You can now gift games without a Steam account and sort your wishlist into categories.
Valve has pushed updates to Steam’s Gifts and Wishlist features to – surprise, surprise – make it even easier to buy games. Among the improvements, it is now possible to use a guest account to purchase games, instead of just gift cards and Steam hardware. And if you want to organize your wishlist, the company has made it possible to sort saved games into categories.
Making guest accounts more useful goes a long way toward streamlining the process of purchasing games on Steam, but Valve is also expanding the way games can be gifted. As part of this update, you can now send games directly via email. Previously, you had to know the recipient’s Steam account to send a game, but now you can send them a link to claim a game even if their email address isn’t associated with their account. The only limitations are that you must be in the same country as the recipient, and if they don’t accept the game after 30 days, they are automatically refunded. To send a game to someone in another country, you’ll still need to be friends with them on Steam, but Valve says it will now automatically calculate the cost of a game in your friend’s region when paying. These three changes should make it easier for the less gaming inclined to purchase PC games for their loved ones.
Steam’s new Wishlist improvements make it easier to organize while recognizing that the feature isn’t just for saving games you want to buy later. It’s best to think of categories as a folder or tag system for your games. You can name the categories whatever you want and easily add games to a category from their store page or your existing wishlist. Selecting the category at the top of the Steam wishlist page filters your wishlist to only games in that category. The notifications you receive about your wishlist items on sale can be turned on or off for specific categories rather than your entire list. These big changes also come with some smaller tweaks: you can now generate a shareable link to your wishlist or a specific category, see if saved games have demos, and play trailers for games on your wishlist when you hover over them.
