As of today, Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method!

[Crypto Piece]

What will they accept instead? 

[chiggz]

This is really a sad news. Steam had done a great job by accepting Bitcoin as a payment. But times have changed now. Bitcoin hasn't been a reliable payment option lately. Longer confirmations timings, Higher transaction fee isn't what Bitcoin was actually meant to be.

Last year everyone wanted to buy things with Bitcoin as it was almost free to send it and magical. But now its a store of value used to make you rich instantly:(

[kahc]

Totally understandable, given how volatile BTC is and has been the past weeks.

[Iranus]

Steam was one of the very few major merchants left still accepting BTC.

BTC's usage among merchants seems to have been going gradually backwards since the start of the year, with Fiverr dropping it in February and some of the groups that people claim accept Bitcoin not actually doing so or doing so indirectly.

Just goes to show that speculators and an increasing price don't make BTC better. 

[bit-freedom]

It is so sad to hear of this news. The transaction fee is really too high to make sense to pay in BTC for smaller transactions.

Well understood of steam intention.

[PeRo]

Just checked, It is true.. I could not believe it, I hope the price stops moving so much so Steam could accept it again.. There are still third party sites that accept Bitcoin and I hope they stay with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is my only way to buy games, I hope I can continue buying them..

[tomahawk9]

Should've posted the source: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613

From the business point of view of Steam, it's understable how Bitcoin isn't viable to be accepted as payment method yet, there's too much room for complaints from customers, though I think they are exaggerating with the 20$ transaction fee.
I'm ok with them putting on hold the use of cryptocurrency (BTC in this case) for the time being. Hopefully the Lightning Network is going to sort this out and Steam will accept btc again.

[fiulpro]

Well if you look at it from a positive point of view its not such a bad news

The fact that steam decided to call off payment through bitcoins means that people are now into holding bitcoins! Yes they have been through a lots of ups and downs through the time but now they are exceptionally shining being in a phase where there are 6 hard forks ahead of ypu and big whales and CME investing there is nothing that cqn go wrong now thus steam is accepting that people are treating it as an investment also bitcoins were never meant to be used as a fiat or to replace it, I think its perfect as an investment strategy..its a little risky but yes you can expect huge returns.

Thus lets accept this news and hold onto our bitcoins

[Xavofat]

bitcoins were never meant to be used as a fiat or to replace it

Read the title of the whitepaper:  "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".

One of satoshi's primary aims for Bitcoin was to prevent the high fees caused by trusted third parties, and the fraud that ensues.  With high transaction times and/or high fees, it no longer serves this purpose.  To claim that it was "never" intended for this purpose, though, is ridiculous.

What will they accept instead? 

I imagine that they'll just continue to accept fiat and give up on crypto altogether for now.

[Zicadis]

Gaming communities have always had a huge following and with this news its a blow to bitcoin and other digital currencies and if am not mistaken steam was also one of the first and few gaming places you could pay with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, and if they pull out now when cryptos are going mainstream it does not send a good message.

[Anonylz]

It is fine, people were usually paying more than five or six bucks just for transaction fees, and that was not fair.. If you wanted to buy something worth $6 in steam, you must pay the fees.

I have a friend who bought a game that was at a discount, and he paid $2 for the game + $6 for the fees, and that is INSANE.

I dont know what is happening with the fees, i sent out 0.25 out of my hardware wallet a few hours ago, and i had to pay $18 worth of fees for that transaction.. It is pretty high, i hope that it will be fixed soon.

[guillzini]

I'm not really surprised. As it is now, Bitcoin is not a good option for payment services.. the tx fees are ridiculous and confirmations take too long. Even banks do "instant" transactions nowadays, so a solution needs to be found for this.

They are starting to compare Bitcoin to gold, which at the moment is a more accurate analogy investment-wise, if you ask me.

