I've never heard of a restricted account., weird.

I know someone who has an account and isn't allowed to purchase games, but I think that's different.

I believe they;re referencing this:

https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212159529-I-cannot-buy-a-game-as-a-gift-why-

Best thing to do is to get someone else to buy whatever game you want as a gift for your friend, problem is that means going to the trade thread and trying to trade for a GOG game without giving them GOG games, which is near impossible. Worst thing to do is buy the game on G2A or other similar key reseller sites.

I can buy the GOG game you're looking for and give you the code and we can discuss what you can give me in return later just change your chat settings from private to public.

There is one roundabout way out of this.

1. Purchase the game for your account.

2. Do not touch the game in your account (You can go to your library to see if the game is there, but don't even click on it).

3. Contact support and tell them you want your order to be converted into a gift code (use the right support category for it. You can go to your orders and settings page, click on your order number to be directed to support from there).

Although since your purchase is a little time-sensitive (Christmas), if you can find someone trust-able that you can trade with as suggested by Ogdin, that wouldn't be too bad I guess.

I have the same problem, but I don't know how long I still have to wait. It said 3 months, but it doesn't state from when so I don't know how much is left of those months.

The countdown begins after you make a $10 personal purchase.

Yes but I don't remember when that was. Is there any way to tell?

When was your last purchase? What does your order history say?
https://www.gog.com/account/settings/orders

Lets see... My last purchase was yesterday, but when I tried to buy a gift it said that I won't be able to until "three months after completing purchases worth $10".
According to your link it looks like all my first games were gifts from family members or free gifts from GOG, and my first purchase that I made myself wasn't until Nov 24, 2017. Looks like I still have 2 months to wait? Disappointing but it seems to be because of security reasons so I guess it can't be helped :)

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! :)

You're welcome.

It's a bit unfortunate in your case, however the policy was introduced because of a large number of fraudulent purchases made with stolen credit cards, which were later reversed, costing GOG and the devs a lot of money. These gifts were usually then sold at sites like G2A and the only people that didn't get hurt were the thieves. So now there is this little restriction to ensure that the users who buy gifts aren't trying to pull the same thing.

Ouch! That explains why they had to add that restriction. Too bad that the only way to make things harder for thieves is to make things a bit harder for everyone, but that's life :) There will be more sales in the future, so I'll buy the gift then instead :)

Thank you, everyone, for your ideas.
I've contacted support about this and hope they'll be able to give me an official solution.
If not then Ogdin, I might take you up on your offer (I think the simplest thing I can give you in return is the money it costs). I did think of what you've suggested when I searched online for a way and saw some mentions of asking to turn a newly-bought game to a gift code, but doing it like that seemed rather dishonest, as I think that's meant to be done if you actually did mean to buy it for yourself at first or something. Yes, I was.

It doesn't really, in my opinion.
A better solution would be to only let you send a gift directly to another user (and possibly prevent re-gifting of it if necessary).
People should be able to buy gifts without being active users.
Thieves and stolen credit cards are a common blight everywhere, but this is the only website I've ever seen that has implemented this kind of restriction.

EDIT
Support came through with a solution.
They also replied within 3 minutes; I must say I'm rather impressed. o_o

Really? Must be nice. A few weeks ago I had an issue with a giveaway and needed to buy 5+ copies of a game. All I got was "We don't do that."

*grumble*

Glad it worked for you. I actually am.