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 post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
304 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
85342 readers
5769 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
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.
So, what scams are happening? Is this a "do not redeem" type of thing?
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.
load more comments
(4 replies)
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.
Relatives would give them as gifts to me as well.
I am sad about this.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
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
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
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.
load more comments
(30 replies)
Gonna buy up all the local stock and re-sell it for profit
Tap for spoiler
/s
load more comments
(1 replies)
Never liked gift cards. Money you can only use in one place, and you don't even save any money when buying it.
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.
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.
load more comments
(5 replies)
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?
load more comments
(5 replies)
view more: next ›