Valve has confirmed that PayPal payment support has been discontinued in several Steam regions due to a banking partner’s objection to certain content on the platform, with users first reporting issues as early as July 2025.
According to Valve, PayPal informed them in early July 2025 that their acquiring bank for specific currencies was immediately terminating the processing of Steam-related transactions. This decision impacts Steam purchases made with PayPal in all currencies except EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD, and USD, meaning transactions in the US, Canada, UK, and Australia remain unaffected.
Valve elaborated to Rock Paper Shotgun that the bank’s decision to withdraw support for Steam transactions via PayPal was “regarding content on Steam,” drawing a parallel to previous issues encountered with Mastercard. This termination of support necessitated the disabling of PayPal as a payment method for numerous currencies.
Valve expressed its desire to reintroduce PayPal payments for the affected currencies in the future, although the timeline for this remains “uncertain.” The company explicitly linked this PayPal issue to a broader “ongoing censorship battle being waged on Steam and Itch.io.”
This development follows a series of game delistings from Steam in July, which Valve attributed to new guidelines requiring games to adhere to payment processor standards and policies. Valve previously informed Kotaku that Mastercard had effectively compelled the removal of certain NSFW (not safe for work) games by exerting pressure through payment processor intermediaries. Reports indicated that Mastercard, in turn, was influenced by conservative activists who objected to sexually explicit content available on Steam.
In the current situation, a bank collaborating with PayPal appears to be the point of contention, rather than Steam or the payment network itself. However, it is speculated that this acquiring bank may be responding to similar external pressures concerning content on the platform.
