With the holidays approaching at a rapid clip, Valve Corporation’s digital game store Steam unveiled new digital gift cards in addition to those available at retailers such as GameStop and Best Buy. These will enable users to send funds to other users’ Steam Wallet.
Users can send a digital gift card using PayPal, Bitcoin, and major debit or credit cards from Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, and JCB. They will not be able to use Steam Wallet funds, however. As of now, it appears as though this feature is only available on the Steam website and has not yet been added to the desktop app, though GamesBeat has asked Valve about this and will update should we receive a response.
The new feature comes ahead of three of Steam’s annual sales, such as its Black Friday and Winter events. Games get some deep discounts during these, and gamers often jokingly lament about the temptation to purchase new or wishlisted titles with increasingly elaborate GIFs starring Valve president and cofounder Gabe Newell.
Steam is the biggest platform where people can purchase and play PC games. So far, it’s peaked at 14 million users simultaneously on the platform, according to its internal statistics. It’s capable of generating monster hits like the battle royal shooter PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is out on early access on Steam and has already surpassed 10 million copies sold.
