Well, no more Steam gift cards as birthday presents from my employer, I guess. The colleagues will have to come up with something else. How annoying.
That sucks, they were the best for shady deals. Buy em with cash, and treat it like cash.
Say you didnt read the article without saying it
Scammers use steam cards to launder money. Hence the shady deals I talk about. I reread the article and I don’t see how my initial comment would make you think I didn’t read the article.
I hate gift cards but work gives them out for our birthdays each year. I always request games related gift cards. To hear that Steam are no longer selling them is disappointing considering that it’s my main gaming platform.
This really sucks. I give and receive Steam cards as gifts frequently and I know many people that only use steam because they can use cash to buy them. Most of these people will just pirate games now I imagine.
I remember saving up for those and then spending the money in Steam sales. Shame for all the kids who want to buy games that can’t use their parents credit card.
parents should just use PayPal. it requires you to approve purchases.
that or setup a steam family.
No one should use PayPal if they can help it.
I have to use it for a side gig I do. I make sure that as soon as money hits PayPal it goes right out and into my bank account. Fuck PayPal.
My bank lets me set up a kid debit card, I can see and approve purchases and set limits.
Also, IMO kids should either ask their parents to buy a game for them, or be old enough to have their own bank account.
Giving your kid a credit card is how they end up with a gambling addiction because AAA is an unsanctioned casino.
Bad thing in my opinion.
I used them to menage my funds to not to overspend.
Need to connect card to account, leaks happen.
More info to steam, you could use steam even without giving any personal details just by buying physical gift cards.
I had given them few times as gift.
Revolut single use cards. No saving, no leak.
I think there are others as well
One thing that can help with leaks is to not save your CC info with the account. Then it just gets used for the transaction and isn’t saved outside of the payment system, so less of a vector for it to make it on a leak database. Also helps control spending by adding more inertia between this side and the far side of a purchase.
Change to a bank that cares enough of their customers to enable virtual cards, you can create and revoke numbers as much as you like.
Relatives would give them as gifts to me as well.
I am sad about this.
You good bro? ;)
So, what scams are happening? Is this a “do not redeem” type of thing?
There are a lot of scams out there but a common one is to trick people into buying gift cards and giving scammers the info.
(Like calling your grandma and telling her you got kidnapped with an AI impersonation of your voice) or (stealing credit cards, using them to buy a shit load of cards and flipping those cards before the credit companies can cancel them)
Scammers sell the cards on 3rd party sites for cash and those sites resell them for a profit. You can often find deals for less than in retail stores.
It’s a grey area tho as there are some legitimate people just selling cards they got for a holiday and don’t want.
Like others have said, I only have debit cards, as does the large majority in my country. Credit cards are only ever useful while traveling. And I’m not going to gift my private info to data brokers like paypal just because I want video games. Meaning I’m literally looking at the end of an era, because I don’t know of any other way to purchase games on steam anymore.
Steam takes debit in certain regions. And a debit card, from the point of view of what private information is managed, is identical to a credit card. Many debit cards now even allow international use.
Sadly I’m not in one of those regions. Here are my available options:
I used to use paysafecards, they are prepaid single use codes you can buy physically
What provider is your debit card using? Is it not MasterCard or Visa? I’m genuinely curious, there are very few countries not duopolized by these two giants.
It’s called Maestro, which is owned by MasterCard. Which doesn’t help however since it has no credit card number
New Maestro Card haven’t been issued in a while. If you’d replace that card now, you’d likely get one cobranded girocard/MasterCard instead of girocard/Maestro. Works just like a credit card online. There’s a few banks thag issue girocards with no cobranding, but that’s rare.
Even most Sparkassen have started giving out a cobranded Master/Visa by default.
So what you said was true 10 years ago, but likely isn’t/soon won’t be anymore.
Ah! I have one of those too. It’s being retired soon, though, and banks using it are now do the switch to MasterCard for newly issued cards.
(Maestro is a MasterCard brand)
Edit: Nevermind, not every country is retiring Maestro as of today.
You have way more than I do, with more flexibility. Definitely not tied to Visa and MasterCard. Skrill for example, accepts crypto and debit. PaySafe I think is outside of the Visa network and takes debit for prepaid cards as well.
