Today, Valve introduced a major update to Steam’s gifting and wishlist features.
Starting today, Steam users can use guest checkout for game purchases, send games by email, and gift across regions. The update also adds new tools for organizing and sharing wishlists.
These changes aim to make it easier for players to buy games and digital gift cards for friends and family, even for those without Steam accounts. Guest checkout, which launched in 2024 for digital gift cards and hardware, now lets users buy any game on the platform. Players can purchase games from a shared wishlist without creating an account, or send a game as a surprise by entering the recipient’s email address.
Steam now lets users deliver games and digital gift cards directly by email, and recipients get a link to sign in and redeem the gift. Gift emails must be accepted within 30 days, or they will be refunded, and they cannot be scheduled for future delivery; both sender and recipient must be in the same country.
Cross-region gifting is now available, and gifts are calculated based on game prices in the recipient’s region at checkout so that users can send games to friends in other countries. The recipient must be on the sender’s friends list to receive cross-region gifts.
Valve expanded Steam’s wishlist sharing tools. Users can now share links to specific wishlist categories or filtered lists, rather than the entire wishlist. Friends and family can buy games or digital gift cards from these shared lists, even without a Steam account.
The update adds custom wishlist categories so that players can organize games into groups like multiplayer titles, event games, or gift ideas, letting users filter wishlists by category and set notifications for selected groups. Other improvements include autocomplete search, notifications for playable demos on wishlisted games, demo availability indicators, microtrailers on game listings, better navigation across Steam platforms, and interface updates for improved readability.
Players can now create private wishlist sharing links, letting others view selected games and buy gifts without making the full wishlist public; these links can be revoked at any time. For more info on this, current sales, and the Steam Machine, be sure to check back to Simulation Daily for updates.
