Hi everyone,
I was going to create my first giveaway this morning, but then I encountered some difficulties in understanding the process.
I was going to gift" Bat Rats Show", a game which i don't own on my library nor in my inventor. I thought that i could buy it and then keep it as a gift waiting to be sent or link it in some way to the giveaway, but steam obliges me to directly send the gift to one of my friends.
So how could I do it? Do I create the giveaway even if I don't have a copy of the game, and then buy and send it directly to the winner (adding him to my friends)?

Ps. i'm sorry for whatever grammatical error i've made, i'm not used to write in english so much :v

4 years ago

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Yes, you can do exactly that, but consider regional price differences as you might not be able to give a gift to the winner if you're from a lower priced region. Selecting "Gift" when creating the giveaway allows you to create it without any key, and you can do it to give a gift, send the key in an email, or just put the key later.

4 years ago
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Ok, so if I'm from Italy, should it be any of these lower priced shenanigans? Even if the game is discounted?

4 years ago
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you are able to gift to people who have a 10% difference in region pricing to you. I dont know what the page is so hopefully someone else can find that for you

4 years ago
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https://steamdb.info/app/393200/

Unsolicited take: A Steam Gift for Bad Rats Show will not be giftable if you're using EUR to quite a few large places. A worldwide key would make more sense if it's available.

Edit - Or you could just find out if there's keys available. Create the gib and depending on the country of the winner you can buy either the key or gift. I normally set giveaways to be a key so I can put one in if I need to while also leaving open a possibility to send a gift

4 years ago*
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God, what a complicated system!
So, in summary, it isn't reccomended that I buy the gift from my steam client, instead I should use external platforms like HumbleBundle or other online shops, right?

4 years ago
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If you want to gift worldwide, yes. Otherwise you could make a giveaway for a gift and just exclude the countries you can't gift to using the region restriction options for a new giveaway.

4 years ago
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Polish shop is selling keys for this game for ~$0.25. If you will have problem with processing add me on steam and I'll help you :)

4 years ago
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It seems I had a mistaken assumption that you can gift from higher price regions to lower price ones, but as @cece09 says, it doesn't seem to matter to Steam as ridiculous as it sounds. 10% difference in price prevents you from gifting (no idea how that 10% is calculated either).

So yeah, if you can acquire a key, it's probably the best option. Or you can create a region-restricted giveaway.

4 years ago
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I'm pretty sure you can :3

4 years ago
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If you're talking from experience, then I'll take your word, but google is giving me mixed signals :|

4 years ago
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Yeah, I've never been able to find the official policy on this myself.

4 years ago
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I can tell you from personal experience that you can, at least I always could when I tried.

4 years ago
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Deleted

This comment was deleted 1 year ago.

4 years ago
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I also have no issues with sending gifts to cheaper regions. Most of steam gifts (>80%) are won by users from one country which on average is 35% more cheaper than my region. Gift with highest difference I could send was -58.33%.

Anyways that still won't guarantee one being able to send gifts. I've heard that Steam will flag your account if you are sending too much gifts.

4 years ago
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Short answer: Yes

Longer answer: Steam disabled keeping gifts in your inventory some time ago, so only way how to get steam gifts in your inventory is either by activating a steam key, which gives you a copy in your inventory or by buying 2-packs or 4-packs, which some games offers.

Edit: And also, as RiderOfPhoenix wrote, there is also the problem with regional pricing...

4 years ago
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Best answer: Don't do it.

4 years ago
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Don't create a giveaway? Lol

4 years ago
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For your first giveaway you're giving away a game no-one in their right mind would want.
Basically this thread is a late April Fool's joke, right?

4 years ago
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Nope, its not an April Fool's joke. I was trying to understand how to do giveaway, starting from something little and chosen randomly from the list of not-so-expensive games on steam. The reviews seemed really positive, i'm sorry to hear it's actually hated by everyone.
Oh well, I'll choose something else if I manage to create a giveaway!

