I'm not sure why they've made it so it is as difficult as possible to gift a dota item to a friend.
Here's what happened:
I bought a cosmetic item and a taunt intending to gift a friend as a birthday gift. In most other games, after you purchase the item, that would be the end of it. But I realise I couldn't gift wrap it. So I had to Google how to gift wrap.
After googling how to gift wrap, I realised I still couldn't do it. Turns out there is a 7-day trade restriction. That's fine, I'll wait 7 days.
7 days later, I try again. Oh now it tells me I don't have a mobile authenticator. Okay. So I google how to set up a mobile authenticator. I set up a mobile authenticator.
Oh after setting up a mobile authenticator it tells me I can't gift to people not on friend's list for more than 30 days. Okay I'll wait 30 days.
30 days later, I realise I can gift wrap my cosmetic item but not the taunt. Googled it, realised taunt items can't be gift wrapped. Googled how else I could gift the item.
Realised I could do a trade offer. Alright then, I'll just do a trade offer. Googled how to do a trade offer.
Tried to do a trade offer, got the error message that I logged in from new device, unable to trade from this device for 7 days (I did not log in on any new device except to set up the mobile authenticator).
Valve seriously. I'm sure season and experienced players who have been gifting items and playing around your steam store for the past decade think it's easy to do all this, but you think new players with no clue about any of this will wade through this mountain of bullshit or they'll just decide to never buy something from your store as a gift again?
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/mi8ano/valve_really_hates_money_from_people_making_dota/