Bring Back Gaming Cards.

Please?

For those who dont know, Gaming Cards were cards with Station Cash/Daybreak Cash (whichever they were calling it then) that you could buy in stores for different amounts then use to add said game currency to one of your accounts. These were discontinued sometime right before or right after I started playing. I would like to see their return, as i think Paypal may have deleted my account due to the fact that I haven't used it in a while.

You can buy station cash from the website with your credit/debit card. A couple of clicks and you're done.

I don't recommend it by the way and detest that gaming has generally gone in that direction, but if you want to waste your money on non existent stuff then the facility is there to do it easily without the need for cards you buy in stores.

Or are you a strictly-cash type of person?... I mean these days that can only mean nefarious things.. I'm struggling to think of a legit reason why you'd be avoiding using a bank account with a debit card...

I dont have Bank Account anymore, not for years, and I've never had/used a Credit Card, ever.

I won't pry, and I wouldn't expect you to share if I did. Nobody's business but yours.

But, look on the bright side, you won't be wasting your money on station cash. It's a slippery slope.

You already pried by all but stating FalconClash was some sort of a criminal and challenging them to defend themself in your first post:

" I mean these days that can only mean nefarious things.. I'm struggling to think of a legit reason why you'd be avoiding using a bank account with a debit card..."


Let's start with the obvious; a person could have been forced into bankruptcy by medical bills or other circumstances. No credit cards then and you're likely to have a severely restricted debit card if you have one at all.

Then there's the $25 to $35 and higher a month that the banks and 95% of credit unions charge to hold your money and make loans to others with those cash reserves. A minimum of $400 a year for the "privilege" of doing business with them. That doesn't get into any potential overdrafts or other hidden fees.

Credit cards... It goes up exponentially from there. Double digit interest annually, an annual fee also (or higher interest rates to offset the lack of said fee. I'm looking at you Discover card). Oh but in exchange all of that, those "premium" cards give you a small percentage of your money back and act like they're doing you a favor.

Never mind banks are also just as much in the information brokering business as Google and Facebook.

Yeah I realised that sentence I wrote sounded quite privileged. I do genuinely have compassion for those in financial difficulty, I went through it in my early adulthood after making some dumb decisions, but it was never so bad I couldn't have a bank account. I also do take for granted living in a country where medical care is paid for by taxes and free at the point of use, and I could go my whole life forgetting how life-ruining that can be for Americans (and almost nobody else in the world). It blows my mind that so many in the states advocate for your medical system.

All those other issues you talk about are also alien to me. I've never heard of banks charging you to hold your money. It's always been the other way round for me. And I've never used a credit card unless it was 0%. Again, perhaps the financial system in the states is generally expensive to be a part of, I don't know.

I'll stick to my final point though, lacking the mechanism to purchase station cash is the silver lining. They're being saved from a bad decision here.

To be fair, you 'waste your money on non existent stuff' every time you go to the movies, subscribe to a streaming service, or any number of other digital items/services. Not much of an argument, me thinks.

you can get a onetime use credit card or get an online bank, but I don't know if that is save, one of my kids is using one and my sister swears by it.

I liked the gaming cards. I would buy them and give them to my grandsons as a gift and they loved it. So did their parents. Makes super Birthday and Christmas gifts. They play different games from me so now I have to give them cash so they can buy what they want from the game they play.

It's actually pretty easy in the U.S. to find a bank that won't charge you a service charge. You might have to pay to get paper statements in the modern era where everyone pushes paperless to cut a business expense. Anyone paying large service charges for basic checking services probably hasn't shopped around much, though I'll grant that banking regulations and markets vary by state and I only know my own location well. Credit cards? These days few credit cards charge an "annual fee", and most also charge no interest if you pay in full every month. My credit card effectively pays me through rebates.

I probably wouldn't go so far as to claim "nefarious intent", though I might suspect "conspiratorial thinking" from someone insisting on cash-only. It's actually not hard to get a checking account after bankruptcy, especially not after this unbanking lifestyle has been going on for several years as suggested by the original poster. Most people are poorly served by the decision to avoid banking services, as avoiding banks makes most financial services more expensive. Which in a way kind of takes us back to the original topic: DBG will offer gaming cards when they see them as a profitable item, i.e., the markup they're able to charge on them (over normal subscription sales) justifies the cost of printing, distributing, and marketing little plastic bits.

I know kids would use those cards bought with their allowance.
I think this is a market DB lost by stopping the use of those cards.

It may not have been Daybreak's choice; the harsh reality is that large chains like Best Buy, Walmart and Target replace items that don't sell X amount per square foot of retail space with other items that will. Our poor gal EQ2 is the Little Engine that Could-- carrying on despite having a total player base of 50,000 per EG7's December 2020 earnings report:

https://www.enadglobal7.com/wp-cont...entation-Dec-2020-Acquires-Daybreak-Games.pdf

Except it's not an eq2 issue. Those were company cards usable in any SOE game so the potential market is the total number of players in all DBG games.

Except games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty from Activision Blizzard, and huge gaming platforms like EA Origin, Epic and Steam, all have millions upon millions of subscribers and purchasers vs Daybreak's games, eh? Even DC Universe only has 40k subbers, and it has by far the most players of any Daybreak game.

Just in new customers alone, Steam had 2.6 million new game buyers each month, buying their very first games on Steam, during each month of 2021. And that doesn't count all of us old customers who've been buying on that platform for years now. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/valve-during-2021-steam-saw-2-6m-first-time-buyers-each-month#:~:text=News-,Valve: During 2021 Steam saw 2.6,first-time buyers each month&text=Yesterday Valve released a new,27% in comparison to 2020.

Just Call of Duty alone (and no, I don't play it nor have I ever) has sold 425 million units (at $60-$100 per unit depending on Deluxe, Ultimate Edition, etc.) throughout its franchise-- and that's not counting the DLCs and cash shop sales for all of its online components. Call of Duty's game sales+cash shop sales had already topped $27 billion as of December 2020 (yes, billion with a B just for Call of Duty). CoD sold 25 million copies just in 2021 alone. Imagine if the Everquest franchise had done this!

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/86728/activision-sold-25-million-call-of-duty-games-in-one-year/index.html#:~:text=According to the latest figures,in little over a year.

All of which may be true but it's not what you originally posted and I hate inaccurate information.

EQ2 having 50k players total is not inaccurate; not to mention that only 21k of those pay for subs. Daybreak's got 215k subscribers total, adding all of its games together. On what planet would any retail space stick that stuff on its shelves instead of the other companies whose mega-figures I reported and linked? Zero.

You just hate being way, way off in your imagined estimates. Bad head canon instead of researching the easily obtainable facts. But carry on!

No, but game cards being dependant on that number alone certainly is, which is basically what you posted.

I miss the cards too, I used to buy them to put coin in my DB account or purchase 'presents' for myself or others. And of course, before I went all access to actually play the game.

I'm almost positive you can pay for sub using Steam money, and you can buy steam cards for cash in stores.
That would be closest we can get right now to a store bought way of paying for sub

if you use Steam.