Make multiple purchases and/or gifts at once!

[Enginerd]

multiple purchases at once - at least let me gift games to multiple people at once or at least buy a single game for myself and others, having to go back to a store page 5 times and redo my card verification over and over is TEDIOUS.

but also, why cant i just add like 3 games for myself and that check a box "also gift this game to" and then check the box for each person?
send game A & B to X
send game B & C to Y
send game C to Z

Buy game A & C for myself because i already have B etc.

[nullable]

Originally posted by Enginerd:

multiple purchases at once - at least let me gift games to multiple people at once or at least buy a single game for myself and others, having to go back to a store page 5 times and redo my card verification over and over is TEDIOUS.

My first through is your use case probably isn't so common, and you probably aren't buying so many games for so many people so frequently, and neither is everyone else. So the necessity of the change is arguably very limited to not needed.

There's also argument to be made that making it more complex will invariably result in user error and if you send the wrong game to the wrong person and they accept it, now you need their permission/involvement to refund it. So maybe the cost/benefit wouldn't be there from Valve's perspective.

And besides having to go through checkout 3 or 4 times once in a while isn't that tedious. Also, and maybe you card is different, but putting in my CVV a few times doesn't strike me as being tedious either.

Originally posted by Enginerd:

but also, why cant i just add like 3 games for myself and that check a box "also gift this game to" and then check the box for each person?
send game A & B to X
send game B & C to Y
send game C to Z

Buy game A & C for myself because i already have B etc.

Maybe I don't buy enough gifts for multiple people at the same time, but I don't think most online stores run this kind of complicated checkout/gifting system either. Which I think might be another good argument why you can't.

[Enginerd]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Enginerd:

multiple purchases at once - at least let me gift games to multiple people at once or at least buy a single game for myself and others, having to go back to a store page 5 times and redo my card verification over and over is TEDIOUS.

My first through is your use case probably isn't so common, and you probably aren't buying so many games for so many people so frequently, and neither is everyone else. So the necessity of the change is arguably very limited to not needed.

There's also argument to be made that making it more complex will invariably result in user error and if you send the wrong game to the wrong person and they accept it, now you need their permission/involvement to refund it. So maybe the cost/benefit wouldn't be there from Valve's perspective.

And besides having to go through checkout 3 or 4 times once in a while isn't that tedious. Also, and maybe you card is different, but putting in my CVV a few times doesn't strike me as being tedious either.

Originally posted by Enginerd:

but also, why cant i just add like 3 games for myself and that check a box "also gift this game to" and then check the box for each person?
send game A & B to X
send game B & C to Y
send game C to Z

Buy game A & C for myself because i already have B etc.

Maybe I don't buy enough gifts for multiple people at the same time, but I don't think most online stores run this kind of complicated checkout/gifting system either. Which I think might be another good argument why you can't.

Yeah i know its not many people but for example during a recent sale i bought 3 games for 3 people; so for every single purchase i had to go through the steps:
1. find game (search)
2. add to cart
3. open cart
4. move to ONE person to send to
5-?. ALLL the check out steps

then you either have to hit back a bunch (go backward through all the purchase screens a bunch until you hit the store page OR you click store and have to then search for the game again and repeat all the same steps.

so all together I had to do all these steps 9 times.. and get 9 separate receipts / emails etc and risk my cards getting flagged for fraud / double or triple charges because my cards are (in a good way) over protective that if they see the same exact values from the same vendors rapidly they will assuming someone is trying to scam you.

this is made more tedious and infuriating when youre internet is lagging and/or steam is lagging (as the store pages often do during big sales).. So it took me a solid 45mins to buy 3 games for 3 people because steam simply wouldnt load a store page so i could go buy a game again lol.


Furthermore; i agree if it gets to complicated that people could mess things up and send stuff the wrong way or whatever but again -- we have a "REVIEW THIS PURCHASE" page so its really on yourself to not verify.. and steam COULD have a small purchase window where they let you retract a purchase.. like within 1hour of sending a gift you can un-send if you screwed up for a refund. I've definitely gotten a game for my wife and had to tell her to deny it because someone informed us that the game WASNT the type of co-op we'd thought it would be from the preview and description


BARE MINIMUM;
buying any single game - it should be that you can also gift that game to multiple people at the same time..

that would have reduced my purchases to 3 instead of 9 AND for each new game i buy, i wouldnt have the same charges come up repeatedly (unless theyre both exactly the same price but thats not as common). This would also reduce the load on VALVE Transactions / servers timing so that maybe stores wont lag as much.

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Gifting to a specific person needs to be its own transaction.

This is not going to change.

[Enginerd]

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Gifting to a specific person needs to be its own transaction.

This is not going to change.

:summercat2023:

give a reason why and ill believe you.. everything is digital and you already have your friends and family added. not like were talking multiple shipping addresses and physical products.

just turn the single radio button selector into a checkbox on the user selection list

[nullable]

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Yeah i know its not many people but for example during a recent sale i bought 3 games for 3 people; so for every single purchase i had to go through the steps:
1. find game (search)
2. add to cart
3. open cart
4. move to ONE person to send to
5-?. ALLL the check out steps

My response is: So?

Not everything needs to be streamlined into a one button process, and there's often good reasons why it shouldn't be. Or there's a limit to how much benefit streamlining is, or more features are.

