Gonna buy up all the local stock and re-sell it for profit
Tap for spoiler
/s
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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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 not the biggest fan of them either, but there are lots of ways to get them for an amount greater than you paid.
Also there is something to think about with gift cards I asked a friend why they always got me them as gifts and found what they said interesting. For them they wanted to get me a game, a Lego Set, or something similar. The gift cards let my friend give a gift while I get to choose which specific thing I get.
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.
and you don’t even save any money when buying it.
The only time gift cards really make sense is when you can buy them for less than face value.
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.
I'll concede your point, though there are generic pre-paid cards that are not linked to a specific store.
Those have fees, though. Back when I didn't have a bank account, it was already over $5 per card, so I assume it's much higher 15 years later.
I was not aware that could be a problem (had a debit card £ as a teen when online buying/downloading games started).
even if you have a debit card, in much of the world unless it’s a visa/mastercard it’s not going to be accepted in many places online
my debit card (in canada) uses interac. it’s accepted basically everywhere in physical stores, but online it’s pretty much useless if you don’t also have paypal (which is also not accepted everywhere a credit card would be)
A coffee shop used to offer a $10 gift card for every $40 gift card you bought (or something like that) around Christmas. It was meant to get people to buy them as gifts but we knew we were going to go there throughout the year anyway so we loaded up for ourselves.
I always get them at Sam’s Club, they’re around 5% off the face value there. Can’t remember the exact price but was somewhere around $18.92 for a $20 card. Not a huge discount but will definitely miss it.