Gabe Newell: “Up to half of Bitcoin transactions on the Steam platform were fraudulent”

The main reason for Valve’s refusal to accept payments in bitcoins was not the volatility of the first cryptocurrency, but scammers.

Digital game distribution platform Steam stopped accepting bitcoins in 2017. But, as Valve co-founder and CEO Gabe Newell recently told PCgamer, one of the main reasons was too many fraudulent transactions:

“The thing is, there are a lot of actors in the cryptocurrency space that you wouldn’t want to give access to your clients. We had problems when we started accepting cryptocurrencies for payment. 50% of transactions were fraudulent, it’s just staggering. We do not need such clients.

The head of Valve did not explain what parameters transactions were defined as fraudulent.

Newell also confirmed that Bitcoin support was also disabled due to volatility. According to him, when a game costs $10, and a day later it’s $100 – it’s “an absolute nightmare.”

Newell has a similar attitude towards cryptocurrency games and collectible tokens (NFTs). At the same time, the co-founder of Valve is quite loyal to the blockchain and distributed ledger technology. He is very interested in these technologies, however, according to him, people do not always understand why they use the blockchain:

“There is a difference in how things should be and how they are in the real world. And it’s the same with NFTs – too many of them are created just to steal players’ money. We thought we didn’t want to let our customers get scammed. But there is nothing about the blockchain that would make it problematic on its own.”

During the shutdown of Steam Bitcoin support, it was reported that the platform operator was embarrassed by high transaction fees.

Recall that in mid-October last year, the Steam platform banned the placement of games with support for NFTs and cryptocurrencies. Several similar projects were immediately removed from the platform.

Source: Bits

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