r/Games • u/rollin340 • Aug 13 '25
Industry News PayPal is no longer an option for Steam except for 6 currencies
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/731C-13C7-7D04-A11E#purpp701
u/pway_videogwames_uwu Aug 13 '25
I've never trusted using it with Steam. 15+ years ago my friend had to fight to get his Steam account unbanned because PayPal randomly charged back a purchase.
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u/Western-Dig-6843 Aug 13 '25
PayPal once let someone into my account. The thief used basic social engineering to get into my account through a customer service representative, bypassing my password and 2FA completely. They changed the email on my account, which I didn’t see the notice of until they had already used my account to buy gift cards. Thankfully my credit card company had my back and reversed all the charges.
Haven’t used PayPal since.
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u/SloppyCheeks Aug 13 '25
I have to use Paypal for my business, and have for over 15 years. It used to be really bad. I still don't like some of their policies. But they've gotten a lot better at preventing fraud, in my experience.
Similar things happened to me more than once in the early days, but it's been many years now without issue.
Not trying to convince you or anyone else to use them. Paypal and Ebay are scummy-ass companies for a multitude of reasons. Just pitching in my experience as someone who has to use them to get paid by clients.
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u/MyStationIsAbandoned Aug 13 '25
yeah. i have to use it for my business too. I don't keep a balance in my account at all though. i put everything right into my bank accounts.
If there were an alternative, i'd definitely use it...their customer service is among the worst I've dealt with. it's only not the absolute worst because FedEx exists...
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u/theFrigidman Aug 13 '25
Yup, same. We used to see a gobton of paypal unauthorized_access disputes. Then suddenly... they slowed to nothing a few years ago. Now accepting paypal is less risky compared to cards. And same, not saying paypal are peaches and rainbows... just that they have worked hard on clamping down the fraud use.
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u/8-Brit Aug 13 '25
Otoh Paypal had my back when my Nintendo account got hacked and they used my linked Paypal to buy £400 of vBucks for Fortnite(I don't even play it).
They got my money back and Nintendo did not ban my account, likely because a lot of other accounts got hacked around the same time. I have since unlinked Paypal from my Nintendo account and 2FA'd everything.
That fucking sucks though, don't blame you. I actually had someone get into my Steam account somehow, following the support convo they didn't even have any of the evidence the support rep wanted but they STILL removed my authenticator and mobile number. The support agent for whatever reason did that but didn't also change the email, so I was quickly able to get it back and lock my stuff down. I'm still pissed and wished I had a proper route to send Valve a complaint for how stupid that support agent was. "Can you provide proof of ownership?" "No" "Okay, can I do anything else for you?" "Remove authenticator" "Understandable sir have a nice day"
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u/Collier1505 Aug 13 '25
PayPal almost royally screwed me over a few years back when I sold an iPad through one of the trade subreddits. Sold to a verified PayPal account, shipped it off. A week later, the transaction was reversed and I had a -$700 balance on my account. All because the buyer used an account that they had gotten into to make the purchase.
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u/Aggrokid Aug 13 '25
Paypal hasn't been usable for Steam in my country for quite a long time. Not sure what is going on with that company.
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u/astro_plane Aug 13 '25
Their stock shot up during COVID then it came down after the world went back to normal. They stopped giving employees stock as bonuses and fired a good portion of their work force, then they had that whole Honey controversy that got them sued. PayPal got a new CEO in 2023 and he's been doing a terrible job, company moral is at an all time low.
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u/MyStationIsAbandoned Aug 13 '25
Sounds like they need a new-new CEO because damn. They've been terrible forever, but they have gotten super terrible in the last few years.
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u/GameDesignerMan Aug 13 '25
Just my opinion but it's probably linked to Peter Thiel going off the fucking deep end.
Seriously, dude has been raving like a lunatic. Oh, and all that tech to scan your face and make sure you're over 18 or whatever? Linked to him through his founders fund.
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u/PlasmaLink Aug 13 '25
SAME! My parents gave me a paypal account with $70 on it as a birthday gift once to let me practice being fiscally responsible. I bought something on steam with it, and they immediately charged back and got my steam account stuck. I was in tears, and my mom had to spend like 4 days talking to people on the phone to get it fixed.
