Late last year it was revealed that Steam - the biggest digital storefront for PC games, would be getting local payment options including support for digital wallets and even cash on delivery.
Several reports on Reddit have indicated that these domestic payment options have stopped working, with users getting an error message stating it's a temporary issue.
“We are temporarily unable to process transactions with this payment method at this moment. We apologise for the inconvenience,” reads the message on Steam when inputting local payment options such as credit card, debit card, net banking, cash on delivery, or wallets.
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One Redditor claims that this could be due to “delays in payment”. Nonetheless, according to Novapay - the company responsible for bringing Indian payment options to Steam, this is not the case.
“We are in the midst of some routine maintenance because of which the domestic payment options are temporarily unavailable. Expect this to be back online in 24 to 48 hours,” a spokesperson for Novapay told Gadgets 360 over email. This was five days ago.
However, the errors still persist. At the time of writing this story, Gadgets 360 verified that you cannot use net banking, cash on delivery, third-party digital wallets, or local credit and debit cards either. And for its part, Novapay has been unreachable, not replying to our requests for comment, and we’ll update this story the moment we hear from the company.
It seems that gamers would have to resort to using debit and credit cards enabled for international transactions to buy games from Steam or purchase store credit via third-party vendors or use Bitcoin.
Given how popular Steam is in India, you’d expect a speedy fix. Evidently this is far from it, which makes us wonder if the size of the games market and monetisation potential are all some sections of the industry claim it to be.
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