Valve kills its retail gift card program due to scammers
Valve kills its retail gift card program due to scammers
Valve 因诈骗问题终止实体礼品卡计划
For years, Valve’s physical Steam gift cards have been the closest you could come to buying a Steam game at a brick-and-mortar store. Now, Valve says it is phasing out the production of new retail gift cards, citing a losing battle against scammers exploiting the hard-to-track payment method.
多年来，Valve 的实体 Steam 礼品卡是玩家在实体店购买 Steam 游戏最接近的方式。如今，Valve 表示正在逐步停止生产新的零售礼品卡，理由是难以追踪的支付方式被诈骗者利用，导致公司在打击诈骗的斗争中处于下风。
PC Guide was among the first to note the end of Valve’s retail gift card program, which was quietly announced in a recent update to a Steam support page. Since launching the retail cards in 2012, Valve says it has been fighting a constant battle with scammers, who instruct victims to purchase gift cards and share the pertinent details and security PIN.
PC Guide 最早注意到 Valve 零售礼品卡计划的终结，该消息是在 Steam 支持页面最近的一次更新中悄然发布的。Valve 表示，自 2012 年推出零售卡以来，他们一直在与诈骗者进行持续的斗争。诈骗者通常会诱导受害者购买礼品卡，并分享相关的详细信息和安全 PIN 码。
Those scammers can then resell the gift card details at a discount on gray-market sites to effectively launder the funds, creating an anonymous and hard-to-trace form of payment. Valve says it has made various moves to slow scammers, including placing limits on redemption and availability and adding a prominent warning on the cards themselves: “Never share a pin via email, social media or over the phone.”
随后，这些诈骗者会在灰色市场网站上折价转售礼品卡信息，从而有效地洗钱，创造出一种匿名且难以追踪的支付方式。Valve 表示，他们已采取多种措施来遏制诈骗者，包括限制兑换和供应，并在卡片上添加了醒目的警告：“切勿通过电子邮件、社交媒体或电话分享 PIN 码。”
But the company now admits that “scammers have adapted” and “continue to have an impact on Steam customers and other unsuspecting individuals.” Rather than continue to fight against that “impact,” Valve writes that it has “made the difficult decision to end the Steam Gift Card program at retail stores.”
但该公司现在承认，“诈骗者已经适应了”，并“继续对 Steam 用户和其他毫无戒心的个人造成影响”。Valve 写道，与其继续对抗这种“影响”，他们已“做出艰难决定，终止零售店的 Steam 礼品卡计划”。
Steam users will still be able to redeem existing physical gift cards, and retailers will be able to sell physical gift cards that are already in stores. But Valve estimates that those existing stocks will be completely gone by the end of 2026 as it ceases new production.
Steam 用户仍然可以兑换现有的实体礼品卡，零售商也可以继续销售店内现有的库存。但 Valve 预计，随着新生产的停止，这些现有库存将在 2026 年底前完全售罄。
The end of physical gift cards effectively severs Valve’s last link to the old brick-and-mortar retail world that Steam so effectively killed across the PC gaming landscape. When Steam was announced in 2002, Valve’s Gabe Newell sold it as a way to get around those annoying retailers altogether, “eliminating the overhead of physical goods distribution” and “leverag[ing] the efficiency of broadband to improve customer service and increase operating margins.”
实体礼品卡的终结实际上切断了 Valve 与传统实体零售世界的最后联系——而正是 Steam 在 PC 游戏领域有效地终结了这一世界。当 Steam 在 2002 年发布时，Valve 的 Gabe Newell 将其宣传为一种完全绕过那些令人烦恼的零售商的方式，旨在“消除实体商品分销的开销”，并“利用宽带的效率来改善客户服务并提高运营利润率”。
Over two decades later, though, Valve says there’s still a huge legitimate market for physical Steam gift cards, which are the most direct way for gamers to convert physical cash into digital PC games. In early 2024, Valve reported that it had tallied up $80 million in physical gift card redemptions during just the last 11 days of 2023.
然而，二十多年后，Valve 表示实体 Steam 礼品卡仍然拥有巨大的合法市场，这是玩家将现金转化为数字 PC 游戏最直接的方式。2024 年初，Valve 报告称，仅在 2023 年的最后 11 天里，实体礼品卡的兑换额就高达 8000 万美元。
That’s a significant market even for a multi-billion-dollar company like Valve, and one that Valve said has been a “massive benefit to developers.” At the same time, Valve wrote in 2024 that “physical cards are some of the most expensive payment methods we support,” no doubt thanks to the overhead associated with printing/shipping and support time devoted to dealing with scammed customers.
对于像 Valve 这样价值数十亿美元的公司来说，这仍然是一个重要的市场，Valve 称其对开发者来说是“巨大的福利”。与此同时，Valve 在 2024 年写道，“实体卡是我们支持的最昂贵的支付方式之一”，这无疑是因为与印刷/运输相关的开销，以及处理受骗客户所投入的支持时间。
So while Valve will miss the significant revenue it derives from physical gift cards each year, it will probably welcome the opportunity to finally be able to completely ignore the retail market. Customers, meanwhile, will still be able to purchase digital gift cards directly from Valve or add Steam funds via some prepaid debit cards available at retail (as long as there’s an address attached).
因此，虽然 Valve 会怀念每年从实体礼品卡中获得的巨额收入，但他们可能会欢迎这个终于能够完全忽略零售市场的机会。与此同时，客户仍然可以直接从 Valve 购买数字礼品卡，或者通过零售店提供的某些预付借记卡（只要附有地址）来充值 Steam 余额。