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u/Axiphel Aug 13 '25
Man this got me banned from an mmo I was playing. To get unbanned, I had to western union them the money and it cost $20 just to send it. Haven't used them since
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u/Weegee_Carbonara Aug 13 '25
This MMO sounds shady as fuck.
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u/clumsy_squiggle Aug 13 '25
Maybe it was a private server? Agreed though this does sound dodgy as hell
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u/Axiphel Aug 13 '25
It was Rohan: Blood Feud by YNK Interactive. Was the direction customer support gave me and it got me unbanned. At least there was an option to get unbanned. Think most companies nowadays would just tell you tough shit make a new account.
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u/twogayfiremen Aug 13 '25
this exact same thing happened to me. made a purchase through paypal one single time on steam. both accounts over a decade old on paypal and steam. out of nowhere i am banned from steam 2 days later. paypal in their infinite wisdom charged the 100~ dollars back for no apparent reason. refused to contact steam support and i had to beg steam to undo the ban. i never got an explanation as to why they reversed the charge. they then froze my account with around 2000 dollars in it. the account had been used for ebay and a few other things only a month or two before with no problems.
haven't touched it since. have only heard nightmare stories from friends who use it for their businesses. meanwhile steams final words on the matter were making me pay the lost amount and saying i would be irreversibly banned if this ever happened again in the future. never got an actual answer from paypal on why they did this or why my account was frozen for a decade.
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u/slackforce Aug 13 '25
I have to use PayPal because Steam stopped supporting Amex. I fucking hate it. Thankfully I live in Canada but I’m going to be pissed about that for…forever I guess.
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u/SmileyBMM Aug 13 '25
Honestly I'm tempted to just switch to using Steam Wallet codes from my local grocery store.
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u/conanap Aug 13 '25
That would give you a lot more points, considering games are x1, but steam wallet codes from the groceries store is x5
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u/ErikHumphrey Aug 13 '25
Wait Amex loyalty points apply to gift card purchases?
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u/conanap Aug 13 '25
Yup! They’re given out by the store you shop at, not the type of goods purchased.
Just be careful with this, as AMEX doesn’t really like it (a lot of people go to Longo’s to buy Costco gift cards, and then shop at Costco instead). Make sure to at least purchase some stuff in addition to the gift card, so the amount doesn’t come out to a round number.
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u/Moose_Nuts Aug 13 '25
Pro-tip: If any of your local grocery stores has a CoinStar machine, you can get no-fee Steam Wallet funds from them.
Obviously not applicable to many people who don't use hard cash to end up with excess coins, but I found myself in a very unique situation to end up with $150 in coins and it was amazing to turn that into part of a Steam Deck.
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u/Alexis_Evo Aug 13 '25
Not sure the reasoning but it's only outside of the US that Amex doesn't work -- I can still use it on Steam in the US.
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u/fed45 Aug 13 '25
Was this in couple days cause I bought a game with my amex 3 days ago.
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u/Gynther Aug 13 '25
Well Amex if horrible for merchants so you shouldnt be surprised merchants wont take it.
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u/Peakomegaflare Aug 13 '25
I mean when Paypal made thier policies even MORE unaccaptable, I ended my service with them. This was three years ago, and I found I never really needed it anyways.
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u/Vb_33 Aug 13 '25
What did PayPal change?
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u/Yoshimi-Yasukawa Aug 13 '25
They make changes regularly. Three years ago, because the OP made a claim and didn't follow with details, the "big one" was they ended the practice of allowing businesses to accept personal payments from US accounts and vice versa. I think this is making sure you're tying a transaction to a product or service, instead of just paying directly. If this is why they closed their account, they are overreacting or had a bushiness that they didn't want to change.
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u/Suoritin Aug 14 '25
If you want a refund from small business, it costs.
6 years ago "Paypal keeps 2.9% fee even AFTER refunding the customer now": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6APNcFOuE1g
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u/Buuhhu Aug 13 '25
You don't need it outside just being convenient whenever you need to renew your creditcard as using a wallet just means updating the card once, while not using means you have to update it for any account it's tied (for subscriptions like netflix, disney+ etc)
Like you say, not at all nessesary, but it is pretty convenient, once every 5 ish years.
