Gifting during the sale

Datpotato
Datpotato Member Posts: 30
in General Discussions

so i'm trying to gift the game to a pal during the sale, but he downloaded and played for a bit on the trail one and it wont let me gift the real game to him now, can't find anything on the steam page on how to fix this. yes i already had them uninstall the game and waited an hour before trying again but it still says they own the game.

Comments

  • Peanits
    Peanits Dev Posts: 7,555

    Heyo.

    So the thing about this is that because it's currently free to play, Steam thinks "Hey, this guy owns this game." And because Steam thinks "This guy owns this game," you can't gift it to them. This is an issue that's been around for quite a while now. You used to be able to just send it via email and have them accept it after the free weekend, but it seems like that option is gone now.

    Here's what you can try:

    • Have you friend click their username in the top right corner of Steam.
    • Go to "Account Details"
    • Under the Store & Purchase History section, click "View licenses and product key activations"
    • At the top of this list, you should see something along the lines of "Dead by Daylight Free Weekend - Sep 2018"
    • Click the 'Remove' button next to that entry.

    This should remove the free weekend access from their account and make Steam think "This guy does not own that".

    Before you do this, make sure you are able to gift the game to them. Steam has some weird rules about who can gift stuff to who based on regions and pricing. I, for example, as a Canadian sometimes have trouble gifting games to an American friend due to different currencies. If you guys are in the same country, you shouldn't have any issue. If not, double check first, or else they might end up with no free weekend and no game.

  • powerbats
    powerbats Member Posts: 7,068

    @Peanits said:
    Heyo.

    So the thing about this is that because it's currently free to play, Steam thinks "Hey, this guy owns this game." And because Steam thinks "This guy owns this game," you can't gift it to them. This is an issue that's been around for quite a while now. You used to be able to just send it via email and have them accept it after the free weekend, but it seems like that option is gone now.

    Here's what you can try:

    • Have you friend click their username in the top right corner of Steam.
    • Go to "Account Details"
    • Under the Store & Purchase History section, click "View licenses and product key activations"
    • At the top of this list, you should see something along the lines of "Dead by Daylight Free Weekend - Sep 2018"
    • Click the 'Remove' button next to that entry.

    This should remove the free weekend access from their account and make Steam think "This guy does not own that".

    Before you do this, make sure you are able to gift the game to them. Steam has some weird rules about who can gift stuff to who based on regions and pricing. I, for example, as a Canadian sometimes have trouble gifting games to an American friend due to different currencies. If you guys are in the same country, you shouldn't have any issue. If not, double check first, or else they might end up with no free weekend and no game.

    One thing to add to this is the account must be at least level 2 to receive a gift and be older than say 2 hours as an example to combat hackers.

    Here's the link to the Steam page with all the info questions you could have about gifting.

    https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6262-QXCN-0755&l=english

  • Datpotato
    Datpotato Member Posts: 30

    @Peanits thank you this worked a charm