Steam dropping PayPal support for all but 6 currencies is "related" to pressure from banks and card companies to remove NSFW games, Valve confirms as censorship controversy continues

Steam sale: a screenshot of a collection games in a Steam library — (Image credit: Valve)

Update: Valve has confirmed that Steam's sudden refusal to accept PayPal in many currencies is related to the payment processor-led crackdown on NSFW games.

The removal of PayPal support for all but six currencies is "regarding content on Steam, related to what we’ve previously commented on surrounding Mastercard," Valve tells Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Earlier this month, Mastercard claimed to have no direct involvement in Steam's adult game crackdown. Valve disputed that claim, arguing that Mastercard's pressure on payment processors led to their push against certain kinds of adult content on Steam.

As for the sudden limitation on most PayPal currencies, the Valve spokesperson adds that, "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."

Steam users have a few different ways to pay for their games, be it your typical credit and debit card providers or the likes of PaySafeCard. The more options there are the better, and given some payment processors have led to a ton of games being removed from Steam and de-indexed from Itch.io, naturally some users are keen to use different payment methods on the platform. But around a month ago, some players noticed that PayPal was no longer available for an unknown reason, with some assuming this was somehow related to the NSFW crackdown.

Steam PayPal unavailable update from r/Steam

However, Redditor jeeg123 made a post (which was spotted by PC Gamer) after noticing that Steam had added an explanation to the message. It reads, "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. This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD."

The message adds, "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."

So the UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, US, and countries in Europe that use the Euro (which excludes the likes of Poland, Bulgaria, and Sweden) are all still fine to use PayPal for their purchases on Steam. However, PayPal hasn't explained why or how it came to this decision, or if it is in fact related to the ongoing delisting of NSFW games.

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