Image credit: Valve

If you're among the millions whose Steam wishlists have been accumulating games for years, and you're too scared to venture in, Valve's latest Steam update should help.

As detailed in the company's latest blog update, the keyword here is 'customisation'. First, it's now possible to create custom categories for your wishlisted games, and assign future additions to the ones you've created. The criteria is entirely unrestricted, and all categories are now displayed at the top of the page. A single click lets you show only the games that are part of that category.

This also extends to the wishlist button on every game's store page. Now, when you add a game to your wishlist, you can pick which category it goes into. You can do the same with games you wished for previously, simply by visiting their store pages.

Perhaps the coolest part is that you can also customise wishlist notifications to only be sent for the categories you want. Notifications are very helpful, but they can be daunting to scroll through if you have a massive wishlist, especially during sales. Speaking of notifications, it's now possible to be notified when a game on your list gets a demo, and the demo will be flagged on your wishlist too. Valve has also improved search within the wishlist page to autocomplete titles when you type, and to display results faster. In general, wishlist pages should be more informative too. Microtrailers now play, just like on store pages, and the navigation flow has been revamped on all platforms so the page brings you back to what you were looking at before.

Additionally, when sharing wishlists, you can now set it so it lands on a specific category, almost like you're passive-aggressively trying to get someone to buy you a game.

Image credit: Valve.

But that's not all. Valve's update also brings a couple of improvements to Steam gifting, making it easier to send digital gift cards as well as games to others. It has, for instance, expanded the guest checkout feature (enabling you to buy someone else an item on Steam without needing to have an account) so that it now includes any game. It was previously limited to hardware and digital gift cards. This ties nicely into the wishlist updates, as your shared wishlist link can now be used to directly purchase something without the sender needing a Steam account.

Further to that, Steam games and digital gift cards now be sent to email addresses, even without knowing if that address is associated with a Steam account. Gifts expire within 30 days if unclaimed, however. Unfortunately, this feature is only available between Steam accounts in the same country, but Valve hasn't completely forgotten about cross-region gifting, which now supports games and not just digital gift cards.

When you gift a game to a friend who lives in a different region, Steam will calculate the cost in their region at the checkout, making it possible for someone based in a region with lower pricing to gift to a friend in a higher-priced region.

All this is available now as part of Steam's latest update across PC, the mobile app as well as hardware like Steam Deck and Steam Machine.

Mentioned in this article