Valve’s Steam drops bitcoin support, cites high fees, volatility

Ethan Miller | Getty Images

Gabe Newell, right, co-founder of video game developer and distributor Valve.

Gamers can no longer pay with bitcoin on the gaming platform Steam.

Steam, which is owned by developer Valve Corporation, said in a blog post Wednesday that it could no longer support the virtual currency because of its “high fees” and “volatility”.

“In the past few months we’ve seen an increase in the volatility in the value of bitcoin and a significant increase in the fees to process transactions on the bitcoin network,” Steam said.

All bitcoin transactions are recorded on a huge decentralized record of transactions known as the blockchain.

To keep the network ticking, voluntary bitcoin “miners” have to work out complex mathematical solutions to add a transaction to the distributed ledger. In return for their ongoing maintenance of the network, miners are paid transaction fees.

The average transaction fee currently costs $7, according to data from BitInfoCharts. And Blockchain.info shows that miners have made more than $3 million dollars in transaction fees.