While only a rumor last Friday, it’s now official; Gamestop is selling Steam vouchers.
As I suspected last week, Gamestop is actually selling Steam Wallet vouchers, which will transfer X amount of dollars into a user’s Steam Wallet as soon as the special code that comes with every Steam voucher is entered into the “Redeem Steam Wallet Code” box, which can be found right here (warning: a Steam account is required to view the page). In an interesting twist, Gamestop will only be selling $20 USD and $50 USD vouchers, with only one of those choices being the same as in Valve’s own “Add Funds” page of the account options (yet again: only Steam account owners will be able to see the page). It seems that since Gamestop cannot stop the digital distribution giant, it will just ride its back for the meantime.
While this is all and good, this makes me wonder what will happen to Impulse, the service that Gamestop bought. Since it appears that Gamestop would rather piggy-back off of a service rather than actually try to combat it with their own, what are the implications for Impulse? Will Impulse still remain under the rule of Gamestop’s iron, ham-shaped fist? Will Impulse be thrown aside to prosper without Gamestop hanging onto it? Or will Impulse die, come back from the dead, and exact revenge on the company who abandoned them and take over the world in the process?
It's about time Valve did this. I'm surprised it took them so long to realize that Steam gift cards would be a good idea. It's a no-brainer with a service as popular as Steam. Hopefully after a while they offer more choices other than just $20 and $50 vouchers.
I wouldn't be surprised to see Impulse head to an early grave, it just doesn't have the popularity to compete with Steam.