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Gifting to a specific person needs to be its own transaction.

This is not going to change.

:summercat2023:

give a reason why and ill believe you.. everything is digital and you already have your friends and family added. not like were talking multiple shipping addresses and physical products.

just turn the single radio button selector into a checkbox on the user selection list

Just turn a radio button into a checkbox group (and also all the additional code to wire up the functionality and behavior). Just because you oversimplify your idea into a single sentence doesn't mean it takes one line of code to implement, FYI. I'm not saying it's impossible. But I am saying if there's no need and no value, there's no point in wasting the resources, regardless of how many resources you think Valve has to spare.

I understand why you want it. All I'm saying there's lots of reasons that add up to: not very likely. But that's just like my opinion man. Valve isn't going to not implement your idea based on what some random users say. But they might not implement because they don't think it's worthwhile.

If your issue was significant enough that a multi-user checkout solution was worthwhile they'll do it, and if not, they won't.

[Enginerd]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Yeah i know its not many people but for example during a recent sale i bought 3 games for 3 people; so for every single purchase i had to go through the steps:
1. find game (search)
2. add to cart
3. open cart
4. move to ONE person to send to
5-?. ALLL the check out steps

My response is: So?

Not everything needs to be streamlined into a one button process, and there's often good reasons why it shouldn't be. Or there's a limit to how much benefit streamlining is, or more features are.

I told you why -- it took me 45mins for what should have been 1 purchase or at most 3 because of all the delays on steam's end.

I buy lots of games for friends and family, it wastes time every time

[Enginerd]

Originally posted by nullable:

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Originally posted by Enginerd:

give a reason why and ill believe you.. everything is digital and you already have your friends and family added. not like were talking multiple shipping addresses and physical products.

just turn the single radio button selector into a checkbox on the user selection list

I'm not saying it's impossible. But I am saying if there's no need and no value, there's no point in wasting the resources, regardless of how many resources you think Valve has to spare.

The value ADD is actually seen by OPPORTUNITY cost - I would have bought more games for more people but it already took me 45mins and had to leave for something else.. so they LOST VALUE by not streamlining a purchase process.

[Slav Mcgopnik]

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Originally posted by cSg|mc-Hotsauce:

Gifting to a specific person needs to be its own transaction.

This is not going to change.

give a reason why and ill believe you.. everything is digital and you already have your friends and family added. not like were talking multiple shipping addresses and physical products.

just turn the single radio button selector into a checkbox on the user selection list

This is likely designed to help counter commercial use of steam accounts as a way to sell games off.

[Enginerd]

Originally posted by Slav Mcgopnik:

Originally posted by Enginerd:

give a reason why and ill believe you.. everything is digital and you already have your friends and family added. not like were talking multiple shipping addresses and physical products.

just turn the single radio button selector into a checkbox on the user selection list

This is likely designed to help counter commercial use of steam accounts as a way to sell games off.

Okay now that actually makes sense.

Perhaps they could monitor individual accounts for a "reseller" pattern of sorts except for the Devs of a game - as they may use a mechanism through steam gifting to give review copies etc

[Slav Mcgopnik]

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Originally posted by Slav Mcgopnik:

This is likely designed to help counter commercial use of steam accounts as a way to sell games off.

Okay now that actually makes sense.

Perhaps they could monitor individual accounts for a "reseller" pattern of sorts except for the Devs of a game - as they may use a mechanism through steam gifting to give review copies etc

The issue with this is that it’s a massive workload gain which helps enable commercial steam account use and gains very little for most users.

I’m not saying nobody ever mass gifts, but it’s such an uncommon occurrence that it’s not worth enabling a major problem to allow, and the workload to monitor account activity that way would be huge.

Game devs need not worry, as built in review copies are already a thing and work on a separate system via steamkeys.

[Enginerd]

Originally posted by Slav Mcgopnik:

Originally posted by Enginerd:

Okay now that actually makes sense.

Perhaps they could monitor individual accounts for a "reseller" pattern of sorts except for the Devs of a game - as they may use a mechanism through steam gifting to give review copies etc

The issue with this is that it’s a massive workload gain which helps enable commercial steam account use and gains very little for most users.

I’m not saying nobody ever mass gifts, but it’s such an uncommon occurrence that it’s not worth enabling a major problem to allow, and the workload to monitor account activity that way would be huge.

Game devs need not worry, as built in review copies are already a thing and work on a separate system via steamkeys.

Easily automated to monitor, someone doesnt need to sit and check every single transaction. and easily isolate the questionable transactions / accounts for review.

Perhaps if their family library sharing actually worked or made sense then i'd care less but ONE person playing a game locks an entire library.. that's not how libraries work. Do you give someone every single book on a shelf when they just want to read one? no.

Sooo in order to let multiple people play games im forced to make magnitudes more transactions.. sure sounds great for them obviously but then, why is that transaction chain a giant pain in the ass when ITS THE SAME PRODUCT FOR MULTIPLE PEOPLE.

Dont want to fix the gifting system? then fix the library - let me buy multiple licenses for each game so i DONT lock up an entire library and everyone can refer to the one account so its less transactions and easier to setup/monitor.

BOTH systems for sharing/gifting are completely boned