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Question about regional gifting limits

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MarvashMagalli

Hello, is there any way to check which countries have regional restrictions receiving gifts on steam from another specific country? Is that even a thing? I remember that being a problem, and I wanted to set up a giveaway just right.

10 months ago

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9 Comments
vinstonsmitt

Also interested. I contacted steam support with this question and they never gave me a satisfactory answer. If you want to buy a gift for someone you've added as a friend, in most cases it won't be possible if they're not from the same country as you, but I suspect it's possible if you're from the same region

10 months ago
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aleluist

I don't know if this (totally silent) rule is still in effect, but if a game's base price is cheaper by 10% or more in your country (not region, mind you, this is by country) compared to the recipient's, then you cannot send it. It won't explain why, you'll just get an error message saying not much of anything.

At least that's what happened for years here in Argentina: we basically couldn't gift anything through Steam outside of the country despite the store saying it would be possible as long as the recipient was located in South America.

On top of that you have regional restrictions: you should get a warning when going to checkout if there is a restriction (you can try without actually making a purchase), though maybe that changed with the new redesign of the interface.

10 months ago*
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MarvashMagalli

very interesting

10 months ago
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aleluist

More like headache inducing, hehe. After it happened to me, I just stuck to giving to people here in my country... otherwise, even a slight change in our currency's value could render a game ungiftable overnight.

I doubt you have that problem in most places, though, but it definitely sucks when it happens. As a rule of thumb, Israel and Switzerland almost always have the highest prices. And Mexico, for some reason... but it really depends on the publisher.

For the country thing you have to check SteamDB. Go to the game's page, set your currency, and check the "Converted Price" column. If the percentage displayed is +10% or more, you cannot send the gift to that region.

My apologies for any confusion: I wrote a very confusing (and wrong) example in my (now edited) previous post.

10 months ago*
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MarvashMagalli

Have you ever won any gift here through Steam? Ever had any problem with it?

10 months ago
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aleluist

Since this was put in effect, I won two games through Steam and had no problems, but both giveaways had regional restrictions: one to all of Latin America and the other to just Argentina and Colombia.

Do note that Argentina had the cheapest prices for years, so as long as the region was correct, this hardly mattered -on the receiving end, that is. But sending gifts was a literal crapshoot, and I found it the hard way here: https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/yxiwb/rpg-maker-mv-bundle (read the very last comments).

Thankfully, both winners had one game in their wishlists that was just under the 10% rule, so I could at least give them something. But it was a pretty horrible situation, as Steam kept throwing errors when trying to purchase while specifying that those countries were OK to gift to. It took me a while to find the cause.

10 months ago
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xxxka

I usually go to steamdb and look at price chart and if number are red, I assume I can't gift into them. So far it always worked, for my friends or giveaways on sg (I think I gave away just RDR2, Divinity, Dave the diver and Wilma's dreams by steam gifts?). But maybe it worked, cause I life in expensive region.

10 months ago
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MarvashMagalli

So as long as I exclude countries that are in red or n/a (aka too rich or too poor), it should be good.

10 months ago
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xxxka

That is what I do. Usually reds are ones where is game more expensive. With poorer countries I haven't faced such lock yet.

10 months ago
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Closed 10 months ago by MarvashMagalli.