International sanctions cause Steam payment snarl-ups for indie game devs in Russia and Ukraine

The effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have already been felt across the gaming industry in a variety of ways, but a new effect is being brought to light by indie developers in both countries: The bank Valve uses to pay developers who sell their games on Steam has applied sanctions that are preventing those devs from getting paid.

