Latest Steam update makes it easier for your grandparents to give you games

Jul 23, 2026 - 16:08

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Latest Steam update makes it easier for your grandparents to give you games

Published Jul 23, 2026, 7:55 AM EDT

Grandparents can now send games as gifts without an account

Back in 2024, Valve added a Steam Store feature that allowed non-Steam users to purchase digital gift cards or hardware. This meant that if friends or family without a Steam account wanted to buy a game for you, they had to buy a gift card for the appropriate amount. That would allow you to then purchase the game via Steam.

In the latest Steam update, this has all changed: Non-Steam users can now purchase individual games as gifts. As the recipient, you can share a link to your wishlist with a non-Steam user. Alternatively, when buying a game as a gift, the purchaser just needs to know the email address of the Steam account they wish to send it to, to retain the element of surprise. However, gifted games cannot be scheduled to be delivered in advance.

Additionally, cross-region gifting will now calculate the price of the game in your friend's region before you gift it to them. Previously, digital gift cards were also the solution for this, but you needed to know the price of the game in your friend's region, which was cumbersome at best. Third-party tools such as SteamDB helped with this, but now it's automatic, so you don't need to worry. However, the person you're gifting the game to must be on your Steam friends list.

There are a number of wishlist improvements that have been made with this update too, including the ability to categorize your wishlist to only show specific games. This way, you can send a wishlist link only featuring upcoming games you've wishlisted, or if you want to give someone the choice of a few games on your wishlist to buy for you, you can now cherry-pick which ones. Games on your wishlist with a demo available will now have a green tag, and you can get notified when a game on your wishlist releases a demo.

You can read more about all of the changes, including how to create wishlist categories, in the gifting and wishlist Steam blog posts.