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Steam will no longer offer physical gift cards (pawb.social)

submitted 5 days ago by PonyOfWar@pawb.social to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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Kinda sucks for me, as I've almost exclusively used gift cards for the last few years. I get a bonus tax-free credit card by my employer, which I can only use at retail stores. So those were a great way for me to use that card to buy games. It was also a good option for people who wanted to avoid payment providers like Visa/Mastercard etc. Oh well.

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[-] MantisToboggon@lemmy.world 48 points 5 days ago

This is why we can't have nice things.

[-] TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 30 points 5 days ago

Rip to the kids who's parents don't feel comfortable giving steam their credit card info

[-] CluckN@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago

Wouldn’t a Visa gift card still work?

[-] RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip 11 points 5 days ago

Yeah, but that $5 fee is kind of a killer. Maybe one of those reloadable cards like greendot? Their fees are usually not bad if you use them regularly.

[-] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Worth mention, every Market is very very different. In the US, we tend to think of three very clearly defined Lanes of credit cards, bank accounts, and then all of the weird middlemen products that sit on top of bank accounts like Zelle or Venmo, and we consider all of them either slow, expensive or both. Bank to bank methods are considered the ABS the worst because most of them have been built on top of the ancient, antiquated ACH Network, which basically predated the fax machine and sometimes has 72 hour delays on either end of the transaction.

In much of the world people can just whip out their phones and use their Bank numbers like phone numbers to send $$ point to point, instantly and with zero transaction fees.

I made a friend in another country (while I resided there) who was willing to buy me $200 USD worth of steam wallet funds in their local currency, and I had to pay them with a separate transaction for the favor using PayPal of all things, as if it were 2002. LOL. It was worth it to get at their regional pricing, however it disallowed me from paying for any of my friends games I would normally gift to friends, since Valve wisely restricts cross region gifting and cuts down on a lot of their scam & arbitrage traffic with that.

Tl;Dr - - money comes in dozens, hundreds of different flavors, speeds, and behavior. ALSO, kudos to Valve for being able to think of it in enough dimensions to garner the widest audience possible.

[-] saigot@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

I think post pandmemic and as millennials become the dominant parental group, the number of people in that group is a lot smaller than it once was.

[-] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

What about using a virtual credit card?

[-] TheGreenWizard@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

I guess, I'm just speaking from experience. My parents were slow to trust with stuff like that. Same thing with using their card for iTunes lol.

[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 32 points 5 days ago

BTW the missing link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/78E3-7431-1E88-AD59#retailers

[-] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 21 points 5 days ago

Yeah this kinda sucks. For me the move was buying the cards at Sams Club for the slight discount (about $1 off per $20 card). This move paired with Steam sales was the justification I needed to include gaming in the budget at all.

[-] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 5 days ago

Classic "can't have nice things because people like pulling fast ones" moment, unfortunately.

[-] sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Its almost certainly part of the ongoing lawsuit Valve is having with New York.

NY AG claims (among other things) that Valve knows their Steam Wallets and Steam Items and giftcards form part of a system which allow the proceeds of alleged gambling to be converted into real world money, and that Valve doesn't do enough to stop this.

Valve claims they do their best to find and shutdown secondary markets (which are against their TOS) that facilitate that, and well now they're just pulling the plug on another part of that loop, where all of it has to exist for all of NY AG's claims to be true.

[-] mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

Honestly? Let people gamble, and I'm saying this as someone who isn't big on gambling themselves.

[-] x00z@lemmy.world 14 points 5 days ago

I hate this.

People who are going to get scammed like this will get scammed in much stupider ways too. Not to mention the stores around here have most Steam gift cards right next to the Paysafe cards.

[-] Beth@piefed.social 10 points 5 days ago

Bummer. I used to buy a handful of these a year as gifts.

[-] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago

They just see gift cards as a small portion of the market and can't be bothered dealing with their problems anymore. There are other ways they could approach the issue: eg gift cards can only be for buying games, not DLC or in-game credit. Would lower their utility to thieves/scammers enormously - as they attempt to on-sell the cards in grey markets asap, or buying in-game items and immediately trading them (before the scam is reported).

This response sucks and it feels pretty fucking weak for a company as filthy rich as Steam.

Credit cards have many of the same problems, but I'm sure they won't be bailing on them anytime soon (and insisting on linked bank accounts or something).

[-] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 5 days ago

G2A is a good example of a marketplace where steam games and keys are for sale that were purchased with stolen credit cards (through gift cards to launder accordingly).

It is a shitty situation, but as a former IT worker, this is a massive legal liability and the costs of protecting customers are likely to only grow, not level or shrink.

Also, steam accounts are quite easy to get ahold of that are off Valve's radar. I'm not personally inclined, but there are things like CS and TF2 trading bot accounts that could be used as vectors to launder items (and like I said earlier, steam keys/games can be sold via gray market websites like G2A).

There is nuance here, and I'd imagine the staff members behind the scenes have more than enough data to make an educated decision (if they didn't give a shit they would leave the cards on the shelves because they clearly make money).

