Valve CEO Talks About NFTs, and Crypto Payments on Steam

Valve CEO Talks About NFTs, and Crypto Payments on Steam

Gabe Newell, CEO and founder of Valve which owns one of the largest digital distribution markets in the PC gaming industry, Steam, spoke with gaming media ‘Rock, Paper, Shotgun’ about crypto and NFTs.

According to Newell, validated NFT technology opens a door of possibilities, yet he acknowledged there are some acting in bad faith and are involved in illicit activities. He said:

“You have to separate the underlying technology versus which actors are utilizing that technology. It’s like if you’re a chemist, and you’re looking at nitrocellulose, you’re like ‘Oh, yeah, we can do some really interesting stuff with that’ … The underlying technology of distributed ledgers, and the notion of digital ownership, and shared universes, are all pretty reasonable.”

Newell added:

“The people in the space, though, tend to be involved in a lot of criminal activity and a lot of sketchy behaviors. So it’s much more about the actors than it is about the underlying technology or the rationale for what we’re doing.”

While Steam was one one of the first platforms to accept Bitcoin for payments, it suspended the option back in 2017 because of increased price volatility concerns and rising transaction fees. Newell commented on the matter:

“At one point Steam was accepting cryptocurrencies for payments. And it turned out that it just made customers super mad. There was the issue of volatility. Volatility is a bad thing in a medium of exchange.”

In addition, the Valve’s CEO noted that the “vast majority” of the purchases made with crypto on Steam seemed fraudulent.

Four months ago, Steam removed applications based on blockchain technology from its platform.

The post Valve CEO Talks About NFTs, and Crypto Payments on Steam appeared first on iGaming.org.


Source: igaming