Bitcoin Forum

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/gaming-giant-steam-disables-bitcoin-in-russia/

Steam will disable BTC everywhere in less than a year :)

Why would accept BTC while they made BILLIONS of USD with by accepting debit cards? :)

it has to do more with the fact that btc in russia is not seen well, than anything else

My heart stopped there for a moment, thought they would discontinue the service everywhere and that was before I had completely finished reading the title lol :P I hope this headline won't appear similarly in other countries especially mine, the Philippines + on the grounds that Bitcoin is flourishing without any legal action being put forth to stop its growth and spread. Disallowing the use of BTC on their platform would be a bummer anywhere.

Steam will just follow the guidelines thrown at them from these countries governments. They will disable Bitcoin support, if these governments do not accept Bitcoin as a payment method. I have seen

a similar thing happening with other services too. Some gambling sites, do not allow US citizens on their sites, because the US regulations and laws do not allow for that. This is mostly due to AML/KYC

regulations in the USA. Most people circumvent these soft blocks with anon proxies and using Tor and VPN's.  ;D

Just a few months ago, steam has started bitcoin for their services, it is currently younger to bitcoin system in their site so there will be some problems and issues appearing to them using bitcoin , I think after spending some period they will be okay with bitcoin and will accept bitcoin from all over the world, at that time I think governments all over the world will also start to love bitcoin.

they only disabled in in russia because bitcoin is illegal in russia

they don't lose money on bitcoin, they probably gain money with bitcoin.

also bitcoin is the safest way to pay online (no credit-card fraud or identity theft is possible) so everyone should use bitcoin online.

Wow, it's big for russian steam user. Many russian play on steam games such dota 2. I'm sure there is something happened in russia with bitcoin user.

Always some problem with that Russia and btc. Before making all this conclusions why don't we wait for something official from steam. This is all just talking without any proof, maybe its just temporary, lets wait few days first.
In the end I agree with Kprawn :" Steam will just follow the guidelines thrown at them from these countries governments" I think this is exactly what will they do, they are 100 % legal and they will stay like that no matter what. If bitcoin make problems they will cancel it, easy..
Lets hope for the best and that everything will be ok with Steam in Russia.

They can also make BILLIONS of USD in also bitcoin transactions what make you think they will disable bitcoin everywhere  ???

Because it might open up a few new avenues? And there's also the youth vote. If I was unlucky enough to have children I might throw them some BTC for such a thing. There's no way such stinking brats would get their hands on my debit card.

No. Stop posting nonsense (i.e. FUD).

I don't even understand why people think of this as something important. It is naturally going to come for each country that decides to forbid Bitcoin usage, else Steam would be breaking the law.

No.

No. They can still go through third parties, the same way that everyone else did before Steam started accepting Bitcoin directly. There is nothing special about this and it won't work anyways.

I concur.

Russia is very specific country. They than from tommorow make Bitcoin its national currency or ban it under 20 years prison law.
So you never know with Russia, it shouldn't be treated like normal country.

that's a simple reason why Russia disable bitcoin as payment of that gaming steam.

It's not surprising that a communist shithole is going to stop citizens abilities to use currencies alternative to their own state issued ones to freely buy and sell, this is not Bitcoin's fault.

But im sure that there is a way to circumvent this. Maybe creating a new account under a VPN that uses an IP address from another country should be enough, Steam would not be able to tell.

Then why do they come to Bitpay and ask them to put their service into steam ;D

They simply disabled it because Russia said so, Bitcoin is not well received in Russia and there is no point for steam to put bitcoin as their method of payment, nobody would use it in Russia :P


Steam could ban your ID if they found out you are using VPN, better not risk it at all

Shouldn't it be in the News section ? By the way, that's sad, and I hope and I'm sure that my hope will be fullfilled, that no other country will suffer the same thing.

it's not bitcoin that is illegal though, it's russia that don't want to accept bitcoin, for retarded and unnecessary reasons, there is nothing illegal about bitcoin

so removing bitcoin it's only a russia fault here, not from bitcoin itself

Why disable BTC when they make BILLIONS of USD by accepting debit cards + MILLIONS of USD accepting Bitcoin? What you said is basically saying "let's disable something that allows us to profit even further and that makes it easier on people who are returning costumers".

