Steam started accepting payments in Bitcoins in April 2017. At that time, each Bitcoin was worth about USD 450. Now, each coin is worth about USD 17,000. The “high fees and volatility” had driven the service to stop accepting them. According to development studio Valve, which runs Steam, fees to process Bitcoin payments had “skyrocketed” in 2017, making the virtual currency much less attractive as an option. The company’s representatives said they may re-evaluate Bitcoin as a payment possibility in the future.
Despite the fact that Bitcoin had always been volatile, the rapid changes in value it had seen during the past few months had been “extreme”. Furthermore, the moment-by-moment shifts in value were a problem, Valve said, because of the narrow window customers had to complete a purchase using Bitcoins.
In these cases, customers had to transfer more Bitcoins to make the payment, or get a refund. And either option would result in the customer paying more exchange fees, currently about USD 20. Some customers adding Bitcoins had even been caught out a second time as the value changed again.
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