If you recently tried to purchase a game on Steam, perhaps you noticed that you can no longer use PayPal as remittance. It’s not a temporary bug, but another consequence of Steam’s ongoing battle with payment processors like Visa and Mastercard.
In a quote provided to Rock Paper Shotgun, Valve clarified that the disappearance of PayPal is related to offering specific types of “content on Steam,” much like the issue “surrounding Mastercard.”
“In this case, one of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies,” a rep said.
PayPal isn’t gone for everyone; I just tried checking out a game, and could log into PayPal just fine. As of early July, the currencies that can still use PayPal on Steam include EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD. While this means many major currencies still have the option, this change will likely affect a lot of people around the world.
PayPal has also pulled out of some parts of Steam despite the platform’s decision to delist a wide swath of adult-oriented games. That crackdown was due to pressure from payment processors and an anti-violence against women group called Collective Shout, which has organized campaigns to limit the sales of series like Grand Theft Auto. Amid all of these actions, payment processors insist that if the product is legal, they do not tell vendors what they can or cannot sell. Valve, however, has said that the encouragement to reconsider what types of games it sells has come from intermediaries like banks, seemingly speaking on behalf of payment processors. Whatever the case, Valve’s rules for platforming a game now vaguely state that the content must follow rules set forth by payment processors. The snafu has also affected other platforms like Itchio, as well as games that merely include mature themes. Steam’s acquiescence to these external pressures has also led to a gamer-led movement to harass payment processors, if not a widespread sense of unease over the wider ramifications of the censorship.
The increased scrutiny around adult games also coincides with a wider push for age verification measures on websites like YouTube and Pornhub. If the internet at large continues to tamp down on the full spectrum of “adult content” and a person’s actual identity becomes fully tied to your online presence, the possibilities for complications could become exponential.
Valve’s hoping to restore PayPal for everyone, but cannot say when it might be back. “We are also evaluating adding additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected by this,” the Valve rep said. “In the meantime, please use one of our other current payment methods during checkout. If you can’t use any of the available options, you can consider using a Steam Wallet code to add funds to your account.”