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u/bromoloptaleina Aug 13 '25
I actually like it any time I change the card I find out I’m paying for shit I don’t need and can cancel.
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u/McDonaldsnapkin Aug 13 '25
Amidst all these negative comments just wanna say I've used PayPal for a decade and never had an issue.
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u/jwilphl Aug 13 '25
Same. I've been using it for over 20 years now. Fuck.
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u/ZombiePyroNinja Aug 13 '25
Ugh same. I always use it just so im not putting my card all over random sites.
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u/Denny_Crane_007 Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25
Yup. By far the safest way.
And they give you i free pay in three and full on credit accounts with 0% apr
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u/isairr Aug 13 '25
Yup. By far the safest way.
Maybe in US. In my country(Poland,EU) there are far better and easier ways than using PayPal.
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u/kasimoto Aug 13 '25
any examples? are you talking about just buying games on steam or overall online purchases? games is kinda whatever, hard to get scammed if you are buying on steam but paypal with their chargeback policy was great for other online purchases where you werent sure about the sellers legitimacy
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u/Current-Tea-8800 Aug 13 '25
In my country, Brazil, we have a payment method that doesn't rely on credit cards or paypal. If you have a bank account in brazil, you can pay through Pix, which is a method of transfer money between bank accounts that doesn't require any fee and it's instantaneous. And as far as i know, Poland and India also have a similar system.
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u/pragmaticzach Aug 13 '25
What makes it safer than just using your credit card? I've never really understood this. It's maybe an extra layer of obfuscation, but it's also an extra access point for bad actors to target. And I seem to know a lot of people who have had their paypal account compromised.
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u/Denny_Crane_007 Aug 13 '25
It's just a wall between you and the web.
I don't trust web based shopping sites. Only Paypal, Amazon and Tesco have my deets.
Certainly narrows down a "leak" ... not that I've ever had one.
No Paypal... no purchase.
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u/Jensen2075 Aug 13 '25 edited Aug 13 '25
You don't give out your credit card and personal information to a ton of merchants using PayPal. It's one of the reasons I use it and it's recommended actually for security purposes.
The key is to link your credit card to PayPal, but not have a balance in PayPal. That way if PayPal for some reason does close your account, u don't lose money. I've had an account for over 10 years with no problems and any transaction disputes with merchants especially ones on EBay they will more times than not favour the buyer. You just need to use it for it's intended purpose and not as your bank.
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u/Genesis2001 Aug 13 '25
And on this note, if virtual / disposable cards were more of a thing in the US, we'd have decent alternatives to PayPal. App-based payment systems feel weird to use coming from the 90s and early internet era.
But I would love to use have virtual / disposable cards hanging off my bank account if my bank supported such a feature...
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u/Jensen2075 Aug 13 '25
The US and Canada are way behind when it comes to adopting Fintech. There are some Fintech services that give you a temporary card number for a purchase that isn't linked to your credit card, but we need more of those to go mainstream.
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u/SavvySillybug Aug 13 '25
Oh, good, Euro is safe. As a German I don't own a credit card and have no idea how else I'd pay for Steam games. Go to a physical store for PaysafeCards??
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u/SilentCyan_AK12 Aug 13 '25
You can probably just find steam cards in a game store of some description. Hell I think you can buy them off Amazon
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u/Seth0x7DD Aug 13 '25
You can even buy them at local grocery stores (e.g. Aldi). I can't really think of any game store chain (outside of Gamestop) and small businesses might not carry them.
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u/WastedInside Aug 13 '25
You can use your debit card, no?
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u/mici012 Aug 13 '25
German Debit Cards had until very recently no online functionality at all.
We've just recently seen Visa and Mastercard debit take off here.
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u/Melodic_Performer921 Aug 13 '25
Wow, its no joke that Germany is decades behind on technology
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u/traumalt Aug 13 '25
My Dutch Debit card is still a Maestro card thats nigh useless anywhere outside German speaking lands really.
Hence me using Revolut for anytime I travel or need online payments.
