As reported previously by IGN and Gizmodo, the PC gaming giant Steam is no longer accepting Bitcoin as a payment method on their platform. The news coincided with the digital currency breaking its previous record and reaching the value of $14,500 USD.
Steam is the largest PC video game distribution platform by far with over 125 million active users from over 254 countries worldwide. Steam nearly has a monopoly in the PC gaming market, with its only real rivals being: Xbox, PlayStation, and to a certain extent, EA’s Origin platform.
In an official blog post Steam wrote the following:
“As of today, Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method on our platform due to high fees and volatility in the value of Bitcoin. In the past few months we've seen an increase in the volatility in the value of Bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network. 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. These fees result in unreasonably high costs for purchasing games when paying with Bitcoin. The high transaction fees cause even greater problems when the value of Bitcoin itself drops dramatically.”
Steam’s decision has left many cryptocurrency enthusiasts and players sorely disappointed. Most comments left on steam’s blog post simply requested that Steam should accept a different cryptocurrency with lower fees and volatility, such as Litecoin or Ethereum.
So far there has been no further comments from Steam.
With the release of Game Protocol in 2018, we plan on allowing players to use cryptocurrencies as a primary form of payment. We can guarantee that Game Protocol will be a place both for cryptocurrency enthusiasts as well as for gamers and game developers.
Currently, it seems that the cryptocurrency revolution will not stop, and the future of gaming lies in accepting that truth. By warmly accepting cryptocurrencies and implementing blockchain technologies into the world of gaming, Game Protocol plans on capitalizing on Steam’s mistake.
By using Game Protocol Tokens, Game Protocol plans on keeping transaction fees nearly non-existent and therefor avoiding one of the key issues that Steam has encountered.
