I want to share my experience and what I think is a major flaw in Steam's gift system.

I have one account, with a long history and multiple personal purchases (first purchase with a bank card, others via Steam Wallet funded by legitimate gift cards). I tried to send a single gift to a friend — a birthday gift, nothing else. Immediately, my account hit the “gift restriction”.

Meanwhile, resellers and gray-market sellers:

-Add friends and send hundreds of gifts across regions, often instantly.

-Use long-established accounts, verified wallets, and predictable activity patterns.

-Face no restrictions at all, even though their behavior is exactly what Steam claims it wants to prevent: mass gifting, potential arbitrage, and profit-driven activity.

Here’s the catch: Steam’s system doesn’t detect motivation — it only looks at patterns. So:

-Honest users - blocked.

-Gray-market resellers - allowed.

This feels like a system that punishes the innocent while letting the “professionals” operate freely. From a business standpoint, maybe Valve benefits: resellers keep buying keys and generating commissions, Steam keeps online activity and microtransactions alive. But user trust suffers massively, and it looks like outright favoritism.

I’m sure many of us have experienced this: trying to gift one game to a friend triggers a restriction, yet gray markets continue unhindered. Why block ordinary gifts instead of clearly defining limits or adding transparency?

I want to hear your experiences:

Have you ever been hit by this restriction unfairly? Does anyone know if Valve ever manually reviews such cases, or is it all automated?

It’s frustrating that a platform we respect ends up being so selective in its “protection.” Honest gifting should not be a punishable action.

PS: What really exposes the system is this question: “Why block ordinary gifts instead of clearly defining limits or adding transparency?” If Valve truly didn’t want gifts to be resold, they could set clear, visible restrictions. Instead, they keep the rules hidden, leaving users in the dark. Ordinary players get blocked while those with certain infrastructure or “connections” can operate freely, and Valve preserves the limits and reasons in secret. It’s a system that punishes normal users but lets others continue unhindered.