Through a publication in the community of Valve platform, Steam announced that it had stopped accepting Bitcoin payments on their store. The company explains that this is because its high fees and volatility have made it “unreasonable” to endorse it as a payment method. To know more about algo affiliates through full blog.
Valve explained that in recent months it has noticed the instability of Bitcoin’s value, as well as a “significant increase” in the rates required to process transactions with this currency. This has caused that the purchase of games with Bitcoin has a much higher cost than expected.
In addition, Valve pointed out that the volatility of the Bitcoin value has been very extreme, which has caused problems for consumers who decide to use it as a payment method: “This creates a problem for customers trying to purchase games with Bitcoin. When checking out on Steam, a customer will transfer x amount of Bitcoin for the cost of the game, plus y amount of Bitcoin to cover the transaction fee charged by the Bitcoin network. The value of Bitcoin is only guaranteed for a certain period of time so if the transaction doesn’t complete within that window of time, then the amount of Bitcoin needed to cover the transaction can change. The amount it can change has been increasing recently to a point where it can be significantly different.”
Taking into account that in these cases the refund is not a viable solution, Valve decided that it is best to stop accepting Bitcoin as a payment method on Steam. That said, the company does not close the doors to the possibility of re-accepting the cryptocurrency at some point.
“At this point, it has become untenable to support Bitcoin as a payment option. We may re-evaluate whether Bitcoin makes sense for us and for the Steam community at a later date. We will continue working to resolve any pending issues for customers who are impacted by existing underpayments or transaction fees,” Valve concluded.
Keeping in mind all of the above, do you think Valve made the right decision? Have you ever used Bitcoin to make payments on Steam?