I took a look at it. Skrill is just Paypal with crypto. And I already excluded data brokers. I could maybe create a pipeline by buying monero, to charge my Skrill account, to then charge my Steam account. But that’s just too much of a hassle when FitGirl is right around the corner.
Sail the seas then m8
I only use debit cards on steam. But then my debit card had a Visa logo on it so maybe it’s different than what’s available in your country.
You have a Visa debit card, which can work like a credit card.
My debit card does not have a credit card number I can use in online forms, and thats the only card related options steam allows in my region
Prepaid visa’s not an option?
I’ve had to look up what that is, that’s how rare credit cards are here. It seems to exist. However, I’m reluctant to adopt a whole new payment method for one single use case. Also Visa and Mastercard aren’t necessarily more trustworthy than paypal and co.
Visa and Mastercard are the reason steam removed a bunch of adult games and itch.io removed all adult games.
Because a payment processor is a moral arbiter for what you spend your money on.
You could pay cash for the visa gift card, and just load the money into your Steam wallet. Then the only thing they would know is that a person (presumably) bought a visa gift card and put the money in Steam.
I have never seen a visa gift card in my life but I’ll keep a lookout. Thx for the suggestion
I can only speak for the US, but debit cards look identical to credit cards to Steam (Visa or MC, based on which one your bank uses. Look for the logo on your card).
It’s not ACH, you’re not giving them your banking info.
Our debit cards do not have a credit card number I could use in online payment forms.
Is Monzo not available in your country? That’s basically just a prepaid card that you link to a debit card or a credit card.
Looked it up. Not available AFAIK. Thx tho
You have a debit card?
Who doesn’t? Basically every adult has one. Or do u pay everything in cash? And don’t u get automatically a debit card when u open a giro bank account?
Debit and credit card are not the same card.
My point is you can add that into steam
What I learned from this thread is that you’re either in a region that allows debit as payment method, or your debit card has a credit card number. Sadly neither of those apply to me.
Oh, huh.
Credit card system continues to suck. Sorry.
Not everyone is american
Lots of countries use debit cards.
We have debit cards in America
What’s the difference ? I only ever heard of credit cards
I’m not sure, since I’ve never owned a credit card. Debit cards pull directly from your account and you have very limited credit available. Also you don’t have card numbers etc. you could use online.
I think you’re imagining the difference between them from a technological point of view to be much bigger than it actually is.
I have debit and credit cards, Visa and Mastercard for both. Using them feels identical; one draws from your bank account balance and the other goes towards an invoice sent to you at the end of the month.
When you pay with them, the vendors themselves don’t see any private information about you, other than the card number and the way your name is written on the card. Some of my cards only have my first initial and my last name.
They can, however, track that card number across multiple purchases or with partners to build a profile.
Visa and Mastercard themselves can see a lot more, but that’s a given if you use any kind of banking services anyway.
In terms of where they’re accepted, I’ve used them all over the world and the only time it mattered which type I use, is this one flight where Ryanair was not accepting debit when I was trying to buy water… Somehow you have to borrow money to eat/drink on board, which is just silly.
Also some Citi cards let you make a virtual account number that is revocable so you never send your real card data somewhere online
You can get the same thing if you use Apple pay or Google wallet.
better to have that with the bank than yet another party with visibility into your finances.
A debit card in DK is exactly like a credit card in every way except one; you can’t get credit, or anything related to credit.
I have a credit card, a debit card, and a savings card. But essentially they can all be just used interchangeably and you don’t really have to worry about it.
The big difference between a debit card and a credit card is that you don’t have to have the money in the account when you make the purchase with a credit card. But you can just think of it as a debit card and just use it like that, and not worry about the short-term zero interest loan options that they offer.
I don’t really use the savings card for anything, I in fact don’t know where it is, but it’s essentially just a debit card with a limited amount of money. They’re often used by kids whose parents top them up every now and then. As an adult they’re a good way to keep a handle on your accounts and prevent you from accidentally overspending. Although obviously you can just transfer obscene amounts of money into it, so you have to have some self-control or it doesn’t work.
Steam will take all of them.
As far as trusting the card companies goes, I don’t really trust any of them but I also don’t think they’re going to sell my data, there would be too much of a scandal if they did that.
but I also don’t think they’re going to sell my data, there would be too much of a scandal if they did that.
why do you think there would be even a little scandal?
How is that card even used if it doesn’t have a number? Can you use it only physically with payment terminals? I have a debit card and it can be used just like credit card but without the loans part obviously.
Can you use it only physically with payment terminals?
Yup. Every business has them tho. The modern terminals are barely bigger than the card itself.
Ok, that sounds almost like what we call a “credit card” here (FR) except they do have the numbers for online use…
that’s interesting. Here a debit and credit card are functionally identical (both have numbers etc) and only the source of the money changes
Never liked gift cards. Money you can only use in one place, and you don’t even save any money when buying it.
You can walk down to a local Walmart and slap a $20 on the counter, walking away with funds even if you have no car and no credit card.
Hard for a teenager to get steam games without this.
I was not aware that could be a problem (had a debit card £ as a teen when online buying/downloading games started).
even if you have a debit card, in much of the world unless it’s a visa/mastercard it’s not going to be accepted in many places online
my debit card (in canada) uses interac. it’s accepted basically everywhere in physical stores, but online it’s pretty much useless if you don’t also have paypal (which is also not accepted everywhere a credit card would be)
That sucks. Hopefully something can change that :/
I’m hoping GNU Taler takes off.
I’ll concede your point, though there are generic pre-paid cards that are not linked to a specific store.
Those have fees, though. Back when I didn’t have a bank account, it was already over $5 per card, so I assume it’s much higher 15 years later.
I’m with you but I also can see them useful to a degree. Children often want to get games from steam/nintendo store/EGS vbucks/etc and parents really do not want to enter their credit/debit card data everywhere under the anxiety of child abusing that card. Gift cards solve this problem.
Couldn’t they just implement a credit system? Parent does a one time purchase for Steam bucks and then they use that until they run out.
They do have such a system. If you click your username on the top of your desktop client (I’m on the Linux client but believe the windows one also works like this), there should be an item “View my wallet”, this will take you to a page where you can add money to it.
Or if it only shows up for me because I have a balance (sold some steam cards), go to Steam -> Settings and there should be an “Add funds” button right below your profile pic in the Account tab.
They only seem to support specific values (mine does 5, 10, 25, 50, 100). Oh and there’s a link to redeem gift card codes; you might already use this page to get there if you use gift cards.
We see today how bad it is to rely so much on visa and paypal for steam payments when they can control what they want and what they don’t want to see being sold on steam. I think gift cards could be an interesting alternative but idk.
IMO we need regulation. Banks and payment processors should not be allowed to refuse service to any legal activity.
That concerns are also really inconsistent. They don’t seem to have a problem with cigarettes and alcohol, and are quite prepared to authorise payments to strip clubs.
But they have a problem with porn games. How does that track?
I always get them at Sam’s Club, they’re around 5% off the face value there. Can’t remember the exact price but was somewhere around $18.92 for a $20 card. Not a huge discount but will definitely miss it.
A coffee shop used to offer a $10 gift card for every $40 gift card you bought (or something like that) around Christmas. It was meant to get people to buy them as gifts but we knew we were going to go there throughout the year anyway so we loaded up for ourselves.
Same but with haircuts. My mom used to get 4 for $40 cards around the holidays. She was very astute when it came to finding actually good deals.
I’m not the biggest fan of them either, but there are lots of ways to get them for an amount greater than you paid.
Also there is something to think about with gift cards I asked a friend why they always got me them as gifts and found what they said interesting. For them they wanted to get me a game, a Lego Set, or something similar. The gift cards let my friend give a gift while I get to choose which specific thing I get.
and you don’t even save any money when buying it.
The only time gift cards really make sense is when you can buy them for less than face value.
Gonna buy up all the local stock and re-sell it for profit
Tap for spoiler
/s
Word on the street is that a $20 steam gift card today is worth $22 tomorrow.
Scalping gift cards. Now that is a million dollar idea! (in debt)
