Valve has pushed updates to Steam's gifting and wishlist features, introducing email-based game gifting, guest checkout for non-account holders, and user-organized wishlist categories. The changes were detailed on July 22, 2026, via Engadget.

The most consequential gifting change is that Steam now allows users to send gifted games directly over email. The recipient receives a link to claim the game, and no Steam account is required on the sender's end to initiate the transaction. Previously, gifting a game required knowing the recipient's Steam account. The email method closes that friction point, though it comes with a geographic constraint: sender and recipient must be in the same country.

For cross-border gifting, the older pathway still applies. The sender must be Steam friends with the recipient, and Steam automatically calculates the cost in the recipient's region at checkout. Valve has historically blocked gifting between countries when there is a large difference in regional pricing, notifying the user before purchase per a Steam community announcement. That policy remains in effect for the friends-based gifting route.

There is a built-in expiration mechanism. If a game sent via the new email method is not accepted within 30 days, the purchase is automatically refunded to the sender. Steam's inventory system also includes a "Pending Gifts" tab, a feature originally introduced in 2011, where users can view both gifts offered to them and gifts they have offered to friends.

On the wishlist side, Steam now supports user-created categories, functioning as folders or tags. Users can add games to categories from the store page or from an existing wishlist, and selecting a category filters the view to only those games. Sale notifications can be toggled per category, so a user could, for instance, receive alerts for a "must-buy" shortlist while muting everything else.

Steam also now generates shareable links to an entire wishlist or to a specific category, and wishlist entries display whether a game has a demo available. Hovering over a wishlisted game plays its trailer inline.

The guest checkout expansion is worth noting for its scope. Previously, guest checkout on Steam was limited to gift cards and Steam hardware. The extension to full game purchases removes the account-creation gate for buyers who may be purchasing a gift for someone else and have no intention of using the platform themselves.

Taken together, the updates target friction at both ends of the transaction: the sender who does not want to navigate Steam's social graph, and the wishlist user managing dozens of saved titles across seasonal sales. The per-category notification toggle in particular addresses a long-standing complaint among heavy wishlist users, who have had to either accept alert noise for every saved game or disable notifications entirely.

The regional pricing constraints on email gifting are the meaningful limitation. Requiring same-country delivery for the email method means it works cleanly for domestic gifts but cannot replace the friends-based system for international exchanges. Given Steam's aggressively tiered regional pricing, that restriction is a predictable guardrail against arbitrage, but it does narrow the feature's utility for the globally distributed user base that PC gaming increasingly serves.