PSA: If The Pricing Is More Than 15% On Steam You Likely Can't Gift Them

Some of the store pages on steam started their summer sales already so I figured it was a good time to post this.

While I understand wanting as many people as possible to be able to enter the giveaway, sometimes if I can't be bothered to figure it all out, I'll just restrict it to my own country and be done with it. (Being from USA, that still equals a huge portion of the site's users anyway.)

Same, i've always heard it was 10%.

Here's the answer that was given to SG member Luckz

View attached image.

As you can see on https://i.imgur.com/flOKvSL.png (which was already linked as well), the number to look for is not 10% but 15% or 13.04% - depending on whether you are the sender or recipient.

If you are creating a giveaway for a Steam Gift you will buy the winner, you have to exclude countries where the price is at least 15% higher.
If you are asking your friend to buy you a game, it can't be more than 13% cheaper in your friend's country.

Just replace the 10% that you have in your memory with 13% and you're done.

Thanks Banjo :) Fixed it.

Thank you buddy :)

Thank you :)

I just updated the OP to provide a more accurate description of things. Yeah, the whole gifting on thing on Steam can be a bit of a pain, and it's even more of a pain since we can't reroll due to region locks.

You can still send a gift card with the amount needed by the winner to buy the game him/herself. Just be aware that after you add the winner, there is a 72h cooldown before sending the gift card. I'm not sure it's a viable solution but it can help if necessary.

This is not constant for every game

Thanks! :)

Thank you :)

Time flies.. how many years ago was that?

Thank you Fluffy!! :)

Thanks :)

lol that would be interesting if I could. All we need is a member each day that's celebrating their cakeday to post in it and BAM! it's forever alive.

Thank you :)

Thank you :)

Thank you :)

Thanks :)

When I saw this I thought to myself, being able to pin important info to specific discussion boards would be really nice, so I've made the suggestion to the rest of the team and CG.

Thanks :)

Yeah I know it's a bit frustrating to not be able to reroll due to that.

Thanks :)

Thanks buddy :)

Thank you Kappa :)

You're aware of violating Steam's TOS by doing so certainly. If they ever take a more decisive stance against region hoppers both your accounts could be suspended and your stupid question becomes a stupider situation.

Just google "steam regional alt accounts" and read any reddit, Steam community, or SG thread on the topic.

To summarize those threads, it's a great way to get every account involved quickly banned. Valve's so strict on region stuff that many users have recommended not buying stuff at all while travelling, and clearly communicating to Steam Support prior to any permanent cross-region move.

As for even lightly suspected regional alts, their rule of thumb seems to be "ban first and if they really want they can contact us and try to justify the situation, but we're steam support so we'll make that process as difficult as possible", so even if you aren't exploiting anything, regional stuff isn't exactly a great idea to fiddle with. And if you can't justify the situation.. yeah, y'know, a better idea might just be to set up a completely separate computer with permanently enabled VPN and a completely seperate account, and just never cross-contaiminate.

Though that's a ton of effort and expense for saving just a few dollars (if you can even manage that, after currency exchange fees)- especially since one of the main things Steam checks is payment method, meaning you'd pretty much exclusively have to be recharging in gift cards, but I'm pretty sure they changed it so you need to make at least one non-gift card purchase/wallet infusion on an account to even be able to purchase with gift cards, so you'd still need to find a way around that..

I mean, in this day and age, with so many free and cheap games readily available, considering this is confusing to begin with, but when you add in Steam's draconian enforcement of region controls? Well, let's just say that deleting your account yourself would save you a lot of time and effort.. >.>

Thanks hallak65 :)

Ya you don't want to do that. Using a VPN to buy things on the steam store can actually cost you your steam account, not just getting a simple violation.

Thanks guys! It was too good to be true anyway :)