4 years ago
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I generally recommend buying a bundle and gift games that way.

4 years ago
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A nicer way of making Mayanaise's point... who I fully agree with on everything but the April Fools Joke accusation. ;)
The game you are offering has no gifting (cv) or purchase value. It's one of those mass free games that rolled around a couple years ago.
The only "value" of making a ga for that game, is to learn from the experience of jumping through the SG and Steam hoops to "gift" a game with one of the most complicated, if not THE MOST complicated method available. lol

Basically not worth the effort, specially for a 1st SG ga.

Its great that you want to make a GA and are getting on board with SG. Awesome.
But as a first game, that has no retail or cv value that basically only "collectors" or Indie lovers would want... you have to decide if it is worth it "to you".

Buying bundles and giving away the games you don't want is the cheapest way to buy games to giveaway.
However, these games will give you the lowest cv values, if you are concerned with SG cv yet.
I personally like to gift more than level. I enjoy gifting more than leveling on SG, so after 6 years of membership, I finally broke level 6... until the cv values adjusted and now I'm down to lvl 5.96 again. lol
It is what it is.

Welcome to a new kind of 'idle clicker game' called "Steam Game Gifting". ;)

Hope all this helps.

P.S. Your written English is 'good', MUCH MUCH better than 1/3 the English speakers/writers out there. Doing good. :)

Anyone who ever criticizes you for your "English", you need to up your game with.
Deliberately get WORSE with your English and start practicing your cuss words immediately with them, just to piss off the little complainers.
Ask them if you are pronouncing those words correctly and with the correct context, because you care. :D Keep asking them, LOUDLY, until the leave. lol

Constructive criticism is one thing, complaining at your for their own benefit or uninvited, is unacceptable behavior.
Push that button of theirs, with prejudice. Lay it on thick. ;) .02
This is called Passive Aggression and can be quiet enjoyable when used with without anger and with focus. lol

4 years ago*
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The game you are offering has no gifting (cv) or purchase value.

Are you sure? I see it as still unbundled. Not even the first Bad Rats is marked as free..

4 years ago
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Nope. I just remember the mass givaways of Bad Rats and it was almost hard not to pickup a copy.

4 years ago
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it shows as having FCV
at least if it's Bad Rats Show, don't know Bat Rats Show

4 years ago
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Thanks for the encouragement on my writing abilities, that really made me laugh! It's not that other people have criticized me, it'm more of a self-awareness and self-doubt that I also have when using my native language. lol

About the main subject of this post, thank you so much for all the info you gave me!
I'm not really interested in leveling up, but I wanted to start contributing to the site (even if I still haven't won a single giveaway T_T), with the little things I'm able to afford. I'll follow your advice, and try starting somewhere else!
Have a nice day sir, specially in this difficult period we live in!

4 years ago
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lol. Cool. Glad you read the humor in that. :D

4 years ago
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There is another complication when gifting during a sale, that I don't think has been mentioned. Since the winner has up to 7 days to claim the win and redeem it, there is a good chance that will happen after the sale has ended. Even more so if you have to re-roll another winner. So you end up paying full price.

There is another caveat. Even if you do succeed at doing this, if you repeatedly add new friends and gift to them, Steam algorithm will declare you as a trader and block gifting from your account. Of course you won't find this out until you actually try to gift the winner.

Basically, gifting directly from Steam is way too much hassle, even for the hardened SGers. Just buy a key.

4 years ago
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In the end I found some keys from an old bundle I didn't redeem! I tested one of them to be certain they haven't expired, and it worked!
So thanks everyone for your help, I'll leave the links below if you're interestend in the giveaways!
Have a nice day!

https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/TKrmQ/cook-serve-delicious
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/Adwbe/solstice
https://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/fT3JR/uncanny-valley

4 years ago
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Closed 4 years ago by L0LOsi.