Steam dropped Russian support for Bitcoin because they found out it was not worth the hassle to accept Bitcoin transactions from that country plain and simple. Do you think Gabe Newell likes to lose money lol? I think the reason behind that decision was either there were not enough customers purchasing games via Bitcoin which is quite unlikely or the unfavorable business climate given the Russian government's negative view of Bitcoin. By the way there are a lot of websites selling cheap discounted games in Russia and they even offer cheaper stuff than the Russian Steam client itself so I guess the Russian gamers won't be hindered so badly by this. They could just buy the game elsewhere and activate it on Steam it's not the end of the world for them anyways.

this is will happen somtime to several country,steam will give special treatment for some country that they thik it need to be done,lest say that primedice doing same things on several country. if russian people can't answer what happen there,then how can we know what excatly happen??

First steam disable bitcoin in russian so this will continue with other countries, I guess not longer steam will immediately disable a payment with bitcoin.

We don't know if this is just a temporary deactivation or a permanent one. Even if it's due to government intervention it's too early to assume the move is permanent. In Russia, U-turns in decision processes are always possible.


There is no evidence to support this claim. I don't think the reason is administrative cost or lack of usage. The gaming community has a high affinity to Bitcoin. The price is rising also, which normally is followed by increased spending.

Maybe it's just taken down for an update and will reappear soon. Russian users should ask for confirmation from Steam if disabling Bitcoin support is meant to last or not.

ya.ya.yo!

Just to know, in my opinions steam consider about growing of their selling on BTC payment for few time and maybe it contrasts with some their regulate or with the regulating country. Many users in steam are complaining about accepted a bitcoin payment.

Yea, probably the only places steam will disable bitcoin are countries that already has ban/forbid bitcoin usage.

True. But that doesn't mean that they are turning unfriendly towards bitcoin. They are simply trying to avoid tension with the Russian government and as we all know the Russian government has been fighting the currency.

Sometimes, I've heard a Russian government banned bitcoin on their country. But I don't know because of what?Does use bitcoin transaction on their environment it's become an illegal activity?

Steam will one day reenter Russia. Just give it time. The Russian government is delaying the inevitable and in the process are hurting their own people.

Do we have any legit answer why Steam did this?
All I see is people speculating that this was caused by the fact that Bitcoin is illegal in Russia, but I never heard of any recent law banning BTC there.

If this is part of the sanctions imposed on Russia by US then why Steam is still available in Russia in the first place?

Too sad, I think they wont remove the bitcoin payment in steam, Only few countries are banning bitcoin because of the inflation of their currency to bitcoin

But mate Russia has traditionally had a lot of problems with Bitcoin and the government is making it impossible to conduct normal Bitcoin business for foreign companies. If the business environment is so hostile why would Steam want to stay on the Russian market when the disadvantages for them are more than the advantages? Steam probably don't want to find themselves in a legal mess and they opted to just quit the Russian market altogether. The Russians can still buy Bitcoin from 3rd parties and purchase games on Steam albeit not directly any more. However I don't think Steam will want to lose customers from countries where Bitcoin is generally well accepted as of now and the local governments aren't making efforts to ban it so Steam will just continue to offer both fiat and Bitcoin in these countries and double dip for more profit.

This is a bad news for those Russians who are playing with the use of steam. But I guess, one day Russia will allow it to happen again
that they will let steam accept bitcoin to enter their country.

It's not bad for Russians who are playing use steam. it's bad to who are playing on steam with bitcoin or bitcoin users on steam. Nothing happens with another payment user.

the Russians have always been new making in bitcoin world. they are holding big ass bitcoin related conferences in their capital Moscow, and we keep hearing these kinds of news about Russia banning bitcoin, steam banning russia and things like that!

it is strange and worse than that is the fact that you hear it from a well known crappy news site called cryptocoinsnews which is known to lie