Steam will no longer support Bitcoin as a payment method due to high fees and volatility in its value.
“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,” said Steam.
It said customer transaction fees have skyrocketed this year, topping out at close to $20 a transaction last week.
This is in comparison to roughly $0.20 when Steam enabled Bitcoin payments.
“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.”
It said the high transaction fees cause problems when the value of Bitcoin drops dramatically – with the volatility of Bitcoin another concern.
“The degree of volatility has become extreme in the last few months, losing as much as 25% in value over a period of days.”
This creates problems for customers purchasing games with Bitcoin.
“We may re-evaluate whether Bitcoin makes sense for us and for the Steam community at a later date.”
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