How developers can make money off their games through gifts and take a swing at piracy

Me giving out downloads as gifts

This idea has been already implemented however one part of it which I find crucial hasn't been really talked about at all.
You see this past Christmas. I decided to gift each one of my friends who I was having trouble  thinking of gifts for, the Humble Indie Bundle. (Braid was one of the games that was one the list and I loved that game, I feel that gifts should be something you want to share with that person, maybe a part of you in consumerist product form). I could of circumvented the whole paying for each gift part by simply sending them a torrent link on Christmas day. That is the honest truth, it would of been easier and cheaper. I wouldn't of had to put any of my PayPal info. down or wonder if they accidentally double charged me, it would of been of a hell of a lot easier.

Bottom line: Piracy is convient and thats why people pirate.

But, I didn't choose this option. Why? Because when I give gifts and think of christmas, I think product that has been purchased or creative project that requires a costly amount of time. I associate gifts with being costly either time-wise or money-wise (which really are they same thing, you could say I spent one hour of time in exchange for money). Nonetheless, when people think of gifts (if they do at all), they associate them with cost.


So why does this all matter? Well because I ended up spending real money on digital downloads. Why? Because I wanted to show my friends that I had bought them something. the HBI guys didnt make that big of a deal when it came to the whole gifting feature during the sale. But it was the only reason I decided to get that for my friends.

To extrapolate this point, the idea is this past Christmas I spent money on information. Something I don't usually do, why would I? I could watch anime on hulu, listen to music on grooveshark,  or read books for free at barnes and noble. I am willing to pay for information when it comes to gifts.

I bought my friends books and games for the most part. Which are information. I honestly would of loved to get a hard disc copy of humble indie bundle with some nice box art to give to my friends rather than just the gifting e-mail, I wouldn't of minded putting the money down for that. Not enough information dealing (games, books, music) companies talked about a gifting feature at all. I am suggesting they should.

/Start Rant
Why? Because they will make several more sales just from me. There is a lot of information I love. I would of loved to gift an HD download of Carl Sagan's Cosmos to my friends, the samurai champloo HD, Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, an ebook version of A Short History of Nearly Everything, Dropbox space, Picassa Space, tetris for the cell phone, GIMP, any app I love on the PC like SRS, or the pomodoro guide, ANY piece of information I like  I would love to GIFT to people.
\End Rant

TL;DR
Game Devs, music artists, and authors please have a down-loadable gifting feature when selling your product, you might get one more customer, me.