What Happened

In what may be yet another twist in the ongoing payment processor-game platform debacle, PayPal will no longer be an option for gamers using any of the 19 currencies that have now been banned on Steam. The six currencies listed below are the only ones that will still work for PayPal purchases:

1. USD: United States Dollar
2. CAD: Canadian Dollar Dollar
3. AUD: Australian Dollar
4. GBP: UK Pound Sterling
5. EUR: Euro
6. JPY: Japanese Yen

PayPal explains that this block is due to some of their acquiring banks terminating the processing of Steam transactions for their currency. For users in countries with banned currency, Steam advises to either use a payment method other than PayPal or use a Steam Wallet code to add funds directly to your Steam account.

History

Though PayPal has not commented on why some of their acquiring banks have caused this block, many suspect it is related to the Mastercard, Visa, and Stripe situation, where in July, Itch.io and Steam removed many NSFW games from their platforms in response to an open letter from the Australian organization Collective Shout.

In its letter, the organization, which calls itself "a grassroots movement challenging the objectification of women and sexualisation of girls in media, advertising and popular culture," asked the CEOs of PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, and others, to stop processing transactions on game platforms that host games with rape, incest, and child abuse.

The payment processors agreed with Collective Shout and put pressure on Steam and Itch.io, two of the biggest PC gaming platforms, to remove games with such derogatory content from their platforms. Failing to comply with the payment processors' wishes would mean Steam would lose their partnership with them and Mastercard, Visa, and other credit cards would no longer be available as payment methods on the site at all.

Though only games featuring rape, incest, and child abuse were asked to be taken down, it seems Steam and Itch.io took the nuclear option, (perhaps because individually reviewing each game would take too long?) with Itch.io delisting every single NSFW game from their platform and Steam taking down tens of thousands of completely innocent NSFW games. Well, as innocent as an NSFW game can be, haha.

All of this is to say, it seems this recent blockage of currencies on PayPal for Steam transactions is another stepping stone in the controversial path down censorship that these gaming platforms and payment processors are taking.

In my opinion, I think banning games where you play as a rapist or a child abuser is completely reasonable, as that kind of behavior is highly illegal in real life and should not be glorified. Nonetheless, the majority of NSFW games don't feature that kind of content and are entirely harmless for adults to play. As such, I don't think they should be taken down with the others.

It's a complicated situation, one that I hope Steam, the payment processors, Collective Shout, and the users themselves are able to come to a solution with.