Valve updated a help article recently, noting that they will no longer be supplying physical Steam gift cards due to scammers.
Since 2012, you could go into certain stores and pick up a Steam Wallet gift card, which could then be used to redeem the code and add funds directly into your Steam account for use later. They did make quite nice gifts for people, but sadly once the current stock is gone, Valve will not be supplying retailers with any more. Valve continues to offer the digital version, so you can still e-send someone a gift card for use on Steam, just no physical cards when they're all used up.
As spotted by SteamDB, the help page now notes:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.Can I purchase Steam Gift Cards at retailers?
Yes, but only for a limited time.
We introduced Steam Gift Cards to retail stores back in 2012, and added the digital program in 2017. Unfortunately, scammers use gift cards from major brands like Steam to take advantage of all people all over the world.
We’ve responded to gift card scams over the years by taking a number of actions to protect customers, including:
- Working with retailers
- Working with law enforcement
- Making changes to the cards, including adding a prominent scam warning
- Limiting redemption to be in the currency of your Steam wallet
- Limiting availability of cards
- Removing cards from sale when we observed abnormal activity
As we have continued to put more and more restrictions in place, scammers have adapted. 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 locations, we will not be restocking them. We expect all retailers to be out of stock by the end of 2026. Though we will no longer be selling physical gift cards, you will still have the ability to use your existing gift cards on Steam whenever you choose, subject to local laws.
We also continue to offer Steam Digital Gift Cards, and are working to make this an even better experience. Guest checkout, which we added last year, is another way for family members and friends to gift Steam users with a digital card anytime.
You can learn more about gift card scams here.
About the author - Liam Squires-Hand
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can follow me personally on Mastodon [External Link].
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104 comments
Quoting: PyrateYou might be misunderstanding RedHats treatment of their free open source offerings.Quoting: LoudTechieIt was more about how fast they jumped on that. I remember within the same newsfeed that day, I read how System76 CEO advising open source devs to hold on for a bit because he was exploring exclusion for FOSS OS's, and shortly after SystemD implements the thing.Quoting: PyrateOn the age gating fiasco.Quoting: LoudTechieI think it's an issue of balance. Taking the SystemD example, when is it that the community draws the line ? Personally, the comically-fast and instant compliance with age verification fiasco a month or two ago was it for ne. I'm sort of coerced to continue to use SystemD currently, even though that was the final straw for me and I'd rather use something else now.Quoting: PyrateOn the hyped up cryptobro part.Quoting: tuubiI view people who get very passionate about crypto the same way I view enthusiastic small-time stock traders. They keep talking my ear off about how they make (or save) money with it and everyone should do it, and I indulge them to a point because I'm nice and patient like that (in real life more than online), but I just don't find any of it interesting. Money is a necessity and I've never been wealthy enough to ignore it. It's just not something I could ever get passionate about.Im sorry, but point to me where I did this here, where did I talk about making or saving money, market price, hype and all that wall street crap ?
Monero would protect my financial activity from heavily regulated banks and my government, which I'm a lot less concerned about. Some communities have excellent reasons to hide this activity, but most of us do not.Only if you choose to. You can disclose your transactions for taxes or any other reason. I could explain how it works but I'm getting fed up with still being talked to like a crypto bro, I'll just share that optional transparency is a built-in function into a Monero wallet for auditing and taxes etc.
I'm not paranoid and this isn't about paranoia. Speaking for myself for example, I recognise what is a real and what is a more theoretical danger when I'm constructing my threat model, but most of the time, I use privacy tools out of principle more than out of immediate need. This is something I feel is lost for many people recently, at least that's what I'm getting online. Recently I keep recalling that one Luke Smith youtube video about in projects like Linux, how users are slowly abandoning the freedom hard lines started with Free Software and GNU etc. I think we need more hardasses, the Stallman type, so we don't drift away in convenience and complacency.
You're not being treated like a cryptobro. You're experiencing something even more frustrating:
"I've nothing to hide."
A cryptobro would get fundamental disbelief in the promises they make, not in their value.
"crypto is decentralized": except for all the exit scams.
"crypto is the future": except for all the exit scams.
"crypto can do anything": you don't know what you're talking about.
"crypto ...": I'm done hearing about these scams.
As to why this is frustrating,
a. because it devalues other people's needs.
b. because it undercounts one's reliance on fundamental rights.
To say it with a quote I got from schneiers website, but attributed to someone else.
Saying you don't need privacy, because you've nothing to hide is like saying you don't need free speech, because you have nothing to say.
About the complacency part.
I disagree kinda.
Users are going to the centralized semi-free options, because they come from fully proprietary systems and are used to thinking that way and have become to love the strengths of the existing systems.
In general it's going in the right direction.
Just not in the jumps hardliners and early adopters believe in.
Also even a little extra freedom helps a lot.
If Redhat sufficiently fucks up systemD we can fork it with a patch. Would this be a lot of work, yes. Would this be less work than the entire Wine project(which tackles the Windows equivalent) easily, because we have the source code.
Do proprietary kernel modules render your system less free and give root to dangerous parties, absolutely. Still I can patch the interface to limit their power and repair their mistakes For Windows and Mac that requires a jailbreak.