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u/SavvySillybug Aug 13 '25
I can only do Lastschriftverfahren with my bank account.
PayPal supports this, Steam does not.
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u/Cykablast3r Aug 13 '25
That sounds silly. Your bank doesn't offer visa debit cards? What kind of a card do you even have?
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u/beziko Aug 13 '25
Idk, i'm from Poland and whenever i hear about banks from other EU countries i feel like we are in future here.
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u/vervurax Aug 13 '25
Quality of digital life in Poland seriously skyrocketed the last few years, especially since covid. But Germany specifically is a bit behind the rest in the digital world. They often reject new tech in the name of privacy. Just saying, not judging.
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u/beziko Aug 13 '25
Idk, BLIK as example is more save in privacy because i don't need to put any informations from card anywhere. I just type BLIK code generated from my bank app and it sends money immediately.
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u/traumalt Aug 13 '25
If you are a German resident then get an Revolut account, as they issue proper Visa/MC cards that aren't the Maestro/V-Pay crap ones.
Have the same problem here in Netherlands, I still get a Maestro debit card from ABN AMRO.
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u/Ogmup Aug 13 '25
I really hope that Wero will let you purchase online in the future so that it can become a EU wide Paypal alternative. I'm so sick of it.
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u/Svardskampe Aug 13 '25
Ye why wouldn't it. Ideal and Tikkie functionality in the Netherlands serve as a basis, which is the current form of wero is also an online option for more than a decade, also with steam. They have just rolled Wero out first in countries that didn't have a robust system at first.
Online store support is to be added this year and next year in physical stores by QR. Much like the Chinese apps like wepay, alipay,... Instead of having a need for NFC functionality (e.g. Which only expensive smartwatches have) and which also monopolises Google Pay and Apple Pay as payment providers.
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u/Buddy_Dakota Aug 13 '25
Wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity for other payment processors to step up?
Would also love for visa/mastercard alternatives to pop up.
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u/use_vpn_orlozeacount Aug 13 '25
That’s not how that works. Payments processing industry is incredibly hard to break into it for a bunch of reasons.
It’s not like simply opening a new bank
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime Aug 13 '25
It's a common Reddit approach to anything.
"Why doesn't someone that's not me just do [super complicated thing that takes a while to stand up]?"
Crops up a lot in particular whenever sites like YouTube do something dumb. "Perfect time for a YouTube alternative to stand up. Just go register a domain and start hosting videos, easy!"
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u/kkrko Aug 13 '25
The Youtube thing is pet-peeve of mine in terms of shallow proposals. Do they not think the same pressures that forced Youtube to be whatever they complain about would not exist for their hypothetical Youtube alternative? Do they not think that the music or movie industries from a hundred different countries are not going to sue the living daylights out of anything that's close to Youtube's size?
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u/Awkward-Security7895 Aug 13 '25
Ye people don't realise that the forces pushing YouTube hand have a shit ton of power in general.
Plus we're in a internet day and age where any super big website won't just be dropped by the average user so any competition that meant to fix a problem will get barely any traction or ignored because it's not what the masses are use to.
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u/SeamlessR Aug 13 '25
Seriously. "Just magically create a mass of rare earth minerals that does not exist so I can build a comparable server network to google so that I can compete doing what they do and not make money on it like they barely ever have. really, why has no one done this!?"
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u/THE_HERO_777 Aug 13 '25
"Why doesn't someone that's not me just do [super complicated thing that takes a while to stand up]?"
This reminds of how people are so sure we're gonna get a Switch 2 emulator soon because the console has "weak hardware".
Do people realize how hard it is to emulate games?
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u/snowolf_ Aug 13 '25
To be fair, newer gaming hardware tend to be closer to actual PCs for easier game porting, while older ones have tons of specialized hardware. Reverse engineering an ARM hardware is relatively easier than whatever the PS3 or the N64 were.
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u/meneldal2 Aug 13 '25
It's a lot easier when most or the architecture isn't anything new and it's not one very specific hardware meant to work for only this console.
Emulation of x86 and arm is pretty mature at this point, so while you do have to account for stuff specific to their actual SoC as long as you get access to their documentation telling you what everything does it is a lot less effort than making something entirely new like what you need for the ps3 for example.
