It's up to the developer whether or not you need to own the game to buy certain items from the point shop. The default is apparently set to 'No', and very few change it.

You can view the games details page in your library and if there are points shop items for the game, the direct link is next to the discussions link.

Originally posted by Metalnailgun:

points shop issues

The points shop is a cool concept. Unfortunately, you cannot get items from games you do not own, generally, and going to the "from your games" tab means you become unable to search for specific emojis/etc to find what you want, and you also are not able to filter or search by your owned games. (nor r-click in library to go to a game's point shop).

Improvement in these areas would be great. I have a lot of steam points that I have yet to use simply because it's too much effort to go find something I'm interested in that I *can* get.

If a game in your library has Points Shop items, it'll tell you. Right under the "Install" button or "Play" button, you'll see

Store page, DLC, Community Hub, "Points Shop" <--- if it has items, you'll see this. You could also just scroll down (while on your game in your library) to see if it has trading cards (trading cards = Points Shop items)

And you can search by your owned games. What you mean you are not able to?

I own the game "Blair Witch" if I want to find items specific to that game (lets say a background) I will just click on "Backgrounds" and in the search box, I input "Blair Witch" and Voila, you see the game's backgrounds.

What were you looking for and for what game? maybe the game doesn't offer whatever item you were hoping it had?

You can also buy said items from the Market if you can't get the items from the Points Shop for whatever game you don't own.

I mean, we need to put 2 hours in a game before being able to get certain Points Shop items for the games we do own (not every game but the ones I have checked recently) emotes etc

It's like, don't own the game? can't get that item (if the Dev has it set up like that) or didn't put 2 hours into the game? can't get this avatar or whatever.... why? do they think we'd refund a game and keep the items if that 2 hour limit wasn't there?

Yeah, in backgrounds you can search by the name of your game, but on the featured tab "from your games" there's no search bar, which is counter-intuitive because filtering by games you own first would mean that searches have less to sort through or that you can look to see if your games have "cat" but you can't sort that tab at all, whereas on main page you can just search for a specific game (or find it via library if it has stuff)

Also, I guess a lot of things I have or play frequently don't have point shop items since I've never noticed the option in the library's listing of related things (store, dlc, discussions, etc)