Early July 2025 saw Steam drop PayPal for the majority of its global customers.
If the payment wasn’t in Euro, US dollar, British pound, Japanese yen, Australian dollar, or Canadian dollar, PayPal was no longer available as an option.
Valve said it wasn’t a simple technical issue, but that one of PayPal’s acquiring banks had suddenly stopped processing Steam payments for certain currencies.
Overnight, millions of users in countries like Brazil, Poland, Switzerland, Mexico, and others lost access to what for many was their fastest, most familiar way to pay.
Is the PayPal Issue Linked to Steam’s Adult Content Removals?
Valve officially described it as a banking move tied to currency support, but the timing pointed to something larger, as Steam and indie platform itch.io were both undergoing a broad purge of adult-themed titles.
Collective Shout, an Australian anti-pornography group, spent weeks pushing payment giants like PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Discover, and Japan Credit Bureau to cut off sales of titles containing sexual violence or incest themes.
The campaign openly identified executives and called on banks and payment processors to withdraw support from platforms hosting the material.
What Changes Did Platforms Make After Activist Pressure?
In short order, Steam modified its developer requirements to fit payment network standards and cleared out a wide range of NSFW games, even those legally allowed but marked as too risky for processing.
Itch.io hid thousands of adult games from its browse and search features. In both cases, collateral damage hit developers of LGBTQ+ and other mature titles that didn’t violate any laws, sparking debates about whether financial middlemen should have such control over creative expression.
Could the PayPal Cutoff Really Be Linked to Content Restrictions?
This is where the PayPal cutoff becomes more than a dry payment-processing story.
Valve didn’t connect the two matters but admitted acquiring banks, following Mastercard-influenced rules, had cited content concerns in the past.
In Mastercard’s case, Valve said it was told to remove games considered a “risk to the brand,” even when those games were legal to distribute.
In real-world terms, content-focused risk checks like these could cause an acquiring bank to pull support for Steam transactions in certain areas quietly.
Players in certain regions had to switch to Steam Wallet codes, bank cards, or other local options that are slower, more costly, or less accessible.
For developers, especially those making adult or niche content, the loss of PayPal was yet another blow in a season of policy shifts that had already cut into visibility and revenue.
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