Is Steam going to accept Bitcoin again?

[PeRo]

When Steam announced that they are not accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment, they said that it is temporary untill Bitcoin gets stable. Bitcoins price has been pretty stable for a longer period, so why not start accepting again? Did they announce anything?

It's pretty stupid of them because now I am forced to buy from third party sited and Steam doesn't support that but they don't want to support Bitcoin either.

[OmegaStarScream]

I haven't read any announcements personally but I don't think we need them anymore. If you want any game, you could get it at a cheaper price in G2A or Kinguin (both accept bitcoin) and If you want skins ofr any game, you could use BitSkins, once again, at a cheaper price and assuming that whatever you need is not found on these sites, you could try Bitrefill.com

[MarioV]

But why had he stopped accepting bitcoins against his every interest? He should have continued to support it and not refuse it.

[Harlot]

But why had he stopped accepting bitcoins against his every interest? He should have continued to support it and not refuse it.

For businesses like Steam taking up a very volatile payment option like Bitcoin is a very risky move. Even though they have supported Bitcoin as a mode of payment in the past it doesn't mean they can't pull out from it, as the risk involves is really high and it is meant to potential losses on their part. Just think of it this way one of your customers bought the game with 59.99$ worth of BTC but once the payment has been processed BTC's value dropped big time and your customer's payment is in BTC is now worth 45$, will you be happy as a business owner?

[Ojengonggu]

But why had he stopped accepting bitcoins against his every interest? He should have continued to support it and not refuse it.

For businesses like Steam taking up a very volatile payment option like Bitcoin is a very risky move. Even though they have supported Bitcoin as a mode of payment in the past it doesn't mean they can't pull out from it, as the risk involves is really high and it is meant to potential losses on their part. Just think of it this way one of your customers bought the game with 59.99$ worth of BTC but once the payment has been processed BTC's value dropped big time and your customer's payment is in BTC is now worth 45$, will you be happy as a business owner?

I think we all know the price of bitcoin and its friends all follow the exchange market. And if for that reason, I don't think this is right. Because there is a good reason for them to get profit if prices change, Is not it ...? ...?

[BrewMaster]

When Steam announced that they are not accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment, they said that it is temporary untill Bitcoin gets stable.

i think you are mistaken about this. first of all they never said "they will stop until ....", they just said they stopped "because...". at least that is how i remember it.
additionally the reason had nothing to do with bitcoin volatility. bitcoin has always been volatile and if anything its volatility has decreased, even in 2017 that looks so volatile it was actually less volatile compared to early years for instance.
the reason was high fees. in case you have forgotten during that time fees had gone up to $30-$50 and that is (in some cases) 10 times the value of a game on their platform! IIRC the most expensive game was about $50 without expansions,...

will they change? i don't think so. not anytime soon. fees have been low but the blocks have also been full and sometimes it goes up again. maybe with LN they do it in the future.

ps. steem was using BitPay for payments so they didn't care about volatility at all.

[lilyaacebedo]

Oh so there was a time that Steam accepted bitcoin as payment before? That's new to me. I hope that they will bring it back as I am frequently using steam now love to play games!

[Shishir99]

But the most important question is will bitcoin remain stable like that all the time.Because bitcoin is very volatile when volume grows but now market volume is very low.It will be good if they accept bitcoin again but it is very unlikely.

[Rath_]

If they decided to use BitPay again, I would rather continue paying with fiat on their platform. BitPay does not support the Lightning Network (since it's pro Bitcoin Cash) and has enormous "network" fee which is basically their markup. There wouldn't anything wrong in this if they called it something like service or conversion fee. BTCPayServer is a free and open-source alternative which supports both Lightning Network and on-chain transactions. However, I doubt that they are going to accept Bitcoin anytime soon again.

[cissrawk]

I think no, but idk about how about them in future. But, if you want to buy steam wallet, you can use steamgamesbtc.com for that. Their ANN thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96426.0

[AdolfinWolf]

I think no, but idk about how about them in future. But, if you want to buy steam wallet, you can use steamgamesbtc.com for that. Their ANN thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96426.0

That site looks real sketchy. If it wasn't for the ANN you linked, i would've definitely written it off as a scam.

When Steam announced that they are not accepting Bitcoin as a method of payment, they said that it is temporary untill Bitcoin gets stable.

-snip-

I think it was a little bit of both, looking at their blogpost about it, they state the following:

...For example, transaction fees that are charged to the customer by the Bitcoin network have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week (compared to roughly $0.20 when we initially enabled Bitcoin). Unfortunately, Valve has no control over the amount of the fee....