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[-] Poopfeast420@lemmy.zip 4 points 5 days ago

gift cards can only be for buying games, not DLC or in-game credit

That's even worse.

You'll either have the balance on the actual gift card, not in your wallet anymore, and potentially a bunch of cards with a few bucks each lying around, that you need to keep track of.

Or you add a secondary wallet, just for physical gift cards, and people will get confused why they can't buy something, when Steam says they have the funds.

I'm pretty whatever about this change, since it doesn't impact me.

PaysafeCard is an alternative, if it's available in your region, or depending on the amount of scams involving the physical cards, Steam should just eat the cost of the additional support needed to combat this better.

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[-] Xerxos@lemmy.ml 6 points 4 days ago

On the one hand, I can understand the people who used Steam cards being pissed. On the other hand, I'm impressed with Steam for putting scamming victims over profit.

Remember: Valve made money from gift cards, whether from scammers or legit users. They chose to give up this money just to avoid supporting the scammers. If everybody did this, scammers would have a much harder time.

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[-] uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 4 days ago

The last time I was given a steam gift card obtained at a brick-and-mortar Gamestop, it was a hash of numbers printed on a receipt I had to (painfully) type into Steam manually.

It didn't even come on a pretty card, and that was about ten years ago.

[-] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 days ago

Largely regional. They were on a rack in half of all the convenience stores I saw in South Korea just last year.

If you don't mind just a bit of AI , you can use your phone to capture the string of numbers and copy it to your clipboard these days.

It's lame to trust the machines, but as I age I'm grateful for saving what vision I have left for the actual pixels in my games.

[-] Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Is OCR even really AI?

[-] Miaou@jlai.lu 3 points 4 days ago

It is, it's just that AI is a word that means "expensive chatbots" nowadays. A shame for those of us who work(ed) in the field before openai became popular

[-] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

I mean, when it's the "Google button" that also summarizes the screen contents, implying at least some degree of data exfiltration from our devices, I would say so.

[-] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago

What scams were those?

The main people impacted by this will be minors with no other way to buy anything from Steam…

[-] phailhaus@piefed.social 18 points 5 days ago

Old people getting called/emailed, being convinced they owe either the government or the scammer money, and then bring told to go buy thousands in gift cards.

It's a big business. Over $200 million a year in the US.

[-] defrostedLasagna4921@piefed.zip 9 points 5 days ago

We live with a guy who's been getting scammed for a while now. He just won't listen when we tell him. I highly doubt this change will affect him. They'll just go to a different type of gift card.

[-] schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 5 days ago

Sounds like getting rid of Steam gift cards won't solve that problem, they can do the same with other gift cards or even entirely different methods. Is that worth it to exclude minors or other people with no other way to pay?

[-] PonyOfWar@pawb.social 17 points 5 days ago

This won't fix the problem, but it'll make it somebody else's.

[-] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 5 days ago

They are not fighting scammers with this. It seems that they just do not desire to be caught in scammer business.

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[-] Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

This isn't the first time a company has canceled doing gift cards cause of this problem. It wouldn't even be weird to watch the entire concept of gift cards die off due to this problem.

Hell Iv seen major stores flat out stop selling gift cards. Or require really absurd shit like 3 day wait periods to buy them. To try to combat the issue.

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[-] DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 days ago

Well how the fuck is my family going to gift me credit when they don't use steam,???

[-] new_world_odor@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

They have a guest checkout option for this

[-] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

My family likes to act like doing anything outside of their usual routine will kill them. If they can't buy it while picking up frozen dinners, I won't be getting it.

[-] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 5 points 5 days ago

Also RIP all those poor bastards who were using these gift cards to disguise the true amount of their gaming expenditures from a spouse or partner.

Old scenario - "I was just getting some stuff at the grocery store honey."

New workflow - "Hey, what the fuck is this $59 transaction for steam games on our credit card?!?"

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[-] chunes@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago

You can't lock kids away from the internet and then do this. Pick one.

I remember being able to walk into any store and you'd see a huge wall of gift cards for WoW, PlanetSide, City of Heroes, etc. My childhood would've sucked if I hadn't been able to pay for my MMO subscriptions that way.

[-] Mwa@thelemmy.club 5 points 5 days ago

I hope stores will still offer digital giftcards.

[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago

So to give someone a steam gift card now you have to send it directly to their steam account?

[-] IronBird@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

just give them $, everyone would orefer $ to a gift card

[-] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago

There are a lot of corners of society that consider just giving cash still very rude. There are a lot of Kool-Aid drinkers out there.

[-] Ryanmiller70@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Damn this was a nice stocking stuffer I'd get every year (either others getting for me or me getting for others).

[-] Gmak2442@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

Bad news. I think this was pretty cool.

[-] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago

This is a huge blow to me. I'm not sure what to do now, because the Steam Gift cards was a major reason to use Steam for me.

[-] Truscape@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 points 5 days ago

Technically pre-paid debit cards will serve the same purpose if you still want to use cash to buy a card to redeem steam cash with. You could also use something like PayPal if you don't want to expose your card directly.

I got steam gift cards as presents growing up, so I feel ya though.

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this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2026

218 points (98.7% liked)

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