Reminder: don't add money to Steam wallet

You are still able to buy gifts for other ones, they only don't want your wallet funds for this.
And none of us knows why.

You are still able to buy games for yourself with the wallet funds.

So the limitation is not really much.

I used to use my trader account for gifting, and whenever I accumulated enough wallet funds, I used them to gift games here on my steamgifts profile. That account got banned just like yours. Support didn't help.
However, I saw some people here having success and getting unflagged after spamming multiple support tickets. I didn't bother but you could try it.

When was the last time you bought something for your account, using the steam wallet?
Are your friends in regions where you can send the gifts?

Make another ticket and hope for a human responding, they will unblock your account

Are you buying the game for yourself or a gift for someone else? I got the same error few months back even though I hadn't used steam store for almost 2 years. They even denied my 1st support ticket saying I could only buy using credit card now. Then they reversed it later.

Pretty much the same happened to me last month after I gifted one too many games I think. Blocked me buying games for friends directly through wallet.

But I think this is always a temporary ban since I was able to do so just that a few days ago, meaning they apparently lifted it. Though without notifying me.

The same happened to me a couple months ago. I got the exact same reply from the support. I still have no idea if they removed the block.

in other words, if you do have to gift, its best to make a new steam account in order to gift the winner.

noted.

Damn, just reading the support reply is so infuriating ... no explanation of anything, blocking any further communication, claiming that they can't lift the restriction when they probably can ...

Same thing happened with me last year.Still can't gift....

I tried to gift a game to my brother for his birthday 6 months ago, had the same issue. I contacted Steam Support and got the same exact answer, no further explanation given.

My guess theyre trying to break a specific cycle- its all about the origin of the money being steam, things like the steam market. I got this same nonsense and my guess it had to do with how me (being broke) am used to selling all steam cards and tf2 itens. I can still do it for myself but they see gifting as 'taking money out of the system', the part that turns steam enticing for shenanigans.
My guess you also do that to some extent, i imagine frequency of selling itens or just the source of the funds weighting on their algorithm; The moment youre gifting with most of the funds from steam they hit the hammer.

I got really burned by that and it crippled how often i can gift. Also had issues repeatedly with steam gift cards, then the whole nonsense on pricing and restrictions... i grew tired. I even supported epic when it first started hoping a newcomer would pressure steam better, sadly epic didnt got any better. This kind of thing sucked a lot out of my enjoyment of the platform too

They should fight bots, fake accounts, how easy it is to create fake games with fake itens and price manipulation nonsense, instead they choose the easy way out hurting larger portions of the user base instead. Same sort of behaviour across the board, just look how theyve been dealing with cheater bots in tf2, muting every f2p player... wich didnt work at all but they still havent lifted the whole mute nonsense.

Yeup intended to purchase a graduation gift for my cousin on New Year, but unfortunately got flag as well.
Shouldn't have add bunch of money to steam 😥

Hey, that looks familiar. I was hit with this too, same message. Right after I'd done a giveaway with 10 recipients and I'd loaded a bunch of money in the wallet because direct payment wasn't working (this was a separate, temporary issue on the provider end that resolved itself).

What irks me most is that they don't see fit to send you any notification of the restriction being imposed, and also don't see fit to have the payment page give you a message that this restriction is in effect (it fails with a generic error). You first have to go to support, and then support goes "oh yeah nah sorry we decided your money's no longer good here, don't ask why, and don't ask it for it to be undone". I'm not sure what kind of fraud or abuse this is supposed to cover, and I'll never know for sure as Valve thinks security through obscurity is the best policy here.

Just for completeness, the total amount of wallet funds I've ever added through market transactions is a pittance, certainly nothing comparable to people who trade for a virtual living, so that's probably not the trigger. The total amount of wallet balance or money added regardless of source might be. Of course sending gifts to hundreds of different people is also not average behavior, so maybe that factors in too. Or maybe it was random, I truly don't care -- I won't lose any sleep over it since it's no more than a minor inconvenience to me, but it's bad optics any way you slice it.

This is a problem, yes, but calling steam the worst customer support in gaming clearly tells me you haven't played on Xbox, or Ubisoft Connect/Uplay, EAPlay/Origin, or frankly any other platform or launcher. From my experience, Steam has one of the best customer supports if not the best, at least in the gaming industry. I mean, what other company can you literally contact the CEO, and actually have a chance at him responding.

This is big crap. No way to talk. They will do nothing and will close all tickets regarding the issue. How nice of them. It's still even more stupid. They don't restrict you from making gifts. They restrict you from making gifts using wallet money. I wonder what's the reasoning behind that. It's not because part of your wallet come from Steam (selling items). That money is already in Steam hands, you exchange it for games, it doesn't matter if the games fall in one or another account. You end paying the price assigned to you with the normal gifting restrictions. It's absurd.

I only add money to the wallet selling card drops. The rest of the payment, through paypal/credit card. It's rare for any of us to win some gift card code, so well, not a big deal in the end.

I had similar story that they completly blocked me from buying anything to anyone else than me. They've replied to first message claiming that they know i'm probably trader and i'm doing some shady shenanigans. I've asked them what exactly since as far i know I wasnt doing any of that. So they wrote me back saying they know and that's enough. Yes.

Welp. After i've asked them for any proof because i have no clue what they're talking about they stopped replying. A year later after buying few games to myself and adding some funds to wallet restriction magically disappeared. So yes. I'm bit salty about this story to this day. Yes.

You should make your post on Twitter, more people will be able to benefit from your story and show that it is not acceptable to have this kind of response

I got this ban a few times in the past couple of years. They ban you when you try to gift a game to a newly added friend and it lasts for a few months then you can gift purchase again.

The only way i know of to buy from the community market is via the wallet. Every so often, when i want a particular card or emoticon etc, i have to add $5 to my steam wallet.

I wonder if I should try explaining to steam support about steamgifts and proving the gifts are going here. Or maybe I should email Gabe and try to explain to him the whole concept of steamgifts.

My main concern is steam support misunderstanding and thinking steamgifts is some kind of selling/trading site and punish me further.