Valve announced earlier this week that they’re changing the gifting system.

A blog post from earlier in the week states that the current system “has had a bunch of friction for a while”. It also adds that Valve wants to make gifting easier between friends so they will be completely changing the system.

The current system will be completely retired. This includes the Gift to E-mail and Gift to Inventory options. These changes have now come into affect.

Here’s what the new system will include:

Scheduling Gifts

Gamers will be able to buy a gift months in advance and it will be delivered to their friend on a specific day. According to the blog post, this will work “on time, every time”.

Refunding Gifts

In the old system, declining a gift would cause it to be added to the buyers inventory. This new system will change this. Declining a gift will cause it to be refunded and the money will return to the buyers account.

Cross-country gifting

The blog post states that “gifts sent through the new system will always work on the receiver’s account”. If there’s a large difference in pricing between countries, gifting just won’t be available. The new system will also tell users when gifting is not possible prior to purchase.

If you’d like to see the full blog post from Valve you can find it here.

While these new changes are very different to the current system, pre-existing gifts will not be affected by this change. As a result, anyone looking to purchase gifts now will need to use the new system which prevents people from adding games to their inventory. However, it does come with quite a few positive additions to the gifting system.

If users encounter any issues they should alert Valve through the official Steam Forums here. What are your thoughts on the new system on Steam?