Here's the situation: I have a few gifts in inventory from before Valve stopped doing that. I want to give them away, but I can't figure out if they're region-restricted or not. I've tried researching it, but all I can find are Steam Support pages (which are a little vague for my taste) and threads complaining about not being able to gift to the US any more, and frankly it's giving me a headache. If anyone has any experience in this, I would love a straight answer to any of the following questions:

  • Is the gifting restriction based on currency conversion only, or on the price of the gift in question?
  • Is it true that you can give to cheaper countries, or are you locked into the +/- 10% range? (ie: I live in the US. The Euro is more expensive, so I can't gift to the EU. Could I gift to, say, Mexico though?)

And probably most importantly:

  • Valve says that when I hover over the gift in my inventory, I should see what region restrictions it has. I see none at all. Does this mean it really is safe to put it up as non-region-restricted here, or are there restrictions that Valve "forgot" to mention on their support page? Because frankly, Steam is pretty buggy in my experience and I wouldn't be surprised if they messed it up.

Thanks for reading, and double thanks if you can answer! Have a small 1+ puzzle train for your trouble, and have a nice day!

edit: Thanks for the answers. It seems it should be safe to give away the games I have in inventory unrestricted, so I've added one of them as a bonus giveaway below.


Rambling about the Puzzle

Apparently the puzzle is a lot harder than I expected. (That, or very few people read threads without the [GA] tag.) Since I do want people to win these games, I will start supplying hints on a periodic basis whenever I feel like it. But first, a story!

I used to be a lower-tier admin on a MUD back when they were popular (and indeed, long after they stopped being popular). Perhaps the biggest rule we had was "No spoilers for quest solutions!" And as a Celestial one of my biggest duties, aside from reminding people to watch their language (we had some younger players and tried to maintain a family-friendly environment), was to provide hints to people who were stuck. It could be difficult at times, finding the exact level of help a player needed without just giving them the solution, and I, well, I developed a reputation for being on the cryptic side.

So imagine my delight playing The Talos Principle: The Road to Gehenna when one of the NPCs recognized my character and said something to the effect of, "Uriel? You mean the Messenger that gave the most cryptic 'hints' to all those puzzles? You're the worst of the lot!"

I have never identified more with a videogame character.

Which is to say: I apologize in advance. I am probably going to give the worst hints ever, but I'm trying! Good luck, all.

Enough backstory, where are the hints?

First hint: Technically, it probably should have been written as 11111+puzzle.
Second hint: 11111 has five digits. What else has five "digits"?
Third hint: -1 only has one digit.

Giveaway's over, so here's the solution:

The solution is to treat the five-character code in the puzzle URL as if it were a number. Add 11111 to that "number", and you get the giveaway code. There were a few twists: -1 might be a little confusing, being two characters long, but the number -1 only has one digit. Letters in mathematical formulas are usually variables, but in this case we just move to the next letter in the alphabet, so A+1=B, B+1=C, and so forth. Put it all together and you get something like this:

  1  1  1  1  1
+ B -1  A  2  A
---------------
  C  0  B  3  B

Plug C0B3B into the giveaway URL, and voila! A tiny train.

Bonus giveaway:

Gift copy of Don't Starve Together up for grabs, thanks to your help.
Hint: Whatever you do, do not divide by #!

5 years ago*

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How old are these gifts?

5 years ago
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Hmm, let's see. There's one from December 2015 and another from November 2017. Both of these were from multipacks: buy the game, get a copy for a friend.

...huh. I could have sworn there were more, but that's it. (Aside from several copies of Minion Masters, but they're pretty pointless since the game's gone FTP.)

5 years ago
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And there's nothing on the gifts about been restricted to some regions? I believe they are region-free [Since you are on US, and at the time US gifts were region-free].

5 years ago
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That's what I guessed but the whole thing is so messy I wanted a second opinion. Thanks!

5 years ago
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Why don't you trade them for something that gives you the same or higher amount of CV?
Trading usually involves trust (with certain precaution of course).
That way you'll probably find out if your gifts can be activated in any region and get something equivalent to make giveaways.

