If you have read that Steam only lets you gift a game to someone on your friends list, that was true until July 22, 2026. On that date Valve shipped an update called “Gifting made easier,” and its own summary of the change is the sentence that makes this page much shorter than it used to be: “You no longer need to be friends on Steam to send gifts.”
So you have four routes now instead of one awkward workaround. Here they are in the order we’d try them for a present.
Option 1: send it to their email address (our recommendation)
Both games and digital gift cards can now be sent straight to an email address. You don’t need their Steam username, you don’t need to be friends, and you don’t need to send a friend request that tells them something is coming. Steam emails them a link; they click it, sign in to whichever Steam account they want the game on, and accept it.
Valve’s own example is not knowing your nephew’s Steam account. And if the email address you use happens to be the one attached to their Steam account, that’s fine — the email simply contains the sign-in-and-accept link.
Two rules come attached to this route, and both are worth knowing before you buy:
- It can’t be scheduled. Valve’s wording is that a gift email not accepted within thirty days is automatically refunded, “so they cannot be scheduled for future delivery.” The gift is live from the moment you send it.
- Same country only. “The recipient of the gift must also live in the same country as the purchaser.” For a gift going abroad, use option 2 or a gift card.
Option 2: buy it as a guest, with no Steam account at all
This is the same as option 1 with one extra piece of good news: you do not need a Steam account yourself. Guest checkout has existed since 2024 for digital gift cards and hardware, and Valve’s July 2026 update extended it so that it “can now be used to buy any game on Steam.”
For anyone buying a PC game for someone else without playing PC games themselves, this is the whole answer. Open the game’s store page in a browser, add it to the cart, mark it as a gift, enter their email address, and pay. Nothing to install, no account to create.
Option 3: gift straight from their wishlist
If the person has sent you a link to their Steam wishlist — and Steam now lets them create share links filtered to specific games — you can buy a gift directly from that list. When you arrive through their link, Steam pre-fills the recipient in the cart for you, so there is nothing to type and nothing to get wrong.
This is the least error-prone route of all, because they chose the games. If you are reading this in advance of a birthday and you’re in a position to ask, asking them for a wishlist link is a better use of the conversation than trying to guess.
Option 4: buy a retail game code and hand it over
The one thing Steam still cannot do is give you something to put in an envelope. Games sold as online game codes can: you buy one like any other item, the code arrives in your email, and you pass it on however and whenever you like.
What that route gives you that the others don’t:
- Something to wrap. A printed code in a card is a present; an email notification is a transaction.
- Your own timing. No thirty-day clock, no scheduling limits — you hold the code until the day.
- No country rule. A Steam code redeems on a Steam account wherever they are, subject only to the publisher’s own regional terms.
The trade-off is that a code can’t be handed back if they already own the game, so it’s worth choosing something they’re unlikely to have — a recent release, or something outside their usual pattern. A Steam gift, by contrast, can simply be declined and refunded.
Which route should you pick?
Buying for someone in your own country, and you don’t use Steam? Guest checkout to their email address. It is the fewest steps by a distance.
Need it to arrive at a specific moment? Add them as a Steam friend and schedule the delivery — scheduled gifts arrive in the recipient’s time zone. Or buy a code and hand it over yourself. Our full Steam gifting guide covers the scheduling flow.
Buying for someone abroad? Gift to them as a Steam friend, or send a digital Steam gift card, which Valve converts into their currency automatically.
No idea what they already own? Credit removes the guesswork entirely — our Steam gift cards explained guide covers the amounts Valve sells and how to send one, and the gaming gift cards buying guide covers which store cards are actually worth buying on Amazon.
What still doesn’t work
Buying it on your own account and sharing the login. Don’t. Sharing account credentials is a support headache at best and an account-security problem at worst, and the game stays attached to your account rather than theirs.
Third-party key resellers. Gray-market sites sell keys cheaply and the savings are real, but so is the risk: a key bought with a stolen card can be revoked afterwards, which means your friend loses a game they thought they owned. For a present that is a worse outcome than paying full price.
Assuming a console version will do. A PC gamer with a Steam library has no use for a PlayStation disc. Buy for the machine they actually use — our gaming gift mistakes guide opens with this one because it’s the most common failure in the entire category.