Confirmations are not required for casual purchases. The amount of luck and effort required to double-spend an unconfirmed transaction greatly exceeds the value of casual purchases. Bitcoin confirmations are more akin to the months during which you're allowed to contest a credit card purchase, except instead of months, it's between a few minutes to an hour.

Sitting there waiting for confirmation for a bitcoin purchase for a videogame is like waiting for the credit card company to reassure you that the transaction is now irreversible.

They probably went through an external payment processor, so they weren't exposed to the Bitcoin network or its speed/risk at all.

Why is the time obscene? It usually takes 45 days for confirmation if you pay via a credit card. Compare that to about 60 minutes for 6 confirmations on the Bitcoin blockchain, and it's orders of magnitude higher.

You aren't actually comparing the few seconds it takes to swipe your credit card to 60 minute Bitcoin confirmation I hope. It's about 'reversibility' of a transaction - for a Bitcoin transaction to propagate takes about the same time as a credit card swipe to propagate.

Edit: Wow why the downvotes? Seems like people here don't understand the first thing about how payments work in the real world. The funds are not 'confirmed' instantaneously. If someone walks into your store and pays you $1000 with a card, you can't say withdraw it in cash in 2 seconds.

It takes about the same time for a 0-confirmation Bitcoin transaction as an 'unconfirmed' card transaction.