That is correct. If they don't accept the gift within 30 days it gets refunded back to the person who purchased the gift.

You can read it here in the gifting F&Q's: https://steamhost.cn/help_steampowered_com/en/faqs/view/2C02-3563-B72F-F117

You will just have to wait for it to go on sale again if you don't want to pay full price.

Next time, schedule the gift up to 1 year in advance, the limit on how far ahead you can schedule a gift and when they are ready to receive the gift, reschedule it to be sent immediately.

Originally posted by armthedarK:

*CAREFUL* GAMES ON SPECIAL SENT AS GIFT REDEEMED WITHIN 30 DAYS!
Hi,
I am dissapointed to find out;
I purchased a gift that was on special for a friend (who doesnt play much) only to find out steam had returned the birthday gift because it was not accepted within 30 days....!

I was told I have to re-purchase the game at full price again!

...

mmm, its been like that for quite a while (couple years). so don't know why you are so surprised about it. besides Valve can only keep a hold on the money for the sale for so long.

Originally posted by armthedarK:

Hi,
I am dissapointed to find out;
I purchased a gift that was on special for a friend (who doesnt play much) only to find out steam had returned the birthday gift because it was not accepted within 30 days....!

I was told I have to re-purchase the game at full price again!

...

And in that time you haven't talked to your friend or ask them if they received it it not?

Originally posted by armthedarK:

Hi,
I am dissapointed
I purchased a gift that was on special for a friend (who doesnt play much) only to find out steam had returned the birthday gift because it was not accepted within 30 days....!

I'd be more disappointed with your "friend" than you getting the gift refunded. 30 days... almost an entire Month (since most have 31 days) and your friend didn't log into Steam within that time frame?

Does your friend have a bunch of gifts or something? and if they don't play much, why waste your money buying/gifting them a game? might as well get something they'll be using or etc as soon as they get it. Try to use/spend your money more wisely, just my two cents.

Honestly it is a good policy, it saves people money in the majority of cases, and if a person can't be bothered accepting a gift within that time, the either do not use steam very often, or didn't want it to begin with.

Originally posted by steven1mac:

Honestly it is a good policy, it saves people money in the majority of cases, and if a person can't be bothered accepting a gift within that time, the either do not use steam very often, or didn't want it to begin with.

^ This right here.

If I refuse a game it is generally because I have no desire to ever play it; it just isn't the type of game I enjoy.

Also, if he doesn't play much, maybe you should have told him that there's a gift waiting...

I always thought Steam might be sending EMails to the recipient, but maybe they don't, or it was seen as spam...

Wild how people are expecting a random company to act as the middleman between them and their friend. Is Valve supposed to read your mind and tell your friend to just log in? Gifts on steam ain't subtle, so your 'friend' is someone who can go more than a month without even booting steam.

Originally posted by armthedarK:

Hi,
I am dissapointed to find out;
I purchased a gift that was on special for a friend (who doesnt play much) only to find out steam had returned the birthday gift because it was not accepted within 30 days....!

I was told I have to re-purchase the game at full price again!

...

If the game is not accepted there is no account to link the license key to, which is why they are refunded after some time.

Originally posted by Kargor:

Also, if he doesn't play much, maybe you should have told him that there's a gift waiting...

I always thought Steam might be sending EMails to the recipient, but maybe they don't, or it was seen as spam...

Steam send emails when a gift is sent, I have sent and received enough games to know that for a fact. Doesn't do a lot of good if they have steam link to an email they don't check however.

Originally posted by armthedarK:

Hi,
I am dissapointed to find out;
I purchased a gift that was on special for a friend (who doesnt play much) only to find out steam had returned the birthday gift because it was not accepted within 30 days....!

I was told I have to re-purchase the game at full price again!

...

The game was returned, your money was refunded. You and Valve are square, you've lost nothing. If you want to purchase the game today, what's the price today? That's the price it costs. Wanting to pay some other price is quaint. You're not owed a past sale price because of reasons.

Wait till it's on sale again, and maybe nag your friend to accept the gift. Or maybe video games just aren't his thing.

Thanks for all your feedback. The simple concept to me remains - you should not be able to return a gift from a friend within 30 days (too soon?). If its been purchased doesnt that mean someone technically owns it? What happened to the good old days of hardcopy. To me it feels like steam is just trying to get out of the special price, and they hope I buy it again at full price... I guess next time another gift is in order.

Originally posted by armthedarK:

Thanks for all your feedback. The simple concept to me remains - you should not be able to return a gift from a friend within 30 days (too soon?). If its been purchased doesnt that mean someone technically owns it?

Yes.

The "problem" ist one of being user-friendly: with the option to refund stuff, Steam needs have a cut-off date where the purchase has been refunded or committed. They don't want a "pending purchase" sitting around for years.

They also don't want to commit the purchase while still keeping the gift pending: if the recipient rejects, then where does the purchase go? Remember, they used to have gifts as "items" stored in the inventory, and the code for that is still there -- but they made it mostly inaccessible because they didn't want it anymore, for whatever reason. While rejected gifts could, technically, go into the sender inventory, that has two problems:

• Steam wants to avoid creating inventory gifts. Putting rejected gifts into the inventory would open an abuse path: users could send a gift to another account, and reject it to get an inventory gift. Yes, they can add all sorts of abuse-checking-statistics as in "this account sends a ton of gifts that are all rejected", but that's more work and like all statistics-based safety features it's error-prone.
  
• Users wanted to send a gift to the recipient. If the recipient doesn't want it, they likely prefer getting their money back, instead of getting a useless inventory item.

And, let's face it -- "anonymous gifting" where someone sends a gift to some random account and doesn't follow up on it in any way is not the usual way that gifts are used. There's usually communication between the sender and the recipient.

The recipient might not be at his box when the purchase is made, so some kind of disconnect is necessary for gifts to work. But, having a 30 day limit is plenty.

Originally posted by armthedarK:

it was not accepted within 30 days....!

Is it common for people to not log into their steam for long periods of time?

You couldn't say "Hey check out your steam LUL uwu owo rizziler glizzy, binky goofy ahh."