How to gift games from Canada to EU? (Italy)

[FireDragonDoL]

Hi,
I wanted to buy a game for a friend in Italy.
I'm originally from Italy, so I have a bunch of them still there.

Since I moved to Canada, all my payment methods are canadian.

Now, for some reason, for some games, when I try to buy them and gift them it tells me I can't due to credit cross-region pricing.

My only option is to make an italian account, but there I cannot use my canadian payment system.

On top of that, we wanted to pool money to purchase a steam deck for my sister (rather than a Switch), but I cannot buy a steam deck for europe from canada, but I also cannot buy one for europe with an italian account paying with a Canadian payment system.

What can I do?

Gift cards are not an option (considered bad presents), also I'm not going to put 600 on a gift card, that's terrifying.

[Satoru]

Send Steam wallet instead

[HikariLight]

If the regional price difference is LESS than 10% you can gift it.
If the difference is 10% or more then your best bet is to send a gift card code to your friend.

[Wolf Knight]

if the price difference is more then 10% between regions, then gifting a game is not an option. you either send a digital gift card using an outside payment, or you use a 3rd party site that sells keys and send them the code.

there are no canadian/american/french/spanish/etc accounts, there are only steam accounts. your account should only be set to the region you physically live in. making an account to bypass any kind of restriction is a violation of the SSA and can result in ALL related accounts being locked/terminated, and that can include you being banned from the service if they so desire.

this site lists legit key sellers

https://isthereanydeal.com/

avoid using grey markets, you have no idea what you are really getting and its common for them to scam people with used keys, out of region keys, fake keys, demo keys, selling base game keys and calling it a bundle key, etc.

if you have an issue with a key, you will need to take it up with that sites support, steam has nothing to do with keys nor the sale of keys.

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

If game cost by more than 10% by regional currency gap, gift wallet funds to them, and they buy it that easy. https://store.steampowered.com/digitalgiftcards/

You can use this site to help compare regional currency gap, no need to think really.
https://steamdb.info/

If looking to get game cheaper, compare deals online using isthereanydeal.com it help you compare retail, and retail key sites for prices on games want to grab, or gift someone, also always check if the game be gifted, or redeem in said regional, for keys just ensure they're not region locked, or it is for their region, the store getting key from will tell you what key is for.

[Worldzworstgamer]

Buy games elsewhere. There are many sites that sell Steam keys for games and hell they do it at a better price.

[FireDragonDoL]

I have no idea why some comments are so negative. I'm highlighting a problem: I'm not looking for ways to buy cheap things, I'm just looking for a way to spend the amount of money requested to buy presents even across regions.
Key sellers are available, but I'd rather give money to Valve, given they reinvest those in stuff I appreciate (Steam Deck, gaming on Linux).
On top of that, some games are not available in "key format" (not sure why).

I'm not putting 600$ in steam wallet, as I said, that's terrifying. If something goes wrong, that's a lot of money.

So if I'm buying a game in Italy for an Italian friend, I'm OK paying the Italian price, not the canadian one.
I'm not sure why this is not possible given that I can buy items on Amazon IT with a canadian credit card, apologize my ignorance on the topic, would love to know what's causing this limitation, any idea?

I'd argue the whole gifting on Steam it's a problem. Surprises are nice, but it's really hard to "surprise" somebody unless they live in the same country and are already on your friend list, it really defeats the spirit.
Kind of a bummer for an entirely digital experience (website and videogame).

This year my mother had to sign up to Steam (she's 63 and doesn't play videogames), buy 5$ worth of wallet, add me as a friend then buy the game for me as a present. So much for a surprise, I had to explain every step of it to her!

Solving international collection of money is pretty straightforward nowdays (stripe or paypal make it easy), but as I said, I have a Canadian account and my mother did not have an Italian account until this year, so it was not an option to buy the Steam Deck for my sister at all.

I was hoping things would improve, but it's getting worse and worse over time.

Thank you for all the answers.

[Chompman]

FireDragonDoL の投稿を引用：

So if I'm buying a game in Italy for an Italian friend, I'm OK paying the Italian price, not the canadian one.
I'm not sure why this is not possible given that I can buy items on Amazon IT with a canadian credit card, apologize my ignorance on the topic, would love to know what's causing this limitation, any idea?

It's a legal issue as you cannot be advertised one price based on your region then be given a different price when you check out to factor in the other countries price.

[FireDragonDoL]

Chompman の投稿を引用：

FireDragonDoL の投稿を引用：

So if I'm buying a game in Italy for an Italian friend, I'm OK paying the Italian price, not the canadian one.
I'm not sure why this is not possible given that I can buy items on Amazon IT with a canadian credit card, apologize my ignorance on the topic, would love to know what's causing this limitation, any idea?

It's a legal issue as you cannot be advertised one price based on your region then be given a different price when you check out to factor in the other countries price.

Can't I be allowed to navigate to some steampowered.com/it so that I'm advertised the "correct price"?

[FireDragonDoL]

nullable の投稿を引用：

The system is what it is. You can either use available options, or wait for it to change to be exactly what you want. Downside with the latter is you're gonna be waiting a pretty long time.

You don't need to put $600 into a Steam wallet. That's hardly the only way for you, as a group of people, to manage a purchase. I mean what would you guys do if you wanted to buy her a PS5? Well that same solution would work for a Steam Deck....

From my perspective it's like you're going out of your way to avoid using available options because you only want to use the one that doesn't exist.

I would open amazon IT and use my canadian credit card, that's literally what I did a few years ago to buy her a PS4.
I **cannot do this** on Steam, there is literally **no way for me to buy Steam hardware and get it shipped to Italy**.
I can:
- buy a steam deck for Canada, buy a flight ticket and travel to Italy (costing 3x steam deck price)
- buy a steam deck for Canada and ship it with UPS, effectively paying double taxes

I'm not going out of my way, as I said, this is making things hard for myself.
We went with the (ugh) Nintendo Switch this time, because I could purchase that with my credti card.