[aintnopassincraze]

The game has changed and bitcoin can no longer be used for everyday transactions ones even totally $50 because of the high fees. I won't move mine around anymore unless I have to or the fee is justified by the amount I am moving around. It does suck that this has happened maybe it can be used as a wake up call to the devs to get the fees lower. I know that may not be number one priority but it should be up high on the list if you ask me.

[hatshepsut93]

From the blog post:

Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, but the degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days.

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary, and Bitpay requires transactions to be sent and confirmed within 15 minutes - so the chances of BTC dropping 20% in 15 minutes are actually extremely small, and all the volatility is handled by Bitpay. The real problem here is that customers have to use high fees to get their tx included in the next block, otherwise Bitpay will have to send their transaction back.

[kokojie]

From the blog post:

Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, but the degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days.

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary, and Bitpay requires transactions to be sent and confirmed within 15 minutes - so the chances of BTC dropping 20% in 15 minutes are actually extremely small, and all the volatility is handled by Bitpay. The real problem here is that customers have to use high fees to get their tx included in the next block, otherwise Bitpay will have to send their transaction back.

Yeah, to realistically have a transaction confirm in a hour, I had to pay equivalent of $5 in fees. Who the hell going to pay that to buy a $60 game? They can just use their credit card for free and get 2% cashback.

[darkangel11]

I'm not really surprised. As it is now, Bitcoin is not a good option for payment services.. the tx fees are ridiculous and confirmations take too long. Even banks do "instant" transactions nowadays, so a solution needs to be found for this.

They are starting to compare Bitcoin to gold, which at the moment is a more accurate analogy investment-wise, if you ask me.

I call bullshit. Banks do it only between accounts within the same bank. You can't have an instant transaction between different banks and you can't have money sent during weekends and at nights. I have been doing it for many years and my last transaction sent on Monday needed over 24h to appear on the account of my friend in a different bank within the same country. My another transaction that was sent on Saturday arrived on Tuesday (!) because they don't work in the evenings, nights, on Sundays, and it takes up to 48 hours anyway.

[drzed]

Understandable really. They should accept Litecoin instead. Much more suited to the smaller transactions.

[darkangel11]

From the blog post:

Historically, the value of Bitcoin has been volatile, but the degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days.

Bitcoin had a plenty of 20-30% drops and spikes this year and the year before, it's simply not true that volaility has increased, unless they measure volatility in flat amounts, which is dumb.

I've personally used Bitcoin 2 times with Steam, and to those who don't know how it works, they actually have Bitpay as intermediary, and Bitpay requires transactions to be sent and confirmed within 15 minutes - so the chances of BTC dropping 20% in 15 minutes are actually extremely small, and all the volatility is handled by Bitpay. The real problem here is that customers have to use high fees to get their tx included in the next block, otherwise Bitpay will have to send their transaction back.

Yeah, to realistically have a transaction confirm in a hour, I had to pay equivalent of $5 in fees. Who the hell going to pay that to buy a $60 game? They can just use their credit card for free and get 2% cashback.

Steam is greedy as fuck. The same games games that you can buy on other stores or online (on humblebundle or simply ebay/amazon) cost at least 30% more when bought directly through Steam. Their policy where you are forced to accept that none of these games are actually yours but you are only allowed to use them for a certain time makes it a ripoff IMO. They are probably afraid that people will buy games cheaper due to the booming market and the bubble will pop before their people can make it to an exchange and convert to fiat. 

[lighpulsar07]

What will they accept instead?  

Really? They will remove bitcoin as a payment method on steam? That is very sad though i am the one who pays/purchases that item in steam using bitcoin. I think the reason why steam remove this is the price is rising rrally fast right now and it will be risky for losing money them if they continue this. Why did they do this  now how can i purchase an item/ a new costume if bitcoin payment is stopped

[mike8CircuitStudios]

I think we'll be seeing new options for crypto and games very soon...  

The game we are making is integrating a wallet, tokens and purchasing into the game.  https://youtu.be/GhLwvuBieOI

Not the same as being able to use it on Steam, but, my point is I think we'll be seeing some major changes in the near future.