Gabe Newell Says That 50 Percent Of Bitcoin Transactions On Steam Were Fraudulent
Bitcoin was briefly accepted on Steam as a payment method between April, 2016 and December, 2017. The cryptocurrency was removed from the platform on account of "a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the Bitcoin network.” Valve went on to remove games based on NFTs and cryptocurrency from Steam a couple of years later. The reasoning behind the move away from blockchain technology has never been clear until now.
President at Valve Gabe Newell revealed his opinions about cryptocurrency in particular and blockchain technology more broadly during a recent interview with PC Gamer. The executive came out strongly against both of them.
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Newell referred to the constant fluctuations in the exchange value of Bitcoin as a "complete nightmare" for Valve. This appears to have directly impacted the price that people had to pay for their games on Steam. The cost of these could change dramatically over the course of weeks, days, or even hours.
When it comes to crypto bros, Newell didn’t mince words. The executive noted the incredibly large number of scammers and swindlers among them. "The problem is that a lot of the actors who are in that space are not people you want interacting with your customers," he said. "We had problems when we started accepting cryptocurrencies as a payment option. 50 percent of those transactions were fraudulent which is a mind-boggling number. These were customers we didn't want to have."
Newell doesn’t see much point in blockchain technology for the moment. "There's a lot of really interesting technology in blockchain and figuring out how to do a distributed ledger. I think that people haven't figured out why you actually need a
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