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76561199807885542 22 Jun @ 6:21am

question

how to buy a steam game gift tradable copy, which we can store in our inventory with ‘no region restrictions’?

Last edited by sigma; 22 Jun @ 6:26am

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments

Ettanin 22 Jun @ 6:32am

You can't. Valve removed this feature because it was abused.

Kassie 22 Jun @ 6:33am

You can't anymore. That was removed years ago.

D A И I 22 Jun @ 10:01am

Originally posted by Ettanin:
You can't. Valve removed this feature because it was abused.

How was it abused?

Crazy Tiger 22 Jun @ 10:03am

Originally posted by D A И I:
Originally posted by Ettanin:
You can't. Valve removed this feature because it was abused.
How was it abused?

People were being commercially active with them, as in selling them.

D A И I 22 Jun @ 10:04am

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:
Originally posted by D A И I:
How was it abused?
People were being commercially active with them, as in selling them.

Ah yes, i remember that. They seemed to have taken a swift 360 on multiple parts of Steam when it comes to commercial activity. Thanks for confirming what i suspected, the selling.

Ettanin 22 Jun @ 11:13am

Originally posted by Crazy Tiger:
Originally posted by D A И I:
How was it abused?
People were being commercially active with them, as in selling them.

yep, they used the regional price difference for mutual profit with a markup that would still be below the recipient's regional price

Last edited by Ettanin; 22 Jun @ 11:13am

76561199807885542 22 Jun @ 12:03pm

Originally posted by Kassie:
You can't anymore. That was removed years ago.

That’s what I thought too, but one of my Steam friends outside my region once traded me a gift copy of ‘Endless Dungeon’. I double-checked — he’s not in my region. And weirdly, the gift didn’t show any region restriction message like ‘This item can only be redeemed in…’ etc.

Meanwhile, when I tried to buy Portal 2 for a friend, it did show that kind of restriction. So why is there no region lock on one but there is on the other? Is it game-specific or something else? And also — how do I find or buy those non-restricted tradable gift copies now?

Last edited by sigma; 22 Jun @ 12:03pm

Ogami 22 Jun @ 12:08pm

Inventory copies that were bought from before the system was abolished are still around and are usually not region locked. That was one of the reasons they system was abandoned, users bought a ton of gift copies during sales in cheap regions and then traded them for more expensive items with users from regions where the games cost much more.

There are only 3 types of inventory gift copies still around nowadays.

1. Old copies from before the system was abolished, those of course get rarer and rarer as time goes on.

2. Free "secondary" copies, basically you buy a game for yourself and you get a free gift copy for a friend. A few games still have that but also from before the system was abandoned.

3. 4 packs where you buy a game for yourself and get 3 extra copies for friends, a handful of games that offered this still offer them but no new ones can be created since 2017.
So its not many games that offer those.

Thats pretty much it.

Last edited by Ogami; 22 Jun @ 12:09pm