Steam Faces Ongoing Impact from Visa and Mastercard’s Censorship

Man, okay, so here’s the scoop – if you’re trying to snag a game on Steam, you might’ve noticed something weird: you can’t use PayPal anymore. Like, at all. This isn’t one of those random glitches. Nah, it’s part of Steam’s ongoing tiff with payment peeps like Visa and Mastercard. Crazy, right?

Anyway, Valve – those folks who run Steam – told Rock Paper Shotgun that this PayPal thing has to do with the kind of “stuff” they sell on the platform. Kinda like what’s been going down with Mastercard. And get this: apparently, some bank that works with PayPal just decided to say “nope” to processing Steam transactions. Bam, no more PayPal for a bunch of currencies.

Not everyone is out of luck, though. I gave it a whirl myself! Yep, I could still log into PayPal, no problem. As of early July, PayPal’s cool with Euros, Canadian bucks, British pounds, Japanese yen, Aussie dollars, and US dollars. So yeah, lots of big currencies are still fine… for now. But still, pretty sure a ton of gamers worldwide are gonna feel this pinch.

But hold up, there’s more! PayPal also bailed on certain parts of Steam, even though Steam stopped listing a bunch of adult games. And this shady move was because payment processors felt the heat from folks like this group called Collective Shout. They’ve been busy campaigning against games like Grand Theft Auto. The bigwigs say they don’t tell sellers what to sell, but Valve thinks banks are, like, speaking for them or something. Weird, right? So now, Valve has these new rules about what games can be on Steam, but they’re super vague. All this mess has even hit other places like Itchio. And, ironically, this pressure has sparked gamers to push back at these payment guys.

We’re also seeing this clampdown on adult games while places like YouTube and Pornhub are beefing up age checks. If everything online wants your real identity, things could get seriously complicated.

Valve’s trying hard to get PayPal back for everyone – no word on when, though. They’re thinking of adding more ways to pay, but for now, they’re sticking with what they’ve got. If those don’t work for you, maybe grab a Steam Wallet code. I mean, what else can you do, right?