Valve has announced a significant update to Steam's wishlist functionality, introducing categories to help users better organize their ever-growing lists of desired games. The update also brings improvements to the game gifting system.
In a blog post, Valve explained that the growing number of games on Steam has led players to wishlist more titles than ever before. While existing features like ranking and filtering have been useful, the company recognized the demand for more robust management tools. The newly added categories allow users to sort their wishlisted games by criteria such as genre, release year, review score, or even custom groupings.
Users can assign games to specific categories as they add them to their wishlist. This feature extends to notification preferences as well, allowing for more tailored alerts for specific game groups. The ability to filter the wishlist by these custom categories aims to make it easier for players to navigate their selections.
The update also enhances Steam's gifting capabilities. Building on the guest checkout feature introduced in 2024 for digital gift cards and hardware, the platform now allows any game on Steam to be purchased via guest checkout. This means friends and family can utilize a shared wishlist link to purchase games for a user. Alternatively, games can be directly gifted to a recipient's email address, a useful option when a Steam username is unknown. Valve has also confirmed that cross-region gifting is now supported, enabling users to send games to friends regardless of their geographical location.