Hello, my dear GoG family!

I have heard/read a wave of info about Steam not allowing users anymore to Cross-Region Trade or Gift due to huge difference in prices from region to region (which in turn, I'm Mexican and prices in MXN are way cheaper than when I used to pay in USD).

But the issue is, I get lots of rumors and very few real info, which in turn makes me have lots of questions such as:

1) Do games purchased before the new policy apply to this new rule (retroactive policy)?

2) Is Gifting and Trading treated equally?

3) What about the "Developers allow buyers to do Cross-Region Trading or Gifting" info? Is it true?

And a huge etc!

So, does anyone have a link to all this info directly on Steam?

I've checked the Support/FAQs over there and it says nothign rather than:

"You can Trade/Gift with your family and friends"

So I'm very, very, very confused.

Thanks for your time on reading this :)

P.S. Please avoid zero-tolerance + zero-intellect arguments as: "@#$% Steam buy GoG"

Link to a topic that discusses the matter, along with an official answer from Valve.

Valve's answer taken from the topic:

"As most of you know, our developer tools suggest pricing based on market research and purchasing power parity. In the case of territories such as Russia, Brazil, and SE Asia, we suggested pricing that is lower than the direct USD conversion. This is based on our assessment of actual pricing of comparable products in that market. Recently Rubles have hit an all-time low which has been a concern of many game developers. We are still assessing the market to see if suggesting new prices in Russia is right for customers who live in that market. We do not think that pricing based on currency conversion only is the right way to approach the Russian market necessarily.

What we are doing immediately in response to the Ruble drop is limiting trading and gifting from Russia to prevent people from taking advantage of the situation. We have been applying a gifting and trading lock of this type on all newly created packages on Steam since mid-2014. Today we have propped a change that will affect all packages on Steam which will not allow them to be unpacked to an account, if gifted or traded from a lower priced region to a higher priced region. This change is not retroactive and only affects new purchases. It also will not affect customers in that region from gifting a copy to other people in that same region. All customers will have proper warning when they are purchasing a gift prior to checkout in those regions as well. We will continue to assess the situation and make changes if necessary in the future. If you have any questions please feel free to write us via the contact form via the Steamworks Development site - Documentation & Help -> Contact Steam Publishing."

My own experience, in Mexico:

If I add a game to my cart and select to buy it as a gift I get the following legend in red: I tried it a couple of times when this changes went live and I just tried it now with a couple of games. I have not tried to go through and check if the notice is correct. But if someone outside of this region needs some very cheap game or DLC I might give it a try.


Before this changes I had bought a game and kept it as a gift in my inventory. I was able to send it to someone in the US who added it to his library without a problem. This was a few days after the restrictions appeared.


I don't trade games so I have zero knowledge about that.