[2017-12-07] Steam announced that it will no longer accept Bitcoin as payment

[aalfadhala]

Steam, the popular online gaming service, has announced today that it will no longer accept Bitcoin as payment. The news comes barely six months since it made the decision to start accepting BTC.

Valve, the studio that runs steam, made the decision because of the volatility of the currency and the escalating transaction fees associated with Bitcoin trading.


Source: https://coinblip.com/blog/steam-stops-accepting-bitcoin/

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[jjacob]

Steam, the popular online gaming service, has announced today that it will no longer accept Bitcoin as payment. The news comes barely six months since it made the decision to start accepting BTC.

Valve, the studio that runs steam, made the decision because of the volatility of the currency and the escalating transaction fees associated with Bitcoin trading.


Source: https://coinblip.com/blog/steam-stops-accepting-bitcoin/

This is an unfortunate reality. Huge transaction fees have made most day to day transactions unviable. if you are moving a million dollars, then it does not matter. But for most daily transactions, credit card fees are lower. Hope scaling issues are sorted out with the development of secondary layers like the lightning network.

[Oo ako to]

I think it's a wise decision for them to remove bitcoin for now because bitcoin is very unstoppable but I know that there's still a chance that it's just temporary and they are waiting for bitcoin to stabilized. Bitcoin will slow down for sure when it reach $100k.

[Kakmakr]

What a stupid business decision, now that Bitcoin is booming before Xmas. Steam should not even be influenced by the Bitcoin price, because purchases are being done through Payment processors. This has nothing to do with price volatility and more to do with politics.

When you use Payment processors, all bitcoins received are immediately converted to fiat. You pay with bitcoin and Steam receive the payment in Fiat. <They do not even receive bitcoins> 

If their backend kept the bitcoins and accounting converted it later, then they would have made millions from the latest price surge. ^smile^

[rjbtc2017]

This is the reality here, Steam is one of a big merchants who accepted Bitcoin as their payment type but this kind of Merchant cannot move with flow of the  Bitcoin's price movement  how can you expect small merchants to move with it?. I'm not being negative here but that's the truth. I guess every merchant should establish first on how they convert the Bitcoin into fiat on real time transactions also we still need to wait for the improvement of the transaction confirmation and the transaction fees seems big enough to be used on Bitcoin transactions on these merchants.

[DooMAD]

While I can understand the disappointment felt by some and the general sense that this is a setback for adoption, personally, I'd rather see companies like GOG and HumbleBundle (when they aren't doing Steam exclusives) leading the way.  DRM runs somewhat counter-ethos to the principles of Bitcoin.  Who wants third-party custodians and middlemen placing restrictions on what you can or can't do with the things you've purchased?  That's no better than the restrictions banks place on what should be your money (but clearly isn't).  I've always despised Steam for this reason and refuse to defile my harddrive with it, let alone give them any money.  I believe that over time, either Steam's business model will have to change, or they will eventually lose their market leading position because of this.