- Valve will soon put an end to physical gift cards
- It has actually been forced to end physical gift cards due to fraudsters’ customizations
- Once stock has expired across retailers, there will be no more physical gift cards
Valve will end physical Steam Gift Cards when inventory runs out across retailers.
As reported by Destructoid, this move is due to scammers using the service to take advantage of consumers.
Steam scams are by no means new, and many of them lead to stolen Steam accounts via scammers who reach out to users on Discord posing as Valve employees. It’s also reminiscent of reports suggesting that Apple’s physical gift card scam is costing buyers millions of dollars, which 9to5Mac highlighted.
Valve notes on the Steam support FAQ page that these physical gift card cases involve scammers posing as official agencies and contacting consumers over the phone to force them to buy gift cards to cover taxes, bills or other debts.
The latter doesn’t sound 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 law enforcement and retailers, but pulling the plug seems to be the best solution.
“As we’ve continued to introduce more and more restrictions, fraudsters have adapted,” Valve says. “They continue to have an impact on Steam customers and other unsuspecting individuals.
“So we’ve made the difficult decision to end the Steam Gift Card program at retail stores. As Steam Gift Cards run out of stock at retail stores, we will not be restocking them.”
Unsurprisingly, this has left several Steam users frustrated, especially on Reddit, with one in particular saying: “Fantastic job scammers, first you scam people out of their money, then you ruin everyone’s gift cards.”
These frustrations are justified as consumers will now only be able to purchase gift cards digitally, and with fraudsters easily adapting to changes, it is not impossible for future changes from Valve to dramatically adjust digital gift cards. We can only hope that Valve never has to go that far.
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