Make more physical Steam Gift cards and distribute them to all major stores

[Hexxed]

Every year around this time of year (Christmas) we run around and try to find Steam Gift cards for our kids and niece and nephew. For the 3 or 4 places that actually carry them, they always sell out. This year, not a single store in our 100K Canadian city from Gamestop to BestBuy to 7-11's and gas stations have had any for months.

WTF Steam? For the largest PC distribution platform in the world why aren't they available everywhere? Who is in charge of your sales department and do you not see how much money you're losing?

I literally saw 2 people standing next to me looking for them as well and when they asked the salesperson they said they haven't had any Steam cards in ages (and this was one place we found them every year though they usually sell out early). So instead, one bought an Xbox gift certificate and the other bought an iTunes gift card. That was in a 2 minute window and when I talked to the salesperson she said she's asked that many times a day (and this was a month ago!). That's just one store in one city. How much money are you leaving on the table?

Next I figured I'd just grab them a digital gift card and print it out but no, I need to send it to them directly. Yeah, I'm going to have them log into their account Christmas morning as they're opening their other presents and say hey, go check your email and then your Steam account, Santa sent you a digital present.

Also what about my nephew and niece? I have no idea what their usernames are. Luckily I have an account but most parents and grandparents have no idea. So, what's happening is I'm giving my kids cash or a VISA prepaid card (horrible Christmas present BTW since their major ask was for Steam gift cards) and they will have to convert that into Steam funds down the road.

That is, unless they decide to spend their money elsewhere and frankly, with all the free giveaways at Epic and all the free games they get with Microsoft GamePass maybe they'll be smart and save that money for somewhere else.

[Gwarsbane]

Its not Valves problem that the stores didn't order enough cards. Valve does make more during the holidays for the sales but if stores don't send them an order for more why should Valve make more? Just so that they sit on a shelf for months?


Also Valve doesn't give out free games, the developers and publishers are the ones that give out free games. At epic they give the developers/publishers buckets full of cash to give out free games... which really shows because last year epic LOST 400 million dollars. And this year they said they are giving out more free games... so expect that loss to be be even higher. Only reason they are still a float is because of all that fortnite money, which is slowly drying up.

[76561198407601200]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hexxed:

That is, unless they decide to spend their money elsewhere and frankly, with all the free giveaways at Epic and all the free games they get with Microsoft GamePass maybe they'll be smart and save that money for somewhere else.

More games for us. Best of luck to you on epic.

[Haruspex]

Stores have to order those cards to get them. You should be asking your local retailers to order more Steam cards so they're less likely to run out, particularly around this time of year.

[76561198407601200]

Oprindeligt skrevet af 8bitbeard:

Stores have to order those cards to get them. You should be asking your local retailers to order more Steam cards so they're less likely to run out, particularly around this time of year.

Shhh, I want to see if they realize their error.

[Nx Machina]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hexxed:

Every year around this time of year (Christmas) we run around and try to find Steam Gift cards for our kids and niece and nephew. For the 3 or 4 places that actually carry them, they always sell out. This year, not a single store in our 100K Canadian city from Gamestop to BestBuy to 7-11's and gas stations have had any for months.

And why not buy them throughout the year when they are available when the only issue here is you expecting cards to be available at the end of the year.

Secondly those retailers need to actually order them to be able to sell them.

[my new friend]

Have you checked all the available stores? https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5BB2-E986-A733-CF0E

[Reggaejunkiedrew]

Not sure where in BC you are but If you're in the Interior like I am you should know how screwed up the supply chain for everything is because of the floods. Not to mention the fact it's 6 days before Christmas.

Phone and ask some of the stores in Dallas if you're in Kamloops. Market Fresh and the Petro near Barnhartvale and the truck stop. Not sure if they sell steam cards for sure but stock seems to be better in general out here then most of the city.

[Mad Scientist]

Maybe stores should make better predictions about how popular an item is and accordingly order them? Else, they have predicted and it's not as popular as you believe, thus it's stocked less frequently.

Making "more" doesn't solve the lack of a business ordering sufficient quantity of what appears to be a popular item, especially the lack of them ordering something likely to be popular during the Winter season and Christmas Holiday.

[Satoru]

Stores themselves are responsible for stocking cards not Steam

Cards are produced and sold through a 3rd party which are then purchased by stores

[Yzal]

This is like complaining to the Coca Cola Company because you local store/market/etc sold out the Coca Colas they had.

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hexxed:

Every year around this time of year (Christmas) we run around and try to find Steam Gift cards for our kids and niece and nephew. For the 3 or 4 places that actually carry them, they always sell out. This year, not a single store in our 100K Canadian city from Gamestop to BestBuy to 7-11's and gas stations have had any for months.

If you knew that was gonna happen then WHY didn't you buy them earlier!??

[aquatorrent]

Maybe you can try to buy from third party websites? Some websites sell redeemable wallet codes that works like a physical gift card. You can print that. The price is usually more expensive than digital gift card that is sold in steam though and you need to buy the gift card in the same currency that you use (CAD, i assume) since it wont work if it is in different currency. Since you are planning to buy physical gift card in the first place, i assume you already know about the card's limitation though.

[Pscht]

That's some bad advice. First, if you go digital you can just buy digital giftcards directly from steam. Second, "third party websites" can be really shady.

[aquatorrent]

The op stated it clearly why it doesnt work. By third party websites, of course i meant the trusted ones. I'm not sure about you, but third party websites in my place is pretty common and there are a lot of trusted ones that you can buy from. They only sell cards in local currency though.

[Hexxed]

I do realize that stores are often responsible for their own stock however the manager I talked with said they were having trouble getting any in. That leads me to believe that the line is broken somewhere.

Secondly, there are often distributors that take care of making sure a store is well stocked. I had friends who worked with Nabisco and another with Coca Cola that would drive around and see what stores were displaying, help them optimize their placements and fill the managers in on new products and upcoming promotions.

Also, often it's 1 distributor that handles all of a certain product, like giftcards. They're not contacting all 100 restaurants, stores and whatnot everytime they need 20 more Tim Horton giftcards or Home Depot cards around Father's Day.

Just saying that somewhere in that line there's a disconnect and that Steam, who I think generally does a good job as a service, needs to follow it up. If you think that they don't have sales managers and such who's sole job is to help promote more sales then you've never worked in a large corporation.

I love PC gaming so Steam works well. They just need to make it easier for people not in the system to get on board. Even allowing people to buy digital giftcards that aren't tied to a specific account like every other retailer in existence.

Also, we have literally bought stacks of Steam giftcards over the years. We're constantly buying them for birthdays for friends and family. We just haven't seen any around in months at any of the usual places we get them so we ran out.

We started looking in late October so this isn't a last second run out to the 24/7 drugstore or late night 7-11 looking for a last minute gift. Just expected them to show up at some point at one of the usual places and no luck this year. Steam needs to talk to their giftcard distributors and make sure they're available to the masses.

[Brian9824]

Oprindeligt skrevet af Hexxed:

I do realize that stores are often responsible for their own stock however the manager I talked with said they were having trouble getting any in. That leads me to believe that the line is broken somewhere.

There is this thing called Covid, you might have heard of it. One of the effects is a large sale distribution in the distribution of a large variety of items.....