New Steam gift restrictions are ridiculous!

Steam applied more restrictions to gifts activation and trading. New rules limit the number of countries gifts could be activated in. Gamers located in some parts of Europe and South America (and regions visible below on the screenshot) are discovering that once a gift has been bought from certain countries, it can only be redeemed in the same countries. If you add those games to your library, it would only be playable within the same countries.

Users living in Singapore, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, and others are furious on reddit. Here’s screenshot of the new restrictions:

Here’s a quick example, if you buy a game from Russia and send it as a gift, it can only be redeemed in Russia and can only be played in Russia, meaning that if the user were to travel to If you’re thinking of traveling to another country and playing your Steam games there forget it.

Fortunately it seems that CDKeys sold by third-party websites only require activation in the same region and allow players to play them anywhere after that. So feel free to use those Steam Alternatives until it lasts.

Valve, as usual, has not officially announced any of those changes.