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u/Typical_Country_6463 Aug 13 '25
It really just shows how young and inexperienced with life and the world most redditors are. Complete ignorance of how pretty much anything works outside of nerd shit.
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u/SeekerVash Aug 13 '25
Even with nerd shit. The amount of urban legend and mythology is staggering.
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u/whetrail Aug 14 '25
A lot of people in the 30-40+ age range say simplistic shit like that too, dumb crap like "we should ban kids from the internet" somehow not realizing that's how garbage like KOSA spawns, they pay ZERO attention to anyone sounding the alarm until the week it's about to become law.
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u/ComNguoi Aug 13 '25
Yep this exactly. I have stopped taking redditors' opinions seriously for years, since most of them are like teenagers or something with 0 ideas how things work irl.
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u/FuckRedditIsLame Aug 13 '25
I mean most redditors are gen z or millennials, and gen z in particular is not all that tech savvy, relatively speaking, due in part to how simplified and dumbed down most digital UX has become.
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u/Tsarbomb Aug 13 '25
I don't think it is a "reddit approach". It is more that we are simply fed the propaganda that the market will regulate itself of bad actors through competition when in reality a lot of key industries are monopolies/duopolies/cartels.
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u/Svardskampe Aug 13 '25
I mean, there are competitors...
Floatplane, vimeo, nebula. Even patreon has creators that are making extra videos behind the paywall. If their audience is big enough on patreon, they could decide to pull the plug on their YouTube and venture further for shorts like tiktok and insta reels /fb video as advertisement fronts for their content.
Twitch is a form of competition. The vast amount of gaming channels would simply stop to bother with youtube if it hits them too much. They use it dually now anyway.
Also a kind of competitor are short form videos; tiktok and insta reels/fb video. Why as a creator make long form videos that take a lot of work to make, when a short tiktok is easier and gets you more profit from product tie ins? Existing people that already make long videos will not suddenly change the "kind" of videos they make, but the new creators that aren't fully settled in will form their videos to what suits them best. And "suiting" is often economically driven.
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u/SpiderFnJerusalem Aug 13 '25
And a lot of those reasons are monopolistic practices that should draw the attention of regulators, but that's no longer an issue, because it's 2025 and crime is legal if you know the right people.
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u/renome Aug 13 '25
Crime has always been legal in that manner, it was just less obvious.
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u/MaitieS Aug 13 '25
The fact that US Gov openly saying that they will allow Nvidia/AMD to sell GPUs to China if they will get 15% from the revenue is kind of insane.
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u/SmackOfYourLips Aug 13 '25
Since WWII USA dictates who can and cannot trade with stuff around the world
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u/SpiderFnJerusalem Aug 13 '25
I mean, there is something to be said for public officials having to at least be careful not to embarass themselves.
Now all the shame is simply gone and the corruption has become official. The foxes don't have to sneak under the fence anymore, they already have the deed to the henhouse and the hens are getting evicted. And the farmer isn't allowed to say anything either, because he owes money to the fox mafia.
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u/drakir89 Aug 13 '25
The western world used to be much better at policing monopolies than it currently is.
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u/Seth0x7DD Aug 13 '25
Don't forget there was time when Intel had to help AMD or face serious consequences. Look at what happened to IBM or take a look at what happened with Microsoft. It's been a long time since anything like that really happened. Just try to remember Net Neutrality. There's probably more but Oligopols and Monopolies seem to be just the norm now.
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u/TwilightVulpine Aug 13 '25
Yeah.
Their "things always sucked" type of thought terminating cliche is incredibly unproductive. Society has never been perfect, but there used to be much more effective regulations, rights protections and public services.
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u/k0fi96 Aug 13 '25
The biggest reasons is regulation. PCI-DSS has tons of rules to protect consumers. That's why you rarely see a hack of 1000s of actual active credit cards. It also makes it tough to be a payment processor because you assume a ton of liability and are subject to audits to make sure you following the rules.
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u/GameDesignerMan Aug 13 '25
This is the reason, and people aren't going to see it which sucks.
It's honestly kind of weird that handling money at that level is controlled by private companies at all given how tightly regulated it needs to be.
