If you’ve been hunting the PlayStation Store for a gift button and coming up empty, you haven’t missed it — it genuinely isn’t there. Sony removed digital game gifting from the store back in 2019, and it hasn’t returned. This catches people out constantly, especially anyone who’s gifted a game on Steam before and reasonably assumed PlayStation worked the same way.
The good news is that the two remaining routes are both straightforward, and one of them is arguably better than a direct gift anyway.
Step by step
- Know that there's no direct gift button. Unlike Steam, the PlayStation Store has no option to buy a specific digital game and send it to someone else. Sony removed digital game gifting from the store back in 2019, so any guide telling you to look for a gift button is out of date.
- Choose your route: gift card or physical disc. The two reliable options are a PlayStation Store gift card, which lets them choose any game themselves, or a boxed physical game. A card is safest when you don't know their library; a disc is nicer to wrap.
- If buying a disc, check their console has a disc drive. Sony sells a PS5 Digital Edition with no disc slot at all, and a boxed game is useless on it. Confirm their console has a disc drive before buying physical, or choose the gift card instead.
- If buying a card, pick the right region and amount. PlayStation Store cards are region-locked to the country of the account, so buy one for their country. Choose an amount that covers a full game (typically around $50-70) if that's the intent.
- They redeem the code on their console or online. The recipient goes to Settings, then Account Management, then Redeem Codes, and enters the code from the card. The funds land in their PlayStation Store wallet to spend on any game, add-on or PlayStation Plus subscription.
Which route should you pick?
Choose the gift card if you don’t know exactly what they own. This is the common case, and it’s a real advantage rather than a compromise: a long-time PlayStation owner has a large digital library you can’t see, and the odds of picking something they already have are higher than people expect. A card also covers PlayStation Plus, which is what plenty of players actually want topped up.
Choose a physical disc if you know the specific game they want and you want something to wrap. Discs have genuine advantages — they can be lent to a friend or sold on afterwards, which digital purchases can’t. Just confirm their console has a disc drive first, because the PS5 Digital Edition doesn’t have one.
The one thing to double-check: region
PlayStation Store cards are locked to the country of the account. A card bought in the United States will not redeem on an account registered elsewhere, even on the same console. For a gift bought and given in the same country this never comes up — just don’t buy an imported card because it looked cheaper.
If they own a different console
PlayStation is now the most awkward of the four platforms for a gift buyer, so it’s worth knowing the alternatives if the household has more than one machine. Xbox has a genuine gift button that sends a specific game to a friend or an email address, and Nintendo Switch gives you a physical cartridge as a straightforward option. On PC, Steam is now the easiest of the lot — since July 2026 you can send a game to an email address without even having a Steam account. If the PS5 in question is a digital edition with no disc drive, physical vs digital games explains why that rules a boxed game out entirely.
And if you’ve decided a store card is the right call but aren’t sure which one or how much to put on it, our gaming gift cards buying guide compares every platform’s card side by side, with a live price on each.