Update 21-08-2025: After publication, Valve confirmed that PayPal’s disruption to Steam services is indeed related to the Visa/Mastercard censorship controversy. Valve toldRockPaperShotgunthat one of PayPal’s acquiring banks stopped processing Steam transactions due to content on the platform, halting Steam’s ability to process PayPal transactions in several currencies.
In the midst of abject chaos and censorship, back around the time when payment processors realized they could just shut down industries they didn’t like, something slipped under the radar of most. It seemed possibly-related, but worked a bit differently; and without hard confirmation, nobody could really tell one way or the other.
PayPalstopped working onSteam. Well, it only stopped for people in certain regions - Mexico, Poland, and Norway to name a few. This happened with little warning and without explanation, and stayed that way untilValvebroke the silence with an explanation of their own.
Previously, if you were in an affected country and tried to process a Steam payment with PayPal, Steam would refuse your money. “We are unable to process with this payment method at this time,” the brief error popup said. “We apologize for the inconvenience.”
That changed recently. As spotted by a user on Reddit (Thanks,PC Gamer), that popup’s text changed - and it offers a drop-down with a much longer explanation.
“In early July 2025, PayPal notified Valve that their acquiring bank for payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam,” the statement reads. “This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD.”
We hope to offer PayPal as an option for these currencies in the future but the timeline is uncertain.
Steam’s support site also bears theexact same message, in full.
Is PayPal Joining The Visa / Mastercard Censorship Campaign?
At this stage, it’s hard to confirm if PayPal is joining the bandwagon of other payment processing companies. The timing certainly lines up, though the targeting of specific currencies rather than types of product sold makes PayPal’s move different in nature.
While Valve has released a statement on the matter, PayPal on the other hand hasn’t said much of anything. Granted, Mastercard hasn’t said they’re doing censorship, but that came in the form of an official statementclaiming they didn’t do anything- something both Valve and Itch.io dispute.
Itch.io in particular has had a rough go of it. Being much smaller than Valve, they’ve had to take much stricter measures - measures that have put some indie devs on the platform ina bit of a financial bind.
Regardless of intent though, Valve is clearly feeling the pressure. Their remark that “the timeline is uncertain” resonates with the censorship campaign that’s still fresh in everyone’s minds.
All it took was a fewconservative Australian activistsgetting mad at adult content existing, and now there’s a ton of fires that need to get put out.
