Steam Drops Bitcoin Payment Support

Valve, the owner and operator of the largest online game retailer, Steam, has decided to no longer support payment in the form of Bitcoin, a popular cryptocurrency. The reason is stated to be because of high fees and volatility in the currency's value.

In the past few months we've seen an increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network. For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically.

This is an understandable complication. The value of Bitcoin has fluctuated between $9,000 to $12,000 in under a week, and the transaction fees have been equally sporadic. These complications are showing Bitcoin to be an unreliable payment form as it currently is. You have to use government money to buy Steam games once again, like some kind of sheeple.

Valve initially implemented Bitcoin as a payment in 2016 via a partnership with crypto transaction company Bitpay.