Valve kills its retail gift card program due to scammers

Not in a sto’ no mo’ 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.” Over two decades …