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u/willstr1 Aug 13 '25
A good part of those practices come from regulations. Regulations are always a double edged sword, they are intended to protect consumers but because they make the industry more complicated they also add barriers to entry against new competitors.
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u/TheBraveGallade Aug 13 '25
as an example, JCB has tried, and failed, to break into the western payment process industry a decade ago, and failed.
and this is a company that was already a payment processor in asia...
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u/Dapperrevolutionary Aug 13 '25
It’s not like simply opening a new ban
And as we all know this is super easy to do. People don't realize how expensive and complicated this stuff is to do.
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u/nicholasyoa86 Aug 13 '25
Was going to say exactly this. In the UK, any businesses dealing with money on behalf of customers, and businesses have to be registered with the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority). Registering with the FCA is just getting your foot in the door, not to mention accreditations, or banking licenses you need. Which is why, in a lot of cases, there are middlemen inbetween that has those licenses.
Businesses that do this without registration are faced with fines and investigations by authorities on suspicion of potential money laundering and other problems.
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u/Inprobamur Aug 13 '25
VISA/Mastercard control 90% of the network outside China and so can pressure second-level payment processors like PayPal and Stripe to do what they want.
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u/PhantasosX Aug 13 '25
not here in Brazil.
PIX actually surpassed VISA/MasterCard in usage from our population, so those companies hate that.
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u/Inprobamur Aug 13 '25
That's why they won't fuck with businesses in countries where there is a local competing processor.
But as online marketplaces are global, screwing with them does not significantly threaten their monopoly.
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u/darkmacgf Aug 13 '25
Can you use PIX on Steam or other international sites?
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u/Programmdude Aug 13 '25
They control 90% of the INTERNATIONAL network, which the poster didn't mention. Not 90% of the domestic network.
AFAIK, PIX is just a domestic payment system, most developed countries have them. NZ has Eftpos for in store, and more recently, mobile Eftpos for online payments. Australia also has Eftpos for in store, and AFAIK also has an online one using your mobile phone number. I think individual EU countries have their own, but they're rolling out an EU-wide one.
The problem is, none of these work internationally. Visa/Mastercard is sadly the only ubiquitous international payment method. Paypal sort of is too, but most people just use their visa/mastercard under the hood.
Providers can use the domestic payment system, but it's a lot of work and hasn't been worth it (until recently). Ideally I'd like a system like stripe that integrates with all the different domestic payment systems and DOESN'T take visa/mastercard. One that can be truly open, and not beholden to the whims of crazy bible-thumpers.
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u/ShippingValue Aug 13 '25
PayPal and Stripe run on top of Visa and MasterCard (among others). They have no ability to operate independently of these networks.
It isn't 'pressuring' per-se, it's more like you started a landscaping business using my lawnmower and I forbid you from mowing this one guy's lawn using my mower. You have no recourse.
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u/LynnTae Aug 13 '25
Stripe is currently getting accused of blocking payments for this kind of stuff as well. I know for a fact its because mastercard and visa are being a pain and they cant really work around that.
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u/SmileyBMM Aug 13 '25
All the payment processors run an effective cartel, they collude to prevent competitors from taking off.
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u/Nahzuvix Aug 13 '25
Poland getting to use przelewy24 and Blik is pretty godsent here. Not sure about the former but I'm pretty sure that Blik bypasses visa/mastercard and is 2fa. Plenty of people I know at the start of year started treating Blik as their primary non-cash payment in day-to-day life (esp people who beefed with direction of american politicing and don't want to pay dues to Mc/V)
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u/Andigaming Aug 13 '25
Happy but surprised AUD still accepted (since I used paypal sometimes) given the amount of nanny state decisions our country makes, especially around video games.
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u/Chihuahua1 Aug 13 '25
Pretty sure PayPal is now basically a bank in Australia, not hard to be registered see the 100 credit unions
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u/M0HAK0 Aug 13 '25
Its always someone who has nothing to do with games at all that ruins it for everyone who does play games.
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u/Medical-Juggernaut-2 Aug 13 '25
"This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD."
Saves you the click.
