Buying games for friends in other countries?

[Turdsandwich]

so i tried to buy a game for a friend in the US but upon checkout i got a message saying i couldnt gift it to someone in a different price region, the game was $40 in the US store and about $48NZ in the New Zealand store (40US is about 56NZ) is there really no way to just pay the actual exchange rate or whatever and just gift them the game anymore? Much sad

[yoda gaming]

Due to exchange rates, people were previously allowed to get games cheaper by this exact method. To avoid that, Steam put a ban on allowing games bought with different currencies to be exchanged with those using another.

TL;DR you can't gift a game to anyone that doesn't use the same currency as you anymore.

I suppose if you really insist on it, you can buy a VPN and change your location to America. Haven't tried it, but theoretically it should work.

[Turdsandwich]

but surely they could just make it so that you pay with the recipients currency? might as well just get rid of the whole gifting thing all together