If you’ve been having trouble using PayPal to buy games on Steam, you’re not alone. Valve has confirmed that PayPal has been disabled as a payment option in many regions around the world. The problem has nothing to do with either Valve or PayPal, but with one of PayPal’s banking partners, which is refusing to process payments for Steam.
According to a statement from Valve, PayPal’s bank “immediately” terminated its support for Steam transactions in early July. This affects any purchase made in a currency other than the Euro, Canadian dollar, British pound, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, or US dollar.
Valve also told the gaming site Rock Paper Shotgun that the bank’s decision was made “regarding content on Steam,” and directly linked it to a similar issue the company had with Mastercard. This strongly suggests the problem is part of an ongoing battle over sexually explicit games on the platform.
Last month, Mastercard reportedly pressured Valve to remove several NSFW games from Steam by threatening to cut off its payment processing. A bank working with PayPal is now doing the same thing, leaving gamers in many parts of the world without one of their most popular payment options. Valve says it wants to bring PayPal back for all currencies, but for now, “the timeline is uncertain.”
