Valve updated a help article recently, noting that they will no longer be supplying physical Steam gift cards due to scammers.
  • elgordino@fedia.io
    15·
    9 days ago

    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.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      9·
      9 days ago

      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

  • Triumph@fedia.io
    8·
    9 days ago

    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?

    • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
      10·
      9 days ago

      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.worksEnglish
      7·
      9 days ago

      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·
      9 days ago

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

  • black0ut@pawb.socialEnglish
    2·
    9 days ago

    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.worldEnglish
      11·
      9 days ago

      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.