Steam Makes Gift Trade Policy Changes

Valve has made changes to gift tradability on Steam. Thanks to everyone that sent this one in.

All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser's inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading. We've made this change to make trading gifts a better experience for those receiving the gifts. We're hoping this lowers the number of people who trade for a game only to have the game revoked later due to issues with the purchaser's payment method.

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Seems reasonable enough, though I've never traded a gift copy.

I'm fine with this, prevents trade frauds and scams.

It makes sense but I wish there was an exception for family sharing accounts. I often buy a game for my kids and send it to them or I buy a multi-pack and send them a copy. Sounds like that won't be possible.

I also wonder if this is to cut down on people pooling money to buy 4 packs of games.

After re-reading it, it won't affect me because I don't "trade" anything when I give my kids a game.

I dunno why there aren't more angry people in this thread. Steam is totally violating your 33rd Amendment Rights by preventing you from doing what you want with a computer program that you totally bought with money you earned with blood, sweat (go take a shower) and lots of angel tears! Everyone should boycott Steam. We don't need them anyhow when we have a far more gooder alternative thanks to the shining salvation of Origin.

DoubleTap said:

After re-reading it, it won't affect me because I don't "trade" anything when I give my kids a game.

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Yeah, as long as you gift it directly to that person when you buy it, then there's no wait.

They're doing this to combat the use of stolent credit cards. A scammer basically uses a stolen card to buy games as gifts and keeps them in their inventory. Then they use those illegally obtained games to make trades for other items, the person that ends up with those illegal games gets the game taken away once the payment is denied by the card holder and there's a whole other mess of reversing the damage after that.

I'd be interested in seeing all of the theft-related problems that occur as a result of the Steam market, what countermeasures they took and how effective the measures were.