Valve President: 50% of Bitcoin transactions on Steam were fraudulent

Half of cryptocurrency transactions on Steam were linked to fraud when Valve added the option to pay with Bitcoin, according to Gabe Newell, president of the company that owns the platform, in an interview with PC Gamer.

The ability to pay with Bitcoin first appeared on Steam in April 2016. In December 2017 Valve removed the option, citing the asset’s volatility and “a significant increase in fees.”

During the interview, the journalist recalled this episode while probing Newell’s views on cryptocurrencies in general.

“The problem is that many players in this space are not the kind of people you’d want as customers. We ran into trouble when we started accepting cryptocurrency as a payment method. 50% of these transactions were fraudulent — a staggering figure,” said Valve’s chief.

Newell confirmed that Bitcoin price volatility proved to be “a complete nightmare.” A game could cost $10 one day and $100 the next, he stressed.

The company is open to DLT-technologies, but Newell remains sceptical about their deployment:

“There are many genuinely interesting technologies in blockchain, but I think people still haven’t understood what they actually need a distributed ledger for.”

According to him, there is a gap between expectations and reality. As an example, he cited NFT, the deployment of which contributed to fraud against users.

“We don’t want to allow deceiving a large number of customers,” he explained the decision to ban blockchain games on the platform.

But there is nothing inherently problematic in distributed ledgers themselves; the issue lies in the company’s experience with the technology, the Valve president noted.

Earlier, the leadership of Japanese console-game developer PlatinumGames did not see any benefit in NFTs for gamers or creators.