Why Steam Hates Cryptocurrency

Steam accepted cryptocurrency as payment for a short period of time, but the results were unprecedentedly dramatic.

The gaming platform Steam is in many ways a pioneering web store, gaming hub and innovator in the industry. Nevertheless, there is a hot new technology that Valve’s money machine has little to do with: cryptocurrency. That was different in 2016, but the billion-dollar company quickly reversed that decision.

Steam hates cryptocurrency

In April of 2016, Steam introduced the ability to pay for games with Bitcoin. By December 2017, that option was unceremoniously withdrawn. According to CEO Gabe Newell (to PC Gamer), this was for two very understandable reasons.

fraud

The first reason is the fact that an unprecedented amount of fraud has been committed using Bitcoin.

The problem is that you get a lot of players from the [cryptocurrency] world you don’t want to bring into contact with your customers. We ran into problems when we started accepting cryptocurrency. 50% of the transactions were fraudulent, which is a mind-bending number. That came from customers you just don’t want on your platform.

Gabe Newell (2022)

Yo-yo price

The second reason was the fact that games could become 10 times more expensive overnight. Because the price of Bitcoin continuously fluctuates extremely, users cannot expect a consistent Steam price with payment of cryptocurrency.

It was like cheating on customers. And no, we don’t want to do that. (…) So that’s why we chose to [cryptocurrency niet meer te accepteren]† There is nothing inherently wrong with cryptos. But so far our experience with it has been.

Gabe Newell (2022)