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.

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.

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.

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 match the increased price in your friend's region at checkout. Your friend needs to be on your Steam friends list to send this type of gift.

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:

• You can now send a digital gift card or gift a game directly from someone's wishlist

• You no longer need to be friends on Steam to send gifts

• You can create a shared wishlist link that is filtered to specific games

• 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.

• And remember from above, your friend or family member can checkout as a guest, without needing to create a Steam account

That wraps it up for today's gift related updates. Check out our Steam Wishlist announcement to learn about wishlist categories and other improvements that are now available.

Steam Train Fest is chugging along through July 27th at 10 a.m. PT! Score deals on train games of all kinds: Building train stations and train tracks, managing entire lines, or riding the rails in general.

Join us for Steam Train Fest and get your Steam Library on track. (Eh?)

Have fun!

Steam Social Deduction Fest is packed with discounts on games that ask you to really look at everyone around you and ask "friend, or foe?"

As you'll see demonstrated in our trailer above, it's not always obvious who to trust. But that's the fun of it when you're grabbing deals on games that require your best judgment of character, whether that's in the form of murder mysteries, hide-and-seek, and even just good old-fashioned paranoia in general.

Join us now for Steam Social Deduction Fest, on through July 16th at 10 am Pacific. See you there! (Or will we? Can you trust us?*)

*Yes, yes you can.

Greetings to everyone who loves good deals on great games (everyone, we hope?)!

The Steam Summer Sale means the entire Steam Store is filled with deals upon deals upon deals, as our official trailer above will attest. From now through July 9th at 10 a.m. Pacific (it's a long one, friends) you can pick literally any genre of gaming you love and find all sorts of sales.

Cooking battles, universe exploration, fighting with swords/guns/your fists, cozy games, football and basketball games, zombies, and more. Wait, we should list the "more", it's so good: there are even all-time greats that are on deep discounts throughout the sale.

The Steam Summer Sale is yours to explore in the shade of the summer (or in the warmth of the winter for our southern hemisphere friends): Now through July 9th at 10 a.m. Pacific. See you there!