I wanted to give Portal to my friend for his birthday. I had hoped I could buy a "gift pass" for it through Steam and send him the invitation email, like how the HL2 and Ep1 gifts work. But it doesn't seem to be set up for that, and the FAQs were not very helpful. Does anyone happen to know if this can be done?

Only if you log in to his account and purchase it. The best way is to just paypal him the money for it and he can buy it through steam with paypal

I'd post on the Steam forums about this, really. I'm not sure if it is even an option, as the whole Gift thing is new as it is.

Crooked Paul wrote:
I wanted to give Portal to my friend for his birthday. I had hoped I could buy a "gift pass" for it through Steam and send him the invitation email, like how the HL2 and Ep1 gifts work. But it doesn't seem to be set up for that, and the FAQs were not very helpful. Does anyone happen to know if this can be done?

You know you could buy him a whole orange box while your at it? And handily those come in nice physical incarnations...

I might just have to do that, even though it would be kind of a waste in this particular case. Of course the Orange Box is a great value, but this friend of mine is not particularly hardcore. My guess is he'd probably get about two-thirds through Half-Life 2 before he got stuck or lost interest... he'd play TF2 exactly one time and get pwned, then never launch it again.

But Portal -- lovely, fascinating, short game that it is -- he could definitely finish that. So that's why I wanted to see if Steam would let me gift Portal by itself.

Maybe I'm cheap, but $20 seems more reasonable for a friends birthday present than $50. Depends on how good of a friend it is I guess. But I am just a poor college student, so I can only afford $20 for presents now-a-days

That's a factor, too. I ain't noways rich.

does he already have a steam account? If not make him one with his info, buy portal, give him the password

When you buy a game you already have you could gift it to someone, i could be wrong but it's worth a shot.

Do what Msleeper suggested

I think I got a solution to this problem. Word on the internets is that The Orange Box will be $25 at Best Buy the day after Thanksgiving. What a deal! If that's true, I'll get one for my friend for his birthday and probably another one for my brother for <Holiday Name Here>.

Here's the link:
http://bfads.net/Half-Life-2-Orange-Box-PC-at-Best-Buy

I'm not sure how reliable that site is... so I'll probably give my local Best Buy a call before I schlep over there. But if this is true, it's a steal.

Yeah, stores usually have pretty insane black Friday sales. But, a lot of times, they are traps. Given that Best Buy has some ... interesting sales practices ... I wouldn't be surprised if you got gipped. Be sure to check online to see if the deal is on their website, which is a pretty remote chance, and try to get their early because they will probably only stock a few copies so they lose less money.