Valve has confirmed that one of PayPal’s acquiring banks has blocked all transactions on Steam as part of the ongoing action against explicit gaming content.
The issue arose last month, when players, and then Valve itself, noticed PayPal was “immediately terminating” the processing of any transactions related to Steam, regardless of the game being purchased.
It’s not PayPal itself that’s blocking transactions, however; one of the acquiring banks it uses to process payments has “decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies.” Right now, the affected currencies appear to be anything “other than” the Euro, the British Pound, the Japanese Yen, and Australian, Canadian, and U.S. dollars.
In a statement to RPS, Valve said the restrictions “regarding content on Steam, related to what we’ve previously commented on surrounding Mastercard.”
“In this case, one of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies,” the company said.
Mastercard previously denied it had raised concerns over NSFW adult content on Steam, but Valve has refuted Mastercard’s claims, saying: “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution. Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”
Last month, indie game platform itch.io “deindexed” all adult NSFW content from its browse and search pages following pressure from its payment processors regarding some of the content hosted on the site.
It followed an open letter from conservative campaign group Collective Shout which called for a stop to “payment processors profiting from rape, incest and child abuse games on Steam,” targeting the CEOs of PayPal — which is also one of itch.io’s two main payment processors — Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and Japan Credit Bureau (JCB) and requesting the companies “cease processing payments on gaming platforms which host rape, incest and child sexual abuse-themed games.”
For more on the situation, read our feature, what’s going on with Steam and itch.io’s crackdown on adult content?