And

...This creates a problem for customers trying to purchase games with Bitcoin. When checking out on Steam, a customer will transfer x amount of Bitcoin for the cost of the game, plus y amount of Bitcoin to cover the transaction fee charged by the Bitcoin network. The value of Bitcoin is only guaranteed for a certain period of time so if the transaction doesn’t complete within that window of time, then the amount of Bitcoin needed to cover the transaction can change.....

Which definitely indicates that they thought volatility was a big issue. Not necessarily for them, but for their customers.. (Which seems a little bit odd if you think about it. I'm pretty sure most users understood what they we're dealing with..?) Seems a little over-protective of them if you'd ask me.

As per https://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/1464096684955433613

[bL4nkcode]

I think no, but idk about how about them in future. But, if you want to buy steam wallet, you can use steamgamesbtc.com for that. Their ANN thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=96426.0

That site looks real sketchy. If it wasn't for the ANN you linked, i would've definitely written it off as a scam.

I used that site too many times bought games and steam wallets, though as you can see the site looks dull but I can really say that its a legit site and can be trusted unless the owner changed the way he managed the site.

[1Referee]

If they decided to use BitPay again, I would rather continue paying with fiat on their platform.

That was my initial plan as well, but if you think logically, that's exactly what Roger Ver wants you to do. It provides him all the 'evidence' he needs to show that statistically Bitcoin isn't being used as cash, and I'm not going to let him do that. The best is to keep using BitPay and signal merchants that we are willing to spend our coins.

BitPay does not support the Lightning Network (since it's pro Bitcoin Cash) and has enormous "network" fee which is basically their markup. There wouldn't anything wrong in this if they called it something like service or conversion fee.

Regardless of the name or purpose of the fees payment gateways deal with, it's not the problem of the buyer and thus they shouldn't be the one that's paying the bill. Bitcoin's fees have been extremely low in the last couple of months and they still charge that extra fee, which is a clear sign that it's just a way to troll Bitcoin.

Seriously, centralized crypto payment gateways are just as bad as traditional banks, maybe even worse.

[PeRo]

I haven't read any announcements personally but I don't think we need them anymore. If you want any game, you could get it at a cheaper price in G2A or Kinguin (both accept bitcoin) and If you want skins ofr any game, you could use BitSkins, once again, at a cheaper price and assuming that whatever you need is not found on these sites, you could try Bitrefill.com

I know that I can buy from third party sited, I personaly use HRK game or instant gaming, they're pretty cheap and accept Bitcoin. But I like Steams Summer and Winter sales, they give games even cheaper than other sites.

Oh so there was a time that Steam accepted bitcoin as payment before? That's new to me. I hope that they will bring it back as I am frequently using steam now love to play games!

Yes, they have accepted Bitcoin for quite a long time. But when Bitcoin started being unstable and very volatile with high fees and long confirmation times they stopped accepting it, that was around a year ago.

[Thinkable999]

People generally use G2A if they want to buy games online using Bitcoins. It is speculated that steam will start accepting Bitcoins again when it is less volatile.

[SidneyFoley]

Steam had shown a good reason to stop accepting Bitcoin. The price of Bitcoin is very unstable. Though it is unlikely, but only time can tell if Steam will satrt accepting Bitcoin again or not.

[jossiel]

Yes, though they stop accepting bitcoin payments directly there are 3rd party services that we can use but problems are occurring though deposits are confirmed. They are worried about the fees before but I hope they will notice this suggestion from the bitcoin community of gamers since the fees were down and stable again.

Oh so there was a time that Steam accepted bitcoin as payment before? That's new to me. I hope that they will bring it back as I am frequently using steam now love to play games!

Yes, they did.

Possible if the bull run comes, when bitcoin will be echoing again and hope that the fees by that time won't hurt everyone including their business which can be a factor of their decision to get back with bitcoin again because they are worried with its volatility and fee.

[crairezx20]

I think they don't have a plan to continue accepting bitcoin again since there are many 3rd party website right now that you can use to buy credits.

Here, from my country, we have coins.ph where we can buy steam wallet code for bitcoin and 3 other supported coins. So, I think steam will never accept bitcoin again anymore except if the bitcoin become stable as USD.

[gentlemand]

I don't give a shit. It's better for users not to be buying frivolities with BTC anyway. If they really want to there are places like Bitrefill where you can buy vouchers.

Their volatility thing made no sense. They had zero exposure to it. The only thing I can think of is they had masses of customer complaints about Bitcoin fees which isn't their problem either, it was Bitpay and Bitcoin itself.

[RileyPeterson]

Bitcoin has been stable for some time but the market volume is low. It will be a great news for the gamers if Steam accepts bitcoin again. But we might not see it happen until the bitcoin value increases.