Problems with gifting to the US

[Bjørn]

Greetings.

I just tried to gift Ostriv to someone in the US, but on the payment screen I'm greeted with this message:

"Due to regional price differences, the gift you are trying to send cannot be sent to the recipient's region."

I haven't gifted to the US before, so I'm not sure if this is normal, or is it related to current affairs?

The price I'm getting is NOK 176, which is about 18 euros, if that has any significance. As far as I can remember it's been at that price since I bought the game myself a few years ago.

Thanks.

[Saulot]

It's not unususal, i'm surprised it's the first time for you.
Diferent regions get different prices, and steam blocks gifts betwen them to prevent people from second hand selling.
As a Ukrainian, it used to be normal that i couldn't send gifts to EU or USA because o this, as Ukraine was in CIS steam region, also known as "broke-ass russian countries".
Now Ukraine is in european steam region, wich is ideologically pleasant, but financially a bit of a bummer =) Well, at least i can send gifts now.

[Bjørn]

Thanks for the clarification. Economy has never been my fortè, as my bank account can testify to. Silly that they have to make everything so complicated.

[Bjørn]

Цитата допису Saulot:

It's not unususal, i'm surprised it's the first time for you.

The only game I've gifted before was a game I somehow had 2 copies of by buying different 'collections', or however it happened, so that worked good.

But I just tried to gift other games (from various devs / countries) to the same person, and got the same message, so it has nothing to do with the 'special operation', confirmed.

[Jager]

Have you tried using a VPN?

[Bjørn]

Цитата допису Jager:

Have you tried using a VPN?

No, not had the need for one, and I won't buy one just for that, but thanks for the tip.

But I've learned that the reason is that if the price difference is more than 10%, it's not possible to gift to the other region, so that's the cause (current difference is now 25%, apparently).

But I also learned that I can use the Steam wallet for gifting, so that would solve it.