5 years ago
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If it's an old gift, then it has region restriction written on it (if any). No other restrictions apply.

5 years ago
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+1

5 years ago
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+another 1 for additional certainty

5 years ago
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Thanks. It seemed that was probably the case, but I have a hard time trusting Valve to keep their wits together. (See for example the Steam Grand Prix, which appears to have broken... again.)

5 years ago
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Well, new gifting system is a mess, so I understand why you wanted to be sure. Thanks god those old inventory gifts are more simple.

5 years ago
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I think of myself ....

  1. Check the situation of 10% difference with SteamDB and pray.

  2. Send the Purchase Digital Gift Cards to the winner for purchase.
    (Interactions keep a record of consent in screenshots and comments)

  3. Buy a key that says that there is no regional restriction at GMG, Fanatical, humbleStore, etc. and transfer it.

Hint:Digital Gift Cards

What happens if my friend lives in another country?
The digital gift card you purchased will automatically be converted into your friend's currency.

5 years ago
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I'm stumped on the puzzle. Thanks for the GAs!

5 years ago
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Seems like everyone is. Apparently it's harder than I expected! I may drop a hint later tonight if there still aren't any entries.

5 years ago
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So be it. Let your will be done.

5 years ago
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Funny you should make that reference...

5 years ago
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I said it on purpose ;-)

5 years ago
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I think as long as you don't see something like that, you should be good.

edit. And daamn, what is that puzzle :D

5 years ago
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Oh, that's super useful since I also have a gift copy of Minion Masters to compare against. I'm not seeing anything like that on my copy, so hopefully it'll be fine. (I'm not giving away MM since it's FTP now, but it gives me confidence in the other, non-free games.) Thanks for the advice!

As for the puzzle, I swear I thought it would be easy to figure out! I'll probably drop a hint later tonight if it continues to stump everyone. XD

5 years ago*
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You can gift to far poorer countries fine with the new system. It's just not worth it (Paying more for the same.) and you are better off just giving them a gift of a digital gift card to get the exact same game with extra cash left over for maybe another game or more. A friend in Germany has sent me games before, at a 57% increase in price till Digital Gift Cards were easily accessible.

5 years ago
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Tough puzzle

5 years ago
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Bump for solved

5 years ago
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asdfg puzzles :(

5 years ago
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This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

5 years ago
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This comment was deleted 5 years ago.

5 years ago
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bump

5 years ago
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I'm obviously both a bot and highly unclever.

Then again, I sort of knew that already. It pretty much took all the little cleverness I had to find that out, even. shrug

Good luck to everyone else; this is quite evidently well above my pay grade, so I'm taking off. :D

5 years ago
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^_^

5 years ago
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Second hint added. Sorry folks, this one's on the cryptic side, but you'll see what I'm getting at if/when I release the third hint I've got in mind.

5 years ago
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You know, i didn't feel bad yesterday since there was no hint and it was hard.

Now i feel bad because we have hints but it is still hard af :D

edit. Ok, now i feel better because i found it :D

5 years ago*
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Congrats! Hope you had fun puzzling it out. :)

5 years ago
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Bump for solved!

if googling is "searching in google, then rambling is "searching in rambler?

5 years ago*
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+1 for solved

5 years ago
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Bump for some fun puzzles :). Thank you very much for sharing the games and accessible but engaging puzzles!

5 years ago
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I think I know what you're hinting at with the second hint but I'm still no closer to turning that into a clue for solving the code lol

5 years ago
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The problem with hints is that they don't always seem as clear when you try to write them out. Hopefully the latest will help clear up the previous hint.

5 years ago
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These are the most cryptic hints ever. You're the worst!

Not really, of course, but I am completely baffled by your puzzle and hints.

5 years ago
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+1 for solved. Thanks for the hints.

5 years ago
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Added the solution for anyone curious. I'm a teacher-in-training, not a magician, so I'm allowed to give away my tricks!

5 years ago
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