Can I invite friends to Steam?

Question

I basically want to invite a friend to steam, so that they will download it and play a certain game with me. Does steam have this sort of feature? It's essentially a personalized share.

Alternatively, since the game isn't super expensive, I would be willing to gift it to them, which I think you can do to an email address (not necessarily linked to an account).

Answer 1

There is currently no feature to allow you to invite a friend to Steam as such. The closest thing I can think of is either to:

Gift them a game

If you have a game in your Steam inventory, you can gift that to an email address that is not already on Steam.

This will send them an email with an invite to Steam and all the instructions they will need.

Do it manually

1. Navigate to https://store.steampowered.com/join/
2. Fill in your details and click CREATE MY ACCOUNT
3. Get them to download the Steam client.
4. Send them to your Steam profile page, "http://steamcommunity.com/id/{Your ID or Username}/".
5. Tell them to send you a friend request and then you can accept it.
6. Tell them to download your chosen game.

Answer 2

I do not believe this is possible. The gifting feature definitely is though.

Just have your friend download Steam.