notice that they won the game and about the country restrictions you can try steamdb

at the end I would like to thank you for these giveaways you have brightened up the days and maybe even weeks of a lot of people and if you are afraid for your account you can always stop at any time. I hope steam will help you