Steam has announced overhauls to how Gifting and Wishlists work, with new options for cross-region gifting, guest checkout, wishlist categories and more.
Steam gifts are a popular way to send copies of games and digital gift cards to friends and family. Today we’re shipping some great new features that improve the gifting experience, making it easier to send both digital gift cards and games. These features pair nicely with the Wishlist categories and other improvements that are also now available.
Guest checkout
In 2024, we added guest checkout, which lets a family member or friend make a gift purchase without needing to create a Steam account. This feature was limited to digital gift cards and hardware purchases at the time.
Now guest checkout can be used to buy any game on Steam.
You can send a wishlist share link to a friend or family member and they can purchase gifts directly from that list without needing a Steam account themselves. If a guest wants to send a gift as a surprise they can send it to any email address instead.
Gift to email
Don’t know your nephew’s Steam account? No problem, both digital gift cards and games can now be sent directly to email recipients. And don’t worry if your nephew’s email address is the same one they use for their Steam account. The email will include a link to let them sign in to their account and accept the gift.
Please note that any gift email not accepted within 30 days will be automatically refunded, so they cannot be scheduled for future delivery. The recipient of the gift must also live in the same country as the purchaser.
Cross-region gifting
Buying a gift for a friend in a higher-priced region? In the past, digital gift cards were the solution for gifting, but that required you to know the full price of the game in your friend’s region.
Now you can gift games directly to your friend. Steam will calculate the cost in your friend’s region at checkout. Your friend needs to be on your Steam friends list to send this type of gift.
Direct from wishlist
Sending a friend or family member a link to your wishlist is a great way to help them choose a great gift for your birthday or holiday. We have made a number of share link improvements, including:
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You can now send a digital gift card or gift a game directly from someone’s wishlist
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You no longer need to be friends on Steam to send gifts
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You can create a shared wishlist link that is filtered to specific games
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When a friend or family member clicks on your shared wishlist link, if they choose to gift you a game, the gift recipient in the cart will be pre-populated with your information.
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And remember from above, your friend or family member can checkout as a guest, without needing to create a Steam account
More wishlist improvements…
With so many amazing games on Steam, players are wishlisting more and more titles. Existing options like ranking and filtering are great, but players have asked for even more ways to manage their Steam wishlists. Today we’re adding categorization as well as improved search and sharing to the wishlist. Read the full post below for the details, then try out all the new tools on your own wishlist.
Categories added to wishlist
First and foremost is the ability to create and assign custom categories to games on your wishlist. You might want to create a custom category for games you saw featured in a cool event, games best played with a controller, or even games you have in mind for someone else.
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Adding custom categories is quick and easy…
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Filter to a category by simply clicking on the category name at the top of your wishlist or next to the My Categories area of each game
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Quickly add to your frequent categories from the “On Wishlist” dropdown on store pages
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Customize wishlist notifications to only be sent for certain categories
Other improvements
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We’ve improved the search experience on the wishlist page and enabled autocomplete for faster results
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We now highlight when a game on your wishlist has a demo available. You can also be notified when a demo is released for a game in your wishlist.
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Microtrailers are now shown when hovering each games capsule image
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Navigating to/from your wishlist in a browser, mobile, Steam Client, or Steam OS does a better job of bringing you back to what you were looking at
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Plus we’ve made some tweaks to the wishlist page to improve contrast and legibility
Sharing your wishlist
You can already share a link to your wishlist, now you can share a link to a specific category on your wishlist, or even a filtered view of your wishlist.
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Clicking on the share button at the top of your wishlist gives you a unique URL to share with friends and family. People with the link can view the shared list even if your wishlist is set to private. Links can be revoked at any time.
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This sharing link will only show the games in the your current filtered view. For example: you might want to share ‘My Birthday List’ with your family. From that shared link, your family can gift games directly to you, even if they don’t have a Steam account…
