Steam got bigger, and way better too, back in the day you couldn’t gift stuff to a friend who lived in another region. Now, you can actually do that with this recent update, and its definitely the best update that has been done in a long while. I don’t really know why Steam was so locked down, considering people could still buy the keys somewhere else and gift them that way, costing a sale to Valve. The fact that they have decided to do this so late in the life cycle of the platform is insane, but welcome. Let’s see what they do next.
Steam gifting is powered up
Were you tired of your gifts being region locked? Do you think that was an anti-consumer practice? It pretty much was one, but by doing this decision Steam has pretty much dunked on the whole black market that kept keys circulating through third party sites. This is obviously a good thing for the money side of things, and Valve adores the money making machine that is Steam. However it was also a collateral move that benefited all of us, nobody really loses like this, and while I think that it does not apply retroactively, any new cross-region gift will work from now on.
Great news indeed, not only you can do that, but people can now also send stuff without needing a Steam account, you only need the mail of a loved one and then you can just append a Steam key to it for the game that you wanted to gift them. Making things more accessible this way will clearly bring a flow of new cash, and it will also save you from making an account in a platform you don’t want to make one with, yet another Valve win.
