During the last month, gamers from numerous nations have been reporting points with making an attempt to make use of PayPal on Steam. The favored on-line pockets for PC gaming’s hottest storefront appeared to enter everlasting upkeep mode. Now, Valve has confirmed precisely what occurred: a recent censorship crackdown led to the lack of international PayPal cost processing in all however six currencies.
“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,” reads a brand new part of Steam’s buying points FAQ first reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “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. We are also evaluating adding additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected by this.”
There was no fast rationalization for why PayPal’s cost processing had modified, at the same time as PC gamers throughout main nations like Norway and Mexico discovered themselves unable to buy video games. “Just when Satisfactory is finally on sale,” one participant complained on Reddit on July 16.
However Valve has now confirmed that the modifications have been instantly associated to the continuing censorship marketing campaign towards grownup content material on Steam and different PC gaming storefronts. The lack of cost processing assist by one in all PayPal’s banking companions “is regarding content on Steam, related to what we’ve previously commented on surrounding Mastercard,” a spokesperson for the corporate told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “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.”
Whereas that marketing campaign, initiated by an Australian anti-porn group known as Collective Shout, was in response to a small slice of video games that included content material associated to sexual abuse and incest, it’s now led to some gamers in sure nations being unable to purchase something from Steam.
“Been noticing this for quite a bit now, it started off as Paypal being ‘temporarily unavailable at this time’ here in the Philippines when I was trying to purchase games a few weeks ago,” wrote one other Steam person last week. “Today, I wanted to pick up Cyberpunk on sale and then I get hit with [PayPal is currently unavailable in your country]. Seriously? Does anyone know when will this payment method be available again?”
Steam’s FAQ counsel it’s hoping to get PayPal assist for these nations again within the coming months, in addition to exploring various cost methods. Within the meantime, anti-censorship advocates are persevering with to flood name facilities of companies like Stripe making an attempt to reverse the strain on storefronts like Steam and itch.io.