Do locked bootloaders illegally, but unrepentant limit consumer choice. Undeniably, but they still can't sue you under the DMCA for a jailbreak.
Or an example from this forum. If our proprietary electron program botches their testing we can still patch electron without any license problems.
Hardasses are important they remind us how we can improve the world, but they're too blinded by their rage to see the the individual value of the incremental improvements.
So it's like a continuous battle to balance out the hardass-ness with the complacency. I tend to lean more on the former (even though I don't at all feel like I'm doing a lot of work in doing so, it just seems to me everyone else is so lazy and quick to sideline what they claim to believe in). But as long as the right people don't go all the way and they don't lose the plot, you're right in that fighting back is possible.
Also, about regulations being a necessity etc etc, I get it. But I really won't play along if any countermeasure gets implemented ends up chipping away at one of the rights that were once given, that's in brief my angle on all that 'the system is important, actually'.
That was a reaction to a passed law.
Yes, it's problematic, but the reason they can get away with it is that the government is backing them.
Anyone who wants to make that fork has to fight the law and [we know the law often wins.](https://genius.com/The-clash-i-fought-the-law-lyrics)
Most distros also include an Api for handling USA crypto export controls.
And sure, they would've eventually had to by law, it still counts as a redflag for me.
To them it's a place to bêta test and get professional feedback on new features.
The law had already passed parliament and they were supposed to implement it as fast as possible without destabilizing their main product.
By placing it in their open source offering they could proof to be working on the stabilization part, granting them the legalistic goodwill to postpone implementing it in their main offering later.
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Quoting: PhlebiacNot anymore.Quoting: LoudTechieIf Redhat sufficiently fucks up systemD we can fork it with a patch.FWIW, the primary SystemD developer has been an employee of Microsoft for some time now.
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Quoting: PyrateOn the appropriateness of this forum for this discussion.Quoting: LoudTechieForgot to reply to this, sorry. I like your perspective, I find it interesting. I do feel like going deeper into this though is well beyond the topic here and this is not the place.Quoting: PyrateYeah you seem to have a low view of the naive.Quoting: LoudTechieI simply no longer take "I have nothing to hide" people seriously. Maybe in time they'll realise how naive a statement that is.Quoting: tuubiOn the anonymity thingQuoting: PyrateI know, you come from a different angle. My example was mostly about the traders. But both groups (and I'm not talking about you, specifically) want to talk to me about money/currency, or how I'm using it wrong, or maybe how I should use this or that tech to get around the system.Quoting: tuubiI view people who get very passionate about crypto the same way I view enthusiastic small-time stock traders. They keep talking my ear off about how they make (or save) money with it and everyone should do it, and I indulge them to a point because I'm nice and patient like that (in real life more than online), but I just don't find any of it interesting. Money is a necessity and I've never been wealthy enough to ignore it. It's just not something I could ever get passionate about.Im sorry, but point to me where I did this here, where did I talk about making or saving money, market price, hype and all that wall street crap ?
Sorry that I kinda grouped you in with the cryptobros. In my defence, you compared me to Windows and WhatsApp users, which is way worse in my opinion. 😁
Quoting: PyrateYes, but this is a solution looking for a problem, or rather a solution to someone else's problem, as far as I can tell. And this isn't a disagreement you can fix by explaining. It's not intellectual laziness or lack of understanding on my part, and even less about giving up privacy for convenience. I wouldn't have been using Linux for ~25 years if that was the case, and I'd probably have owned an Android or Apple mobile device at some point. Or caved in and got on WhatsApp or LinkedIn or whatever social media I've been cajoled to join over the years. As I said, I like my privacy, but not everything privacy-related is equal in importance.Monero would protect my financial activity from heavily regulated banks and my government, which I'm a lot less concerned about. Some communities have excellent reasons to hide this activity, but most of us do not.Only if you choose to. You can disclose your transactions for taxes or any other reason. I could explain how it works but I'm getting fed up with still being talked to like a crypto bro, I'll just share that optional transparency is a built-in function into a Monero wallet for auditing and taxes etc.
I don't mind that Monero exists, but if it's ever accepted as a mainstream currency, its use needs to be regulated and monitored, losing many of its apparent benefits.
Quoting: PyratePeople will always fall for scams. That's not a problem that'll ever go away. Which is why we need governments, laws and regulations to protect the vulnerable. Of course governments do that with varying success and enthusiasm, but that's a political and social problem that doesn't have a technical solution.Quoting: LoudTechiealso relevant to this discussion.Even though I can't imagine how that could happen, (just like how I cant believe peoole sfill fall for gift card scams), you're probably right. I wonder when this stops being about a problem with gift cards and currencies, and more about people not thinking clearly when falling for these scams.
Valve will never accept monero, because it's anonymous and decentralized.
The scammers for which they sacrificed their own gift cards would exploit exactly this decentralization and anonymity to hide their activity.
Anonymity from the bank is still achieved.
Only the regulator gets access to this information this way.
Also anonymity is valuable for everybody, because its a big part of our shield against oppression. In transactions and in communications. It's all the same.
