- Valve will soon end physical gift cards
- It has effectively been forced to eliminate physical gift cards due to scammers’ adaptations.
- Once stock runs out at retailers, there will be no more physical gift cards.
Valve will end physical Steam gift cards once supplies run out at retailers.
As reported by Destructoid, this measure is due to scammers using the service to take advantage of consumers.
Steam scams are not new by any means, and many of them lead to the theft of Steam accounts through scammers approaching Discord users acting as Valve employees. Also remember reports suggesting that physical Apple gift card scams are costing buyers millions of dollars, as highlighted by 9to5Mac.
Valve notes on the Steam Support FAQ page that these physical gift card cases involve scammers posing as official agencies and contacting consumers by phone to force them to purchase gift cards to cover taxes, bills, or other debts.
The latter doesn’t seem too far removed from digital gift card scams or Steam account theft, and this has been an ongoing battle for Valve, with the help of authorities and retailers, but pulling the plug seems to be the best solution.
“As we continue to impose more and more restrictions, scammers have adapted,” Valve says. “They continue to have an impact on Steam customers and other unsuspecting people.
“So we have made the difficult decision to end the Steam gift card program at retail stores. As Steam gift cards sell out at retail stores, we will not be restocking them.”
Unsurprisingly, it has left several Steam users frustrated, especially on Reddit, with one in particular stating: “Great scammers, first they scam people out of their money and then they ruin gift cards for everyone.”
Those frustrations are justified since consumers will now only be able to purchase gift cards digitally, and since scammers easily adapt to the changes, it’s not impossible that Valve will make future changes that drastically adjust digital gift cards. We can only hope Valve never has to go that far.
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