Google Play Store game gifting feature: what it could do

Android Authority spent time this week digging through Play Store version 53.9.23-24 and found something that isn't live on anyone's phone: reported code for a "Gift" entry sitting in the three-dot overflow menu on premium paid apps. It points to Google exploring a Google Play Store game gifting feature, something that would let a sender place a specific paid app or game directly into someone else's library instead of handing over spendable credit, according to Android Authority's teardown published today. The outlet's reporting doesn't document a company announcement or a staged rollout, and code spotted in a teardown is not proof that anything is publicly available yet.

Right now, if someone wants to send a paid game as a gift on Android, the only real option is a digital gift card, and that delivers credit, not the title actually in mind, per Android Authority's reporting published today.

This piece covers what that gift-card option does today, what Android Authority's find does and doesn't establish, and what to do while the rest of this stays unconfirmed.

Can you gift games on Google Play Store today?

No. There's currently no native way to buy one paid app or game and have it show up in someone else's library, Android Authority's teardown confirms. The closest thing Google offers is a digital gift card option, which started rolling out in October 2025 through a partnership with Blackhawk Network (9to5Google, last year).

To check for it, open the Play Store profile menu and look for a "Gift cards" entry sitting between Payments & subscriptions and Play Protect. 9to5Google described this appearing "if rolled out for you," meaning it's still not guaranteed on every account more than a year after launch (9to5Google, last year). If that menu item isn't there, the Google Play gifting option simply hasn't reached that account, and there's no documented way to force it.

Assuming it is there, the flow is simple. Pick a card value, with Google Play credit running from $15 to $100 alongside cards for retail, dining, travel, and entertainment brands, enter the recipient's email, add an optional gift message, and send (9to5Google, last year). The recipient gets a redeemable link by email or text.

What lands in their account is credit, not a game. They still have to open the link, redeem it, and choose something to buy themselves, Android Authority's report notes. That makes a gift card the right move when the recipient should pick their own purchase, or when there's no way to know whether a native option even exists on their account.

What Android Authority's teardown suggests about Play Store gifting

The find is specific, but it's early. Android Authority reported code suggesting a possible "Gift" entry attached to premium, paid apps in the overflow menu, not a button anyone can actually tap right now. Code like this shows a direction a company might be building toward. It doesn't confirm when, or whether, that work ever reaches a public release.

The reported mechanics give some shape to what a shipped version might eventually look like. Buyers would reportedly be able to attach a short note, capped at 200 characters, and a recipient who doesn't want a particular game could reportedly pass it along to someone else rather than let it sit unused in their library, according to Android Authority's teardown. Both details come from unreleased strings found in an app file, not from a purchase flow anyone has actually used.

There's also a scope question the report itself leaves open. Android Authority's own writeup shifts between framing this as a game-gifting feature and describing it as a "Gift" option for "premium, paid apps" more broadly. That's worth sitting with rather than smoothing over: it's unclear whether a finished version would cover games specifically, every paid app, downloadable content, or in-app purchases too.

Bigger practical questions sit entirely outside what the teardown shows. Would a recipient need a matching country or currency? What happens if they already own the app? How would a failed delivery or a refund request get handled? Does receiving a gift require an active Google account on the receiving end? None of that shows up in the code Android Authority examined, so none of it has an answer.

A separate teardown is a useful reminder of how far "found in code" sits from "coming to your phone." Jetstream's analysis of Play Store v53.3 turned up resource codes for shareable "playlists" on Play Games profiles, letting users bundle three or more games together with titles, descriptions, and comments (Jetstream, 5 weeks ago). Jetstream was blunt that the rollout "has not yet been confirmed." That's the same evidentiary bar the gifting code sits at: real, discoverable code with no confirmed path to release.

How this compares to Steam, briefly

Android Authority points to Steam as the reference case, noting that storefront has long supported gifting a specific game to a friend while Google Play has lacked an equivalent option. The report doesn't detail Steam's library delivery, regional restrictions, or resale handling, so the comparison only holds at the level of choosing a title and sending it, not full feature parity between the two stores.

The available reporting also doesn't cover how the App Store currently handles gifting, so there's no basis here for framing this as Google catching up to Apple. The gap that actually matters for Android owners is narrower: there's currently no way to send one chosen paid game instead of a cash-equivalent credit, regardless of how that stacks up against other platforms.

What to do while this stays unconfirmed

Nothing covered here is ready to use, so the practical move is knowing what already exists and what doesn't. If someone needs one specific game, a gift card still can't deliver that. It arrives as redeemable credit, and the recipient decides what to spend it on (9to5Google, last year). Save gift cards for situations where the recipient is happy choosing their own purchase.

Checking the three-dot menu on a paid app isn't a useful test right now, either. Android Authority's reporting gives no launch date for a Google Play Store game gifting feature, and a string found in a teardown doesn't mean a button is switched on anywhere.

Three things would count as real confirmation: a Google announcement, an entry in official Play Store release notes, or an observable purchase flow that spells out how a recipient gets selected and how redemption works. Until one of those shows up, treat this as a direction Google appears to be exploring, not something worth planning a gift or a purchase around just yet.