Valve will stop making physical gift cards in 2026, so we will see the stock waning as time goes on and probably it will dry up before 2026 ends. This is a huge shift in how things operate and it might make things complicated for people who deal with region locking. I predict that this might cause the era of piracy to rise even further, and considering how expensive and prohibitive everything is getting, there’s more justifications piling up for people to return to the seven seas of gaming. As much as it is the right thing to support people in the industry, we have to understand the companies take the bigger share here.
Valve against physical products
Scammers have been relying on multiple techniques to get their hands on money for a very long time, and physical gift cards are one of them. Usually, there’s ways to defeat the system and make infinite money glitches by just stealing the cards, getting the code, and then putting them back in the place they were. These are objects that can be carried easily and in a sneaky way, not to mention that they also take resources to be made, so perhaps transitioning to digital in this case is a win for us.
However, Valve now holds a digital only monopoly, and they have never tried to sell physical games in recent times like how the Orange Box used to be sold. If Valve is smart, they would realize that there is an untapped market for physical media, and that we need to aim for a better world where people can own what they paid for. But considering they also push for DRM practices and other shady things, relying on a big company like Valve isn’t the smartest choice to make in the current days we live.