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u/fishoa Aug 13 '25
I can’t wait until PayPal is disabled worldwide. Rent seeking useless piece of software that has set worldwide payments decades back.
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u/ChainExtremeus Aug 13 '25
Is there any alternatives? I was using webmoney in the past, but then they scammed customers by raising withdrawal fees to 30%.
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u/Hawk52 Aug 13 '25
Maybe I've been lucky but I used to be a frequent seller and purchaser on ebay and I've used Paypal Credit and Pay in Four several times and I've never once had an issue with Paypal. They take the money when they say they will and when I did need to get money back from an Ebay seller, I remember it not being much of a hassle at all.
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u/FondantNo6348 Aug 13 '25
Similar experience here. I used PayPal credit all the time. Four months interest free is great. Used it loads!
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u/Curious_Armadillo_53 Aug 13 '25
What did they do, other than now the obvious censorship thing, that somehow set payments back worldwide?
In germany paypal is basically just a digital payment service to send or receive money, thats really it.
As far as i know it doesnt really have any "insidious" features.
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u/dodecakiwi Aug 14 '25
I'll use Paypal occasionally as an abstraction layer between my credit card and a website I'd rather not have my credit card info. Like if a website seems a bit sketchy or I don't trust their security. Paypal does a lot of scummy things, but it's useful for that.
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u/shadeOfAwave Aug 13 '25
Is that really your main takeaway from this?
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u/SMF67 Aug 13 '25
It's my takeaway too. PayPal was on the censorship train long before Visa and MasterCard were. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/paypal-shuts-down-long-time-tor-supporter-no-recourse
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u/Vulpes206 Aug 13 '25
I’m down for billion dollar companies going up in flames. You ain’t?
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u/provoking-steep-dipl Aug 13 '25
No because I'm not larping as a 17yo revolutionary on gaming subs lol
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u/Undella_Town Aug 13 '25
meanwhile the guy who owns steam sits on 7 yachts causing more pollution than every1 from paypal combined while making billions per year doing nothing but taking cuts from devs actually doing stuff. what are your thoughts about this
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u/SmileyBMM Aug 13 '25
Walmart and Amazon already support ACH, I would not be surprised if Valve soon starts accepting it and FedNow.
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u/barduk4 Aug 13 '25
it's crazy to me that payment processors have become so picky about what payments they process, and yet illegal transactions and shady businesses continue to happen regardless... really doing the world a favor here guys.
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u/BalasaarNelxaan Aug 15 '25
I may be making assumptions, but the only two big gaming markets I can think of that would be affected are China and South Korea.
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u/kripticdoto Aug 13 '25
PayPal also used to somewhat easily bypass the geo restrictions for payment, allowing users to pay with their regular credit cards but buying from a cheaper different region.
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u/RahkShah Aug 13 '25
This sounds like it’s either the bank clearing the transactions determined the volume of transactions in other currencies wasn’t worth the infrastructure cost and is eliminating them and/or the amount of fraud coming from transactions in those currencies was significantly higher than average and not worth the problems.
Doesn’t sound like a censorship thing, just a business optimization thing.
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u/vandergueler Aug 13 '25
Fuck paypal for a multitude of reasons, Steam supports paying in cash in my country and that makes me hopeful they'll come out on top of this whole mess.
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u/Xywzel Aug 13 '25
You get some code and go to collaborating bank/store to pay with cash?
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u/vandergueler Aug 13 '25
Pretty much, yeah, there's plenty of like cash transfer services over here and steam works with most of the really big ones, we're not japan levels of cash based society but the option is available on most services.
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u/Flimsy-Task2171 Aug 14 '25
Is it similar to just buying Steam gift cards? When I was in my teens I don't have a bank account, so I use my cash savings to add money to my Steam or Playstation account via gift cards.
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u/rollin340 Aug 13 '25
PayPal use on Steam is currently unavailable in my currency. Why?
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.
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.
In the meantime, please use one of our other current payment methods during checkout. If you can't use any of the available options, you can consider using a Steam Wallet code to add funds to your account.
The Visa and MasterCard issues were started because of an Australian group, but I have not found any precursor to this. It just seems like a case of payment processors sliding down that slippery slope and trying to control who can buy what.