Steam Wallet Beta Lets Gamers Pre-Load Cash

This is not an accurate article. It states you "purchase" games from Steam, where in fact you do not. With Steam you only RENT games, you never own them. Think I am wrong? Try to sell your game or even give it to someone else. Not possible and if you attempt they will remove the game from your account. Would be nice if they did allow you to actually own the game.

Yeah, I can only see this working for pre-paid cards. Otherwise what's the point of letting Valve earn interest on your money?

If they are going to want to bank my money, profit on the float even, they should at least make it like some online gift cards $50 for $55 steambucks or something

Some kinda incentive besides gifting someone

its cool for gitfs too!

Seems like a handy way to "save up" for upcoming game releases if you don't always have $60 sitting around to buy them with. :)

There probably aren't so many people in my situation, hence Valve still not doing anything to improve it,but living in a country outside of the one my credit card is registered in causes me a lot of hassle if I want to buy something on Steam because of Valve's anti-fraud stance. Basically, you can't use a credit card on Steam when you are in a country other than the one the card is registered in without contacting Steam tech support, which is a huge pain in the ass and generally stops me buying games on Steam, although I do sometimes get friends to buy a game for me and I pay them instead. It's also a kind of weird rule, since I can't really imagine someone stealing my card and then using it to splurge on Steam. Meh, I guess Valve just want less hassle should it actually occur.

Last time I tried, Pay Pal also had the same problem :(

Steam wallet sounds like at least I could pre-load a bit of cash once and then use that to pay for several games.

two words: in-game purchases

seems to be a real use-case for the Wallet. and that way, Steam could force users to use their Wallet, as opposed to a small CC transaction.

A wallet is good and all, but, what I'd really like to see is Steam gift cards available for purchase from any of your favorite video game stores. Possibly, also, steam codes included with the physical media boxes that are still for sale in many places.

Mobile authenticator for my Steam account please.

Maybe this is a first step to invite more indie developers to steam? With Wallet, customers can comfortably pay "app" prices like 1.59 etc. without expensive CC transfers fees and higher service charges.

The correct answer is that young people can buy wallet cards at best buy when they dont have a cc yet

I thought the purpose of pre-paid credits would be obvious: allowing parents to load up their kids' accounts with specific amounts of money so that they don't have to use their parents' credit cards and so the parents know for sure that they won't go over their allotted amount. Yes, this includes teenagers as well as younger kids.

I think the chances of Steam doing away with direct payments are just about nil. Never gonna happen.

But if they're going to implement pre-paid amounts along with direct payments, why not go all the way? What I would have done is announce discounts for purchasers who buy more than a specific amount of pre-paid credits. The discounts would have to be kept below the amount that Valve is making extra from leftover credits along with the interest being made on money exchanged for the credits that sit idle for significant periods of time, but turning these sorts of discounts (even if they're relatively minor) into a marketing tool is right up Valve's alley, and it would take the sting out of the inevitable "wasted" money represented by leftover credits.

Meh, just an idea.

Gift cards and/or anything like it exist for one reason...it's free money for the issuing company.

Something like 10% of gift card money is never redeemed...and like 50-100 BILLION FRIGGIN dollars are spent on gift cards every year in the U.S...

Sure it's a flexible gift option for people, but it's also a crazy profit windfall for companies.

There is a simple reason for this new feature and it has little to do with customer use cases. Rather, it is an effort to reduce the number of credit card transaction fees levied on purchases of 2 dollar games on Steam. If you can motivate your customers to only make credit card purchases in larger chunks, you stand to substantially increase your profit margins on cheaper games.

Given the ubiquity of the sales on Steam and the number of customers using the service, this is a smart business move for Valve and one that I'm surprised didn't come sooner.

I think the main reason this is being done hasn't been explored yet. It opens the door to easy micro-transactions in free to play games. Gabe has gone on record stating that he wants Steam to do more in that market, and currently it does nothing at all. A wallet would make it much easier (and probably be required) to engage in micro-transactions via Steam, and they could integrate it via steamworks into any F2P game that wants to use its service. Micro-transactions are actually pretty taxing on the vendor due to all the overhead if they don't have such a system in place. This is the first step to Steam embracing Free to Play games.

Wait, wouldn't steam be smart enough to subtract an amount from a game you purchase, so if you have $7 left over the next game only costs 43 if you buy it directly.

I don't think this is like MS points and if you don't like it then just keep using steam as you have always used it.

It's so people can start saving for the god damn christmas steam sale

I wonder if this is linked to any of Gabe's 'three big surprises' he said are coming in the next year.

I personally think one of the reasons is for refunds. Force people to rebuy on steam and not give cash refunds. (like instore credit)

I don't like this at all - I know you can still pay the exact amount which I hope they keep but I don't see them doing this for much longer.

The main reason is, you make much more money by making people buy credit... they buy the credit and hardly ever manage to spend the exact amount put in, so there's always money left over.

I can see two main benefits with using the Wallet over conventional charge as you go payments.

First, you can more easily control how much you spend on Steam when you put in a fixed amount. I know a lot of other steam users out there face this issue, especially when they start putting a whole lot of stuff on sale. You think, oh it's only $xx.xx I might as well get it now to save some money.. before you know it you've bought six games you'll probably never play for $90.

Second, for some people having a whole bunch of micro charges on their credit card statement can be annoying instead of one larger charge. iTunes handles this by charging your account once a week instead of every time you buy a song/app.

I hate that bank gives me interest. Now I can store my money on Valve accounts so they have to deal with this dreaded interest. HAHA owned.

Steam Cards: Now available at your local Wally World!

Gift vouchers anyone?

it's not to hard to purchase games when i want when i store my billing information in Steam.

Bada bing bada bang!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMtxqTbjSK0

I think that's a great idea btw, gives a wider variety of ages to purchase games, BUT yeah that for sure sux that you have to put actual deposits if the game is not even that amount of the deposit. I'd say they should let you buy w/e you want, then let you pay at the end of every 2 weeks or end of month. It's annoying to have to deposit money all the time too man.