Bitcoin Payment May be Coming to Steam

[Steven Bogos]

Bitcoin Payment May be Coming to Steam

//cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/library/deriv/1274/1274167.jpg
Some new translation strings in Steam's latest update suggests that bitcoin payment is coming soon.

Steam may be getting a new way to pay: with everyone's favorite cryptocurrency: Bitcoin. Some reddit detectives [https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44sgnm/bitcoins_in_steam_coming_soon/] have discovered a suite of strings in Steam's official translation server pointing to bitcoin related payment.

Here are some of the relevant strings in full:

bitcoin_authorization_explanation
Bitcoin transactions are authorized through the BitPay website. Click the button below to open a new web browser to initiate the transaction.
bitcoin_payment_tips_header
Tips for Bitcoin customers
bitcoin_payment_tips_text
This process can take up to 60 seconds. To avoid purchasing failures, please do not hit your back button or close the bitpay window before the process is complete.

Users have pointed out that by using the third party BitCoin converter BitPay (as the strings wold suggest) is zero risk for Valve compared to running a node and implementing the Bitcoin receiving internally, as they can convert and receive it all in USD automatically.

While we don't have official confirmation from Valve yet, it certainly seems like bitcoin payment is on the way.

Source: reddit [https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44sgnm/bitcoins_in_steam_coming_soon/]

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[008Zulu_v1legacy]

I keep forgetting that Bitcoins are still a thing.

 

[Johnson McGee]

How about Valve does something about the hordes of scammers and highjacked accounts before introducing a payment system renowned for anonymity.

 

[Zontar]

Seems odd for the digital currency that everyone has long forgotten about to be accepted now given the fact that, well, everyone has forgotten about it.

 

[Kajin]

Bitcoin? Haven't heard anything about THAT for some time.

 

[Rad Party God]

No love for Dogecoin?

 

[SKBPinkie]

No love for Dogecoin?

I'll never for the life of me understand how the whole "doge" meme got so popular. I'd be much quicker at understanding all of quantum physics.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

Hooray ... I guess? I'm rather apathetic towards this since I don't have any Bitcoins left after spending them all on drugs perfectly legal things that people use Bitcoins for.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

How about Valve does something about the hordes of scammers and highjacked accounts before introducing a payment system renowned for anonymity.

Valve has implemented a number of stumbling blocks for scammers - Steam Guard, repeated reminders to never give your account info to people even if they claim to be Steam staff, email verification for trades... what's left that non-morons can still get suckered by? Genuine question.

 

[Gatlank]

How about Valve does something about the hordes of scammers and highjacked accounts before introducing a payment system renowned for anonymity.

How about fixing customer support? I think it's time to end automated responses that come months sometimes years late and to wrong issue.

 

[Lightspeaker]

How about Valve does something about the hordes of scammers and highjacked accounts before introducing a payment system renowned for anonymity.

Valve has implemented a number of stumbling blocks for scammers - Steam Guard, repeated reminders to never give your account info to people even if they claim to be Steam staff, email verification for trades... what's left that non-morons can still get suckered by? Genuine question.

Except the Steam Guard authenticator and the phone app itself is an absolute train wreck.

My favourite bit was the bit where the Steam app on my phone crashed entirely, then after rebooting the app and trying to log back in it demanded I give it an authentication code that could only be gotten by already being logged into the app in the first place. I had to reset everything and turn the damn thing off to recover my account.

 

[Fat Hippo]

I wonder if they're actually going to instantly convert all bitcoins into US Dollars, as suggested in the article, or if Valve is going to sit on them instead. If they did the latter, it sounds like they could quickly become a major holder of bitcoins...which would probably be a silly idea, unless they're looking to get into the speculation game.

 

[Barbas]

No love for Dogecoin?

Can you do more than craft card packs with it? Because that'd make it better than gems already.

How about Valve does something about the hordes of scammers and highjacked accounts before introducing a payment system renowned for anonymity.

I was thinking that'd be rather nice. I mean, it's their company to run as they see fit, but as a wise man once said, "Oh, for fuuuuuck's SAAAAAAAAAKE!"

Plus Greenlight.

 

[mruuh]

This kind of looks like a preparation for an April Fools' joke.

 

[Silence]

I actually thought Bitcoin was even more dead than before now?

 

[Zydrate]

I'll never for the life of me understand how the whole "doge" meme got so popular. I'd be much quicker at understanding all of quantum physics.

Somehow, it's one of the only memes that get me to smile on a consistent basis. Something in my lizard brain just adores it.

 

[Living_Brain]

A bitcoin is still worth over $350, recently on a rise in value from ~$200 in 2015. It's not really dead at all.

 

[Kotoriii]

Around 50-60 million USD are transacted in Bitcoin every day. It is far from dead.

 

[Nobuoa Schniell]

A lot of people who never had an interest in bitcoin and thus never even looked into using it decide it's dead because they don't hear about it much. Riiiiiight...

 

[insanelich]

Around 50-60 million USD are transacted in Bitcoin every day. It is far from dead.

Of course, the question is how much of those are transfers of value and how many are just shuffling things around.

Zero are transfers of value because bitcoin is garbage hohohoho.

But seriously the useless thing wastes electricity to back a system that only works when people don't collude for their own benefit and is inferior to central databases in all possible ways in any real use case. This combined with the transaction limit (and even if you could "fix" it it would balloon in size forever) makes bitcoin one of the worst examples of people trying to force a square peg into a round hole.