Gaming Giant Steam Disables Bitcoin in Russia

[alyssa85]

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

Steam, a platform that offers instant access to games globally, is no longer accepting bitcoin in Russia, according to customers in the country.

An online discussion board called Pikabu contained a message that appeared to be from Steam confirming that it was no longer supporting bitcoin in Russia. The message said it was posted by ‘Technical Support Officer Tim’ on Thu, Jun 2nd, 2016 15:49.:  The message reads:

    Unfortunately, payment in the Steam store using Bitcoin will no longer be maintained on the territory of your region. We apologize for the inconvenience.

[mayax]

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?

[Amph]

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

[bloodnest]

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 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.

[Kprawn]

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. 

[Superways]

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.

[zimmah]

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?

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.

[pocarime32]

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.

[iv4n]

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.

[~Bitcoin~]

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?

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

[gentlemand]

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?

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.

[Lauda]

Steam will disable BTC everywhere in less than a year

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

I'm sure steam will disable bitcoin for users in more country who ban or forbid bitcoin usage.

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.

Wow, it's big for russian steam user.

No.

I'm sure there is something happened in russia with bitcoin user.

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.

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..

I concur.

[Velkro]

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.

[Hirose UK]

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

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

[pereira4]

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.

[teddy5145]

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?

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

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

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.

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

[Cashew]

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.

[Amph]

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.

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

[unamis76]

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?

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".

[Wendigo]

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.