I also find this update to be very disappointing. I frequently gifted small items to people who were not on my friend's list for a monthly screenshot contest.

It seems to me that a better solution would have been requiring an active OTP on an account of a certain age in order to send gifts from the Mogstation, or perhaps having the gift accounts region locked (although I did occasionally send gifts to people on other data centers.)

I hope they will reconsider this change so as not to penalize those of us who used the Mogstation gifting option for its intended purpose