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My friend has just sent me a gift for Christmas on Steam, but I already have a copy of it.
I want to know what will happen if I decline the gift. Will my friend be able to get a refund on it, or will he just have the game himself?

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3 Answers 3

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A declined gift will be returned to the owner's gift inventory, from where it can be gifted again.

Valve generally does not grant refunds in this case, as Steam already tells the user if the gift target already owns the game.

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  • Can you gift someone else the gift?
    – WernerCD
    Dec 29, 2013 at 18:59
  • @WernerCD I'm not sure if I understand you correctly - if you're asking whether the original owner (that is, the person who tried to send the gift) can send it to someone else, then, yes that is possible.
    – user98085
    Dec 29, 2013 at 19:01
  • No... Person A buys... gifts to Person B... B already owns game (or doesn't want). Can person B gift to person C?
    – WernerCD
    Dec 29, 2013 at 19:53
  • And, on topic... the original person can see who has or hasn't accepted given gifts and can recall and send to someone else if they haven't been claimed yet.
    – WernerCD
    Dec 29, 2013 at 19:56
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    This answer is now obsolete due to Valve's new refund policy.
    – Petr Hudeček
    Dec 23, 2015 at 21:28
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Generally, if you decline a gift, it will be deleted, and the sender will automatically receive a refund.

The sender will receive a notification like this:

Gift refunded: "We've automatically initiated a refund for the purchase of the gift."

However, if the gift was sent from the sender's gift inventory, it will not be refunded, and instead just remain there. It can be re-gifted or redeemed at will.

Since May 4th 2017, it is no longer possible to add games to your inventory, but pre-existing gift copies can still be sent this way.

Gift returned to inventory: "Your gift has been returned to your Gift Inventory."

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  • As of July 2023 this is still the current process, although I didn't receive a notification in Steam (yet?), but did receive an email.
    – James Skemp
    Jul 10 at 1:38
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If you decline the game (or any gift) it will just return back to the senders inventory. From there, they can send/trade it with someone else.

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