Sending games as gifts through Steam is nothing new, but Valve made some changes to the feature that should make it easier for you to send games to your friends and family.
For starters, you can buy a gifted game months in advance and then have it sent to the recipient at a specified date. This lets you to buy the game when it’s on sale, which saves you money, and then you can send it to a friend or family member at some point in the future. If, for some reason, the gift recipient declines the gift, the purchase cost for the game is refunded to you. In the past, declining a gift meant that the game would go back to the buyer’s inventory.
In most cases, the new system should work with any Steam user, regardless of where they live in the world. However, there are instances when you won’t be able to give gifts to other Steam users, such as when the recipient lives in a different country and the game’s price is widely different between the two geographical locations. Valve didn’t declare specifically what amount would constitute a substantial enough price difference, but you'll get a notification about it before you purchase the game as a gift.
The changes to the gift system are already implemented into Steam, but it's not retroactive; any gift purchases made prior to the implementation of the new features won’t be affected. As always, you can provide feedback about the new feature in the Steam Discussions forum.