Nothing to hide is a myth(kinda).
In this case for example you wouldn't be comfortable sharing your transaction details with me(don't do it please) proving there's at one person you want to hide this data from.
You don't know [who ](https://unbanx.substack.com/p/banks-are-selling-your-data-heres)your bank is sharing it with(maybe I'm it) or [what](https://artoftruth.org/data-broker-stalking-spokeo-harassment/) they're using it for.
Also anonymity is a herd immunity thing. Only when we're anonymous together are we truly anonymous(simplest case, when I know Monero has only one payer and one payed all transactions can easily be traced).
On the regulation thing.
I disagree that finance needs to be regulated on the current level.
It needs to be limited on the current level.
If crypto wants to succeed it must find a way to implement the currently centralized controls in a decentralized manner.
So not by sacrificing transaction anonymity, so the centralized police and banks can take care of it.
No by, building those controls in the system itself.
First start by copying the features of a good banking app.
MFA, double naming, transaction tagging, daily limits, blacklists, geoblocking, etc.
From that moment it can at least call itself a real decentralized alternative to banks.
If it wants to become an alternative to financial regulators.
It needs to obtain dedicated Big Fish controls, trusted judgement, sanctions, white listing, public minting, etc.
So contrary to you I believe Monero like crypto has great potential. Contrary to Pyrate I think it's not there yet.
I think naivety is a great good.
It's trust the glue of our society.
People assume that it will be alright and don't look in that direction, because someone they trust handles the issue.
They believe they've nothing to hide, because they believe the things they want hidden are already hidden.
I'm simply a security engineer. It's my passion to patch the distance between trust and trustworthiness with cold hard logic, so society can get used to an even more trustworthy world.
Edit:
In a way the naive are just like the hardasses they show us how our society should be.
This is how I would ideally like the equation to be: the people should always be critical, hard-ass, and pick on the smallest things when it comes to their governments. Meanwhile governments should stop what I can only describe as "everyone gets punished and treated as a criminal" with the increasing regulations, and instead return to this naive and trust-based outlook on society.
I would actually argue that we've finally arrived on a subject the GOL forum rules allow(thanks for the tolerance mods) and still about a subject relevant to the news.
Appropriate measures for earned distrust, but if you want to discuss this somewhere else I can post my mastodon handle, so you can DM me there with information about more appropriate channels.
On the maybe forum relevant part:
Spoiler, click me
How should citizens behave toward each other and foreign governments according to you?
With the same distrust as they do towards their government or the naive trust the government has in them?
Right now it's primary the government's job to make certain they can interact with them on trust, but your proposal for how to deal with scams seems you lean more toward distrust.(As an IT trained figure this might surprise you. The internet is relatively new and disruptive. Governments haven't yet managed to get a full grip on the thing yet)
The reason society went with trust is, because assuming the other party acts in good faith is much better for business. A lot less time is spend checking and correcting other people's behavior and a lot more time is used actually producing.
To stay on topic in my examples. The resource usage of crypto currencies and especially Monero reflects this lots of energy and hardware is wasted checking, preventing and confirming nobody is tracing, minting, taking or cloning crypto, because we don't trust anyone to do it.
Although I've ideas how to minimize the damage, this still stays fundamentally true.
This is of course only trust as long the other party acts actually in good faith.
As such instead of full trust we outsource our distrust to the government, which being a central party can do this much more efficiently.
Limiting us to only distrusting the government instead of everybody and that's a burden we share with everybody, allowing us to not even check all interactions with government in the assumption that others will check it.
With the same distrust as they do towards their government or the naive trust the government has in them?
Right now it's primary the government's job to make certain they can interact with them on trust, but your proposal for how to deal with scams seems you lean more toward distrust.(As an IT trained figure this might surprise you. The internet is relatively new and disruptive. Governments haven't yet managed to get a full grip on the thing yet)
The reason society went with trust is, because assuming the other party acts in good faith is much better for business. A lot less time is spend checking and correcting other people's behavior and a lot more time is used actually producing.
To stay on topic in my examples. The resource usage of crypto currencies and especially Monero reflects this lots of energy and hardware is wasted checking, preventing and confirming nobody is tracing, minting, taking or cloning crypto, because we don't trust anyone to do it.
Although I've ideas how to minimize the damage, this still stays fundamentally true.
This is of course only trust as long the other party acts actually in good faith.
As such instead of full trust we outsource our distrust to the government, which being a central party can do this much more efficiently.
Limiting us to only distrusting the government instead of everybody and that's a burden we share with everybody, allowing us to not even check all interactions with government in the assumption that others will check it.
Last edited by LoudTechie on 13 Jun 2026 at 9:34 am UTC
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Quoting: CyrilGuys, I'm very curious... what do you think of the Ğ1 ("June"), then?In short:
[https://duniter.org/](https://duniter.org/)
Fun curiosity it doesn't address most of the problems commonly associated with crypto and seems uniquely vulnerable to 51% percent attacks, but it takes enough of a social approach that I a technical trained figure can see social forces conspiring to prove me wrong.
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