Sorry, I've been trying to figure out the right course of action through the FAQs and whatnot, but it's a bit unclear and I thought I'd just ask people who know Steamgifts better.

I won a large giveaway for Bioshock today. I was pretty psyched, It was for more than 3,000 people, my first time with a win that large. But it was too good to be true... when the gift email came from Steam, it was all in Cyrillic. Puzzled, I went to check it out, and it turned out that the gifter had sent the Russian region-locked version of Bioshock, not the real thing. I messaged him on Steam and he apologized, but he doesn't have the real game as far as I can tell.

At this point, what do I do so that I'm square with Steamgifts? The gift is in my gifting inventory. I tried to send it back to the gifter, but he already owns Bioshock so Steam wouldn't let me send it. I can't install it because I don't live in the Russia region, and I know that Steamgifts doesn't want you trading away gifts you've won. So what am I supposed to do with the game? I'd like to trade it if possible to get SOMEthing, but don't want it to look like I'm being shady.

Secondly, what do I do insofar as reporting the giveaway, marking unreceived, etc? Technically I received a gift from this guy, but I can't play it because I don't live in his area. but it will appear in my inventory on Steam. I don't want it to look like i'm accepting a game but then marking unreceived at the same time...

11 years ago*

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send it back to his email and click on not received.

11 years ago
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go to steam chat with him and use trade option and give it back to him

11 years ago
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You can send him back, just send it by email or trade the gift to him if its in your inventory, and then mark it as not received.

Anyways, just contact support. :)

11 years ago
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^this

11 years ago
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could try steam support, see if they will change it to non region restricted(and activate it on your account)

11 years ago
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Lol.

11 years ago
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They refuse to do those kind of things, sadly.

11 years ago
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If they do it once, everyone will grab cheap RU versions games in the future because they know Steam will trade it :p

11 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 6 months ago.

11 years ago
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Making giveaways with region-locked games is forbidden, therefore he is the one who did the mistake and I don't think he should receive the full contribution amount for a game he did not giveaway.

Uh also...I might be able to tell you how to activate it nevertheless.

11 years ago
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no VPN

11 years ago
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maybe u mean bioshock Infinite?

as far as i know ,"bioshock" has no region-lock,in russia steam store it has the same id as the other world-wide versions (451)

11 years ago
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Nope, it's the original Bioshock. Listed as Bioshock RU.

11 years ago
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11 years ago
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I got in touch with him and I'm in contact with Steamgifts support about it. Don't think there's much else that can be done besides them deleting the giveaway and suspending. I feel bad because it seems like it was an honest mistake (what reason would he have to give a legit, yet region-locked, game away if not for real?) but I don't know any way of rectifying it that doesn't involve him having to shell out for a full-priced copy of the game to send me and I don't think that's happening.

Anyway, thanks guys.

11 years ago
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Closed 11 years ago by CronoGamer.