Paying for a gift game with steam wallet - is this possible?

[Sierp]

Hey

I want to buy a game for few friends (same game). I know that in order to send a game, I need to have a person in my friends list - that's done.
But when I choose to buy a game as a gift (the one I already have, but probably doesn't matter) and I go to payment options - I don't have something like "Steam wallet" - only different cards (Visa, Mastercards etc) + Skrill + paysafecard

My wallet is currently empty, but I want to add money to it and with this money - buy games for friends, but before I do so - I need to make sure I will be able to pay with steam wallet money...

regards

[Lilim]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

I need to make sure I will be able to pay with steam wallet money...

Buying gifts with wallet funds is restricted to prevent commercial activity. It might work but you can not be sure.

It's better to use an external payment method instead.

[Sierp]

Any chance to verify this "might"?
Issue I'm having is that we want to buy a single game (or actually 2 games) but have a single receipt for an account top-up because we want to reimburse it from employer... having 10 receipts and processes is painful
But I couldn't find a way to actually ask Steam support :(

[Lilim]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

Any chance to verify this "might"?

If you use your wallet to purchase gifts too often, you will receive a non-specific error message with the option to contact Steam Support. Support might remove the restriction once. However, if you continue to use your wallet to buy gifts, you will be permanently restricted (you can still buy games for yourself using your wallet).

Steam Support won't tell you how many times is "too often".

[ReBoot]

How often do you buys games for yourself? That "issue" arises when wallet gift activity reaches a certain weight. I don't knkw what it is, I know it exists though. I've gifted tons of games with wallet funds without issues, because my gifting activity is offset with even more self-purchase activity.

[Anonymous Helper]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

Any chance to verify this "might"?

Only way is to try. You either get flagged and get banned from gifting with wallet funds or don't. No one knows the algorithm Valve uses to differentiate commercial activity from regular gifting and Valve isn't going to reveal it either.

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

Issue I'm having is that we want to buy a single game (or actually 2 games) but have a single receipt for an account top-up because we want to reimburse it from employer... having 10 receipts and processes is painful
But I couldn't find a way to actually ask Steam support :(

Err, If you receive payment/reimbursement for the gifts, that's commercial activity the flagging is meant to prevent.

[Sierp]

It's not commercial activity, we are just group of 10 people (team working together) that want to buy 2 games (not 20) together, and have a single invoice, that's all. If I would be selling them (adding markup) - that would be commercial. Either we buy it like this or every one of us buys separately - it's just easier (not even cheaper) for us to buy together.
There is no way to contact support upfront, right?

[ReBoot]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

It's not commercial activity, we are just group of 10 people (team working together) that want to buy 2 games (not 20) together, and have a single invoice, that's all. If I would be selling them (adding markup) - that would be commercial. Either we buy it like this or every one of us buys separately - it's just easier (not even cheaper) for us to buy together.
There is no way to contact support upfront, right?

That's what you say. On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog. Swearing "it's not commercial" is pointless, everyone can do that, including those running comnercial operations.

Feel free to ask Steam support about this, asking doesn't cost a thing.

[Lilim]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

There is no way to contact support upfront, right?

https://help.steampowered.com/

[Yujah]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

There is no way to contact support upfront, right?

Even if there would be you'd at best get some generic run of the mill answer, either because the support technician will also not be able to predict the algorithm or since that's the best you can hope for anyway with anything abuse-related on Steam.

I.e., you can either try and if your account gets gift-locked try and remedy it later through support or just buy not with wallet. You don't seem to have explained why that part is important.

[Sierp]

@ReBoot - I know, and I would be happy to explain this to the support and then they could track the activity. The problem is that we have to spend the budget in 2023, and some won't be able to do that (on vacations already)

@Lilim - I couldn't find a way to contact support, this is just a bunch of prepared answers

@Yujah - I can't relay on trying - if that's the only way, I won't do it at all. Once I top-up my account with 300 euro, and I won't be able to spend it on these games... what I will do with these 300E?... So that's a no-go to me...

[Yujah]

What appears to not be making sense to me is that you could not just rather than top-up your wallet though some given payment source use said given payment source directly -- unless the wallet top-up is intended to occur via market/trade rather than external payment source, and if you'd then want an invoice to reclaim those funds from your employer that to me sounds like commercial activity indeed.

Admittedly not going to dig through agreements, and there may be a better reason I'm not seeing anyway -- but my advise would then still be to simply use your external payment source directly rather than with the detour via wallet.

[Lilim]

Then you have to use an external payment method.

Maybe try paysafecard (if it is available in your area). You could buy 3 cards for 100€ each.

[ReBoot]

Sierp eredeti hozzászólása:

@ReBoot - I know, and I would be happy to explain this to the support and then they could track the activity. The problem is that we have to spend the budget in 2023, and some won't be able to do that (on vacations already)

Somehow, I suspect you haven't read my post. I explained that explaining any of this is futile and you react with, well, this.

Anyway, go ahead. Your money, your time.

[Ettanin]

Lilim eredeti hozzászólása:

Then you have to use an external payment method.

Maybe try paysafecard (if it is available in your area). You could buy 3 cards for 100€ each.

I second this. Use PSCs as the external payment method to buy the gifts directly and skip the wallet step. PSCs come in various sizes, can be used multiple times and multiple cards with leftover balance can be combined for one payment.

[Sierp]

I'd love to do that but I have 2 constraints
1. I need to spend this money in 2023
2. Some colleagues are on vacations, they can't create steam account before end of 2023, so I don't have them in friends list and I can't buy games for them

Anyway - it seems it's not possible or at least not guaranteed so I most likely will not go that route
It's annoying though that I couldn't find this info anywhere, all I could find on steam pages was

"Funds in your Steam Wallet may be used for the purchase of any game on Steam or within a game that supports Steam transactions." No limitations like "you can't use steam wallet to buy game as a gift" - I almost did a mistake and top-up my account