Last month Valve tweaked its Steam Gift policy to make all games purchased as a gift untradeable for 30 days, in an attempt to prevent trade scams.
Now the company has made another big change, namely stopping users from Asia, Eastern Europe and South America from trading Gifts across regions. This is presumably an attempt to prevent customers from buying games on the cheap in in one country, then selling them on to users in another.
This Reddit post lists the particular regions affected. As you can see, Northern Europe, Japan and the US don’t seem to be affected by the new rules. Probably because prices in those areas are typically much higher, limiting the potential for users to make a sneaky profit.
Gamespot points out that the change comes hot on the heels of the collapse of the Russian ruble, an event that caused Apple to temporarily close its Russian store. It’s possible that Valve is making a similar decision in reaction to global currency fluctuation.
That’s only conjecture for now, as Valve is yet to make an official announcement regarding the new changes. It’s a sign that the company is continuing to monitor the Gifting process, removing any opportunity for exploitation of the rules. Which is a bit of a double-edged sword for gamers - the potential for scams is being reduced, but so is the potential to save a few bucks by bending the rules a little.