Valve to no longer offer physical gift cards due to scammers

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2026/06/valve-to-no-longer-offer-physical-gift-cards-due-to-scammer/

73 points · 11 comments · view on lemmy.world

11 Comments

elgordino@fedia.io · 14 pts · 92d (1 reply)

Probably for the best. I spoke to a cashier at a local game store once, she was explaining how terrible it was to see so many people coming in who were obviously being scammed but wouldn’t listen to the advice from the cashier. They preferred it when they didn’t have any to sell.

echodot@feddit.uk · 8 pts · 92d

Yeah when I worked at Apple I got so sick of trying to explain to people that the American IRS are not going to sue them for $100,000 if they don't give them some Apple gift cards.

I also at the Apple gift cards were especially funny because they were for such low denominations

Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 92d

Damn! How am i going to pay off the FBI for my pirated anime now?

Triumph@fedia.io · 7 pts · 92d (5 replies)

But isn't it literally less effort for someone to buy a digital gift card and hand over the card details to a scammer? Or am I missing something?

echodot@feddit.uk · 9 pts · 92d

I'm just imagining the scammers losing their minds trying to get my parents to install steam so they can buy gift cards.

If my mother is not receiving a constant stream of instruction she'll get bored and start clicking on random buttons. There's a reason that all my text messages for her are full of random emojis and gifs that she's accidentally added

ryathal@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 92d

Digital makes it much easier for steam to track. They can more easily identify steam accounts and emails that are part of scam networks. They have options like not allowing sales to be delivered to scammer@scam.com, or reverting transactions they believe are scams within 24 hours.

GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io · 7 pts · 92d (2 replies)

I think you need to be signed on steam to buy them online? That would make it much easier to track and stop scammers

Koenig2005@feddit.org · 1 pts · 92d (1 reply)

I just saw a video where it was mentioned that you can also buy the digital gift cards with a guest-checkout.

GottaHaveFaith@fedia.io · 3 pts · 92d

yeah you can do it now, at least an e-mail is needed, not sure about the rest of the flow

https://store.steampowered.com/join/?guest=1&purchaseType=gift&checkout=1&redir=https%3A%2F%2Fcheckout.steampowered.com%2Fcheckout%3Fcart%3D645849983502278820%26purchasetype%3Dgift

black0ut@pawb.social · 2 pts · 92d (1 reply)

So now there's no way to buy Steam credit without a card?

It's cool trying to stop scammers, but I feel like this move could hurt privacy.

calcopiritus@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 92d

There are digital payment methods that don't require a card.

I remember when I was a child there was "paysafe". Where you paid to a physical machine and get a code to spend online. I imagine it still exists.