Gifts in inventory?

[Chaosolous]

I bought some game's DLC as a gift for someone and when I purchased it, Steam sent me a "New items in your inventory" and when I clicked on it, the items are just the DLC's with these tags: Not Tradable, Not Marketable, and the button "manage gift" above it.

What's all this about? Do they just sit there until they're opened? Why'd they show up in my inventory? I don't recall this ever happening with any other gifts. I could have just never noticed though tbh.

[rawWwRrr]

The gift stays in your inventory until it's accepted by your friend. I can't say for how long it's been that way but it's been at least for several years now. The gifting process works through the inventory section. You've essentially bought a copy of a game and sent it as gifted trade to another user.

It's kind of like the old days when you could buy multiple copies of a game and just keep them as giftable copies in your inventory whenever you were ready to send them to another user/account. They removed the ability to buy multiple copies but the gifting process still utilizes Steam's inventory trading mechanism.