Steam's new gifting policy could kill key resellers

[William Gayde]

Steam's feature of allowing users to gift and trade game keys has indirectly created an entire industry. Key resellers like G2A have always operated in a sort of grey market area due to a considerable amount of payment fraud that they typically turn a blind eye to. Valve's new gifting policies are designed to make gifting easier for the consumer but may also hurt resellers and overseas gamers.

The update has three main changes. The first is the ability to schedule gift transactions. This means you can buy a gift in advance and have it delivered to a friend on their birthday or whenever you want. The next feature deals with declined gifts. Previously, if a user didn't want a gift they received, it would eventually be returned to the seller's inventory and they would still be out the money. Now, the recipient has the option to decline the gift and the sender will automatically get refunded. The third feature has created the most controversy. For all transactions following the new update, gifting across countries won't be available if there is more than a 10% difference in price between countries.

This new rule, while written to sound like it makes cross-country gifting easier, is actually a serious blow to key resellers. They typically buy keys in volume from countries where they are cheap. Then they can resell them in countries with inflated game prices and profit on the difference. Think of it as arbitrage in the game key market. While Valve is certainly trying to cut down on the payment fraud associated with key resellers, this change may also have negative consequences for normal gamers with international friends.

Games are relatively cheap in the US compared to many places like Australia and South America. It was easy to get an American friend to buy the game at the cheap US price and then simply gift it, but this won't be allowed anymore.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/69198-steam-new-gifting-policy-could-kill-key-resellers.html

 

[psycros]

Huh? I've never seen anything on Steam that suggests you can sell your keys.

 

[BlueDrake]

The scheduled gifting has been around for a while. I don't know.. why that's being promoted as something new. Also returning an item to someone has been a thing, just you could also put it in your inventory and then gift it. Has this not been a widely available option, or is this some sort of revamp to those systems?

The only thing new I can see, is the third addition which is going to hurt friends. Unless you somehow can send them money, via some third party means just to buy it. Which isn't always an option for some people. I'm not surprised at this honestly, but people often also grab bundles and sell keys they don't want. Just my big question here on this is, how would this harm resellers if they got the keys from third party sites to begin with?

Are they going to just suddenly block key usage, based on some unknown means of knowing where it was purchased from? They disabled the means of linking your account to other parties, which Humble tried to do as to prevent reselling from happening. So I'm a little confused.. since this will impact Steam's store more than G2A, and various others who sell keys purchased from Humble, etc. Unless G2A is specifically friending people and gifting keys that way.

 

[Experimentongod]

Guys, correct me if I'm wrong, but gifting has nothing to do with game keys. It's done within Steam only, with items on you inventory. So I don't understand how this new system can hurt key selling at all.

 

[Hyrax]

"This new rule, while written to sound like it makes cross-country gifting easier, is actually a serious blow to key resellers. "

Yeah, no. These new rules only apply to the direct gifting feature, it does not affect keys and their regions. Key resellers are going to rejoice because gifts have become obsolete in the aftermarket. If you want cheaper games during non-sale then you have to buy from resellers that bought up keys from other sellers during the sale.

This whole article does not make sense unless I am totally wrong and they changed the key system as well.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Huh? I've never seen anything on Steam that suggests you can sell your keys.

You can't sell the keys to the games already in your personal library, at least I don't think so, but you can purchase a new key and send it whomever you like. That feature has been around for a good few years now.

 

[Cycloid Torus]

So if a game is priced 10% higher in the location of the recipient, then I cannot give it? What if it is on sale with 75% off? Does it mean that I cannot give it away even in my own location?

Steam, lovely and wonderful as it is, is still teaching us all the meaning of 'half-baked'.

 

[NahNood]

Huh? I've never seen anything on Steam that suggests you can sell your keys.

You could buy a game but not claim it on your account, just storing it in your inventory. Some services like g2a.com allow you to sell that "gift" which is essentially a key. No more.

 

[CaptainTom]

Meh I don't blame Steam at all for this.


If Australians want reasonably priced games/computers, then they need to tell their government to stop putting insane tariffs on everything.

 

[Freezies]

Meh I don't blame Steam at all for this.


If Australians want reasonably priced games/computers, then they need to tell their government to stop putting insane tariffs on everything.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Australian government or tariffs.

Game devs set their own prices, and many set them higher for Australia out of greed, although many others don't.

Valve also still refuses to provide local currency for Australia despite having done so for many other countries, so all prices are in $US, meaning a currency conversion fee for all payments from Australia on top.

 

[CaptainTom]

It has absolutely nothing to do with the Australian government or tariffs.

Game devs set their own prices, and many set them higher for Australia out of greed, although many others don't.

Ok buddy sure. Devs set prices just to be mean to the Australians...

 

[Freezies]

Don't be ignorant. It's not to be mean, it's just money grabbing.

Australians earn more, the economy is different and many companies use this of a way to grab more money. They charge more because people still pay. If you look at it as how many hours you need to work to buy the same thing, it still works out less working hours for Australians, than other countries for the same item.

However some companies take it too far though and you can find some games that are 2-3 times the price (eg. Lord of the rings - War of the north was $70 until recently being put down to $20 like it is for everyone else)

Once you factor in currency conversion on top, it's ridiculous. Some of them are starting to bring their prices down because the lose money as people buy games from other distribution sites that sell per region like ROW, instead of country specific like Valve does through Steam accounts.