I think it is for the better. Digital gift cards are more convenient. Plus less paper and plastic use is a net positive for the environment as most people throw physical gift cards (that are redeemed digitally) in the trash anyways. Although it is good to acknowledge that people who will lose out on the attachment in physical sense, like wrapping it up for a friend and seeing the excitement on their faces or a kid or a teenager going getting a physical one with their pocket money cash. But this is mostly in the west though as in the East the concept of physical gift cards is long gone now and even kids spend money digitally through parental access payment methods.

DO NOT REDEEM!!!

When I was a kid physical gift cards where the only way I could pay for online games since my nobody at home had a credit card that accepts international transactions.

This sucks. I was reading how about fraudsters buy counterstrike items to launder money and it's crazy. They must have found steam cards are a huge part of the operation too.

I just want an alternative to the whole VISA/Mastercard BS and this one was the easiest.

Well that sucks, no more paying in cash for physical cards.

Back when I used to work retail all gift cards were inside the registers only allowed to be activated once the registers opened.

This meant it was less likely for someone to either swap gift cards for counterfeit ones, or take pictures of all the cards waiting for someone to activate them and drain the balance.

No I think this is an awful move. Digital Gift Cards will still be available. And I think for gifting its actually really nice to still have.

I worked on a retail store for a time, it was sad that a lot of old people spent a lot on money on gift cards, specially Steam and Apple gift cards because they didn't even knew what they were purchasing, and 7/10 times when you warned them about a scam they tell you to eat shit, but it was funny because it was like: An famous singer is contacting me, just to tell me that if I give them a $100 gift card they will send me $100.000.000

And there were some more extreme cases of old people who lived alone and didn't know much about technology, that it was like a rolplay but on real life and the currency to keep rolplaying was the gift cards.

And another thing is that the old (due to the scammers) were the most unbearable people in the world, because the scammers didn't ask, they demanded gift cards, and they were always asking for $100 gc. If the elderly people couldn't get them, they threatened to stop talking to them, so we had to deal with unbearable old people constantly.

Great the discounts you get on them at Costco just vanished now, I guess. That sucks.

And it gives those card companies more ability to screw them like they did before.

This was honestly not a very wise decision.

Wait that’s still a thing? I haven’t been able to find one in years

I was looking for Sream gift cards as birthday presents for some friends 2 months or so ago. No wonder I couldn't find them.

Shit, there goes another alternative to my VISA card T-T

Ugh I loved getting these as gifts from non-gamer family. A Visa/MC gift card I'll just spend on necessary things but a Steam gift card was for games.

That's probably a big deal in Asia. I get the impression banking is not so smooth an experience out there (most specifically in Japan), and instead most people still work directly with cash; so any gacha game or online store will very much rely on convenience stores to stock their cards.

oh, ffs. well, piracy it is then.