Valve president Gabe Newell has outlined why Steam stopped accepting Bitcoin as a payment method in 2017, citing an excessive amount of fraudulent purchases.
From April 2016 to December 2017, Steam accepted Bitcoin as a payment method for games hosted on its platform. Speaking to PC Gamer, Newell explained why Valve decided to stop accepting the currency.
“The problem is that a lot of the actors who are in that space are not people you want interacting with your customers,” said Newell. “We had problems when we started accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment option. 50 per cent of those transactions were fraudulent, which is a mind-boggling number. These were customers we didn’t want to have.”
The Valve co-founder added that other issues – such as Bitcoin’s unstable value – were “a complete nightmare” as it made consistent pricing on the platform difficult.
Recently, Newell has been vocal on his plans for Steam going forward. He recently said that although Valve has no interest in making an Xbox Game Pass-type subscription service, the company would be “more than happy” to help Microsoft make its own Game Pass available on Steam.
Newell also shared that he thinks there are “a bunch of get rich quick schemes around [the] metaverse,” and added that many individuals pushing the premise “have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about, and they’ve apparently never played an MMO.”
In other Valve news, the company has shared a way for people to see which of their owned Steam games will run on the Steam Deck.
The console launched last Friday (February 25), sharing its release day with Elden Ring – a game that was already Steam Deck Verified at launch.
Elsewhere, a Total War: Warhammer 3 data miner has found voice lines pointing to Chaos Dwarfs making a future appearance in the strategy game.
