Steam Co-founder Reveals Why The Platform Dropped Bitcoin Support
Categories: Bitcoin
Valve’s video game digital distribution service Steam was an early BTC adopter. However, the platform’s journey with the top crypto asset was short-lived. Bitcoin was introduced as a payment method on Steam in April 2016 and removed in December 2017.In a recent interview, Steam co-founder and president Gabe Newell revealed the reasons behind the platform’s short journey with BTC. Steam’s mere 20 month BTC adoption back in the day raised considerable concern among Bitcoin enthusiasts. At that time, Valve stated that the reasons behind discontinuing BTC transactions were the coin’s volatility and ‘ a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network.’More recently, however, Newell revealed that when the platform accepted bitcoin payments, an astonishing 50% of transactions turned out to be fraudulent. This was one of the primary reasons behind the platform’s dropping support for Bitcoin payments in 2017.Steam also banned games with NFT and crypto integration more recently, citing bad actors.Contrary to popular belief, however, Newell highlighted how he was not entirely dismissive of blockchain technology in the interview. On the other hand, he believed there was still a lack of compelling use cases for the technology. Earlier this year, it was reported that Steam would not allow NFTs on its platform. According to Newell, the problem with NFTs is that ‘many of those involved were bad actors.’Despite the scams and number of bad actors in the NFT space, platforms like Ubisoft are keen to find ways to monetize on the growing sector.