Valve enables 'Steam'y gift purchasing

19 Comments by Alexander Sliwinski Dec 18th 2007 10:15PM
Filed under: Online, Business

Adding an option that is sure to never be used by grandma, Valve's Steam service now offers gift purchasing functionality. The concept is pretty simple -- once again, not for grandma -- a customer simply purchases a game off the Steam service and then has the option to gift it to someone else. The recipient of the gift receives an e-card which holds their hand (virtually) through the Steam download process.

The Steam selection is expansive with possibly career-ending games like Kane & Lynch and the recently released Universe at War: Earth Assault available. Go ahead and poke around the Steam store, it might save you a trip to the mall -- maybe even save a forward-thinking grandma a trip to the mall.

Tags: gift, steam, valve

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(Page 1) Reader Comments

WiNG: Dec 18th 2007; 10:22PM

Buy EVERYONE YOU KNOW a copy of Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved.

It's $4 and it will destroy their lives.

gonk: Dec 18th 2007; 10:25PM

eh, i played the demo and didn't like it

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NmOoekbK6YI

Abscissa: Dec 18th 2007; 11:03PM

I played Geometry Wars on a 360 store kiosk. It seemed like nothing more than a reasonably polished but not nearly as fun clone of Robotron. In fact, I've seen very comparable freeware games that were made in a couple of weeks by a single person.

WiNG: Dec 18th 2007; 11:08PM

Is your goal today to shoot down every reasonable post, then spam some youtube videos? Because pretty much every gamer on the Internet and reviewer will disagree with your assesment of Geometry Wars.

gonk: Dec 18th 2007; 11:12PM

*points to abscissa's post*

colin: Dec 18th 2007; 11:19PM

see grid wars 2,

free, and a little easier than geometry wars (i'm not that good, end up getting frustrated when my skill level plateaus, and quit playing.)

Shagittarius: Dec 18th 2007; 11:21PM

I'm gonna say Geowars was highly overrated, I've played plenty of robotron style games. I don't think it was that great either.

rom: Dec 18th 2007; 11:34PM

I love Geometry Wars. I think it's way better than Robotron, and I loved that game too(bought a PS2 retro title solely for that game). Definitely worth the money if you ask me.

Burnt Meatloaf: Dec 19th 2007; 6:48AM

Man, you people act like the game costs $40 or something!

*sigh*... never mind.

opnickc: Dec 18th 2007; 10:55PM

Dangit, I was going to buy Portal for someone, but since it wasn't sold in stores (outside the orange box) and steam didn't have a gifting service I ended up just writing a check with "Buy Portal!" in the memo. Would've been nice to have this feature before, but it's still good that they've added it.

jynxycat: Dec 18th 2007; 11:09PM

to all the haters of steam during it's early months;

ha.

Shagittarius: Dec 18th 2007; 11:22PM

I don't buy digital copies of games or movies.

WiNG: Dec 19th 2007; 12:46AM

Shagi, you're Al Gore's best friend!

mogamer: Dec 18th 2007; 11:21PM

Wake me up when I can pass along a game I purchased and no longer play.

Cheezeman3000: Dec 18th 2007; 11:22PM

Huh... this service sounds an awful lot like N... nevermind.

Zoro: Dec 19th 2007; 12:34AM

It's about time. I've been wanting to gift Portal for awhile now, but don't want to shell out the $50 for Orange Box.

ThornedVenom: Dec 19th 2007; 3:22AM

The new dawn of sugar daddies shall rise.

Burnt Meatloaf: Dec 19th 2007; 6:50AM

Real game disc or not, anyone who were to gift me Sega Rally Revo would be permanently off my friends list.

oshin: Dec 19th 2007; 8:52AM

Anybody got jeff gerstmann`s steam account name ? Im sure he`d love another copy of Kane and Lynch ! hurhur

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