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Can somebody buy me SimCity 4 on GOG (I return money with DonationCredits)?
wraith808:
(But I don't do it on Steam anymore after they locked down my account until I promised not to.)
-Deozaan (May 02, 2017, 01:24 AM)
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What? What happened there?
cranioscopical:
What? What happened there?
-wraith808 (May 02, 2017, 08:08 AM)
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He had so many to give that Steam was coming out of his ears?
Deozaan:
(But I don't do it on Steam anymore after they locked down my account until I promised not to.)
-Deozaan (May 02, 2017, 01:24 AM)
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What? What happened there?
-wraith808 (May 02, 2017, 08:08 AM)
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They didn't like me gifting games to people outside of my region.
It's probably not a problem to do here and there, but after I'd done it for a few people a few times, someone spread word about me on some popular foreign gaming forum and I had probably 15-30 people per day asking me to gift games for them every time a big Steam sale came around. It wasn't uncommon for at least a few people to contact me on any given day for the 24-hour daily deal.
He had so many to give that Steam was coming out of his ears?
-cranioscopical (May 02, 2017, 08:45 AM)
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Pretty close. :P
It got so big and I had so many people contacting me asking the same basic details (Will you gift to me? How does it work? How do I send you money? When/how will I get my gift?) over and over, that I set up a custom email address with an auto-response with all the details. I even considered creating a website or service to help organize people into getting 4-pack bundles and other things like that.
It felt pretty cool helping all those people get games they wanted at nicely discounted prices, and I didn't think Steam would mind all the extra customers/money I was getting to them. But I hadn't considered that Steam had agreements with publishers regarding regional restrictions on games and I was bypassing those restrictions through my gifting. They locked down my account and told me I shouldn't be bypassing their regional restrictions, then they restored my access after I said I wouldn't do that anymore.
That was about 5 years ago. I've pretty much only gifted to IRL friends on Steam since then, or occasionally gone in with other DC members on 4-packs.
EDIT:
How's this for timely? The day after I wrote that up, Steam has changed their gifting policy to essentially disallow people from being able to do what I was doing:
Safe Cross-Country Gifting
No more worrying if a Gift to E-mail or Gift to Inventory is going to work for a friend, gifts sent through the new system will always work on the receiver's account. When there is a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting won't be available and you'll know before purchase.
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