This time, it’s PayPal’s turn. In several regions, you cannot use PayPal to make purchases on Valve’s digital platform.

Valve has confirmed that one of PayPal’s acquiring banks has blocked all Steam transactions as part of a continuing crackdown on games with explicit sexual content. The issue first emerged last month, when players—and eventually Valve—noticed that PayPal was immediately stopping all transactions related to Steam, regardless of the type of game being purchased. However, the block does not come directly from PayPal itself. Rather, it stems from one of the banks responsible for processing payments, which decided to cease handling transactions linked to Steam. This move has disrupted PayPal usage on Steam for several currencies.

Currently, it appears that the affected currencies include everything except the euro, British pound, Japanese yen, and the Australian, Canadian, and US dollars. In other words, a vast portion of the player base is caught up in this long-brewing NSFW row.

In a statement to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Valve stated that restrictions on Steam content are linked to earlier comments they made regarding Mastercard. In this case, one of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing Steam transactions, which has disrupted PayPal availability for several currencies. Mastercard had previously denied raising any concerns about the adult NSFW content available on Steam. However, Valve pushed back on this claim, asserting that Mastercard did in fact communicate with payment processors and their acquiring banks.

The payment processors relayed this information to Valve, which then responded by outlining Steam’s policy—implemented in 2018—of attempting to distribute only legal games. The payment processors rejected this response, citing Mastercard’s rule 5.12.7 and the perceived brand risk to Mastercard.

At the end of the day, payment processors should stick to their job: processing transactions. That’s all they should be doing. They should not be involved in this.

Source: Gamesindustry, RPS