Over the last month, players from various countries have been reporting issues with trying to use PayPal on Steam. The popular online wallet for PC gaming’s most popular storefront seemed to go into permanent maintenance mode. Now, Valve has confirmed exactly what happened: a recent censorship crackdown led to the loss of global PayPal payment processing in all but six currencies.
“In early July 2025, PayPal notified Valve that their acquiring bank for payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam,” reads a new section of Steam’s purchasing issues FAQ first reported by Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD. We hope to offer PayPal as an option for these currencies in the future but the timeline is uncertain. We are also evaluating adding additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected by this.”
There was no immediate explanation for why PayPal’s payment processing had changed, even as PC players across major countries like Norway and Mexico found themselves unable to purchase games. “Just when Satisfactory is finally on sale,” one player complained on Reddit on July 16.
But Valve has now confirmed that the changes were directly related to the ongoing censorship campaign against adult content on Steam and other PC gaming storefronts. The loss of payment processing support by one of PayPal’s banking partners “is regarding content on Steam, related to what we’ve previously commented on surrounding Mastercard,” a spokesperson for the company told Rock, Paper, Shotgun. “In this case, one of PayPal’s acquiring banks decided to stop processing any Steam transactions, which cut off PayPal on Steam for a number of currencies.”
While that campaign, initiated by an Australian anti-porn group called Collective Shout, was in response to a small slice of games that included content related to sexual abuse and incest, it’s now led to some players in certain countries being unable to buy anything from Steam.
“Been noticing this for quite a bit now, it started off as Paypal being ‘temporarily unavailable at this time’ here in the Philippines when I was trying to purchase games a few weeks ago,” wrote another Steam user last week. “Today, I wanted to pick up Cyberpunk on sale and then I get hit with [PayPal is currently unavailable in your country]. Seriously? Does anyone know when will this payment method be available again?”
Steam’s FAQ suggest it’s hoping to get PayPal support for these countries back in the coming months, as well as exploring alternative payment systems. In the meantime, anti-censorship advocates are continuing to flood call centers of companies like Stripe trying to reverse the pressure on storefronts like Steam and itch.io.
