my hunch is that this was done in order to prevent people from getting games for way cheaper by the proxy of having a friend from another region give it to you.
still, i do find this stifling, since i struggled with this problem before as well.
I guess if it was only friends doing it they wouldn't have bothered, it was probably because there was a market of third-party sellers abusing the system.
That is probable or they introduces it so vac banned would have harder time buying game on alt if they would get banned. But they can always purchase keys which are sometimes cheaper than games on steam
Agreed that it is dumb. I think they should at least make it so that the gifter pays the same price as you would've paid. I got a gift card from my friend instead so I could buy the stuff myself. It was very silly.
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