You Can Buy ‘Minecraft’ With a Gift Card & Here’s How

It seems like the days when you could buy a physical copy of a game, burn it, and give the copy to your friend as a gift. The gaming industry has come a long way and with that came having to pay for more things than you’re used to. Minecraft was a game that was once free, or at least when it wasn’t; it was dirt cheap. It’s not dirty cheap anymore, but it is still one of the cheaper games today. If you wanted to gift your friend or family member Minecraft, is it possible to buy it with a gift card?

What forms of payment does Minecraft accept?

When you go online to the official Minecraft website, you can purchase a copy of Minecraft using Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, Apple Pay, Google Play, and PayPal. Of course, if you bought a physical copy of Minecraft, you would be able to pay with whatever the store offers as a form of payment.

Of course, this includes the gift card you can pay with and receive a copy of via email. Physical copies of a gift card can’t be purchased through the official Minecraft store. Besides, there are some limits to what you can do with this gift card; the limitation is that you can’t purchase Minecraft with it, so the Microsoft Gift card comes.

Microsoft Gift Card VS Minecraft Gift Card

The meaning of gift cards has been lost. Back in the day, you could get a physical copy of a gift card, add some money to it, and give it to someone as a present which they could then use to purchase something, in this case, Minecraft. You could buy a gift card from a shop like Gamecards Direct that sells gift cards, but you still don’t get an actual physical copy.

Instead, you get a code that you can redeem with a Mojang account, download the game, and then play it. With a Microsoft Gift Card, you can purchase anything from the Windows store, so it’s not specifically a Minecraft gift card, but it does the job well. With this gift card, you can go to the Windows store, choose the game, and then redeem a gift card as payment.

Why can’t you purchase Minecraft via the official store using a gift card?

The problem with purchasing Minecraft with a gift card from the official store is that Mojang is a company located outside the US. By US law, most, if not all, prepaid debit cards (which is what gift cards are) will not work for purchases in the Minecraft store.

How do I buy Minecraft as a gift?

Since buying Minecraft with a gift card is complicated and often impossible, Mojang offers you the option of purchasing the game as a gift. There are only two ways to do this: via the Microsoft or Amazon stores. Follow these steps to buy it as a gift using both methods.

1. Go to the official Minecraft Java & Bedrock Edition store page
2. Click on the ‘…’ option and choose ‘Buy as a Gift’
3. You’ll be prompted to log in to your Microsoft account. If you don’t have one, you’ll have to create one
4. Then, you enter the email address of the account you’d like to send the gift to
5. You can then type in your name so the person can see who gifted them the game
6. Select your payment method and click on Buy as a gift

1. Go to Amazon.com and search for the term Minecraft gift card
2. Find the official Xbox listing of Minecraft; it’ll say something along the lines of ‘Minecraft Java & Bedrock Edition: Standard – Windows 10 [Digital Code]‘
3. Proceed to buy it as you would any other product on Amazon
4. Once done, you’ll receive a digital gift card code
5. Send the code to the person you wish to gift Minecraft to
6. The person should then go to the redeem.microsoft.com page
7. Have them log into their Microsoft account or make it if they don’t already have it
8. Then they paste in the code, click redeem, and they will have the game in their game library

Can you buy a physical copy of Minecraft?

The only way to purchase Minecraft directly from the creators is to go to their official website and buy the game from there. It is possible to find Minecraft in stores like Target, Walmart, GameStop, and even 7-11, but for the most part, this is a thing of the past. What you get when you purchase Minecraft this was is a code that you then type in, not an actual physical copy of the game.

If someone ever tried to sell Minecraft as a DVD copy to you, they’re scamming you, so avoid them at all costs. It’s best to buy the game from the official store using the methods I described previously.

Minecraft did exist on CDs once. It was released back in 2014 and was discontinued in 2015 for unknown reasons. The game didn’t have copy protection, so you could easily copy and share it with friends and family. Perhaps this is the reason why it no longer exists. Even though you can technically still buy this version second-hand if someone owns it, you are advised to avoid these purchases.

Is Minecraft a one-time purchase

Technically, Minecraft is a one-time purchase, but you have the so-called microtransaction on all game versions except for Java Edition, the first and original Minecraft. For Bedrock Edition users, the only way to get some gameplay variety is to purchase Minecoins and download add-ons from the official store.

Microtransaction issue

Microtransactions aren’t something that has come about in recent years. It has been around since 2006 when Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion sold horse armor for 2.50 USD. Buying a game doesn’t give you exclusive rights to all of its features anymore, and it is an easy way for gaming companies to make more money.

Whether or not this is right is debatable, but as long as people buy ‘exclusive content,’ microtransactions will remain popular. They are compelling, though. They seem cheap, and you don’t feel you’re spending too much on a game, but when you add in the cost of all the additional content you bought, you’re spending more than you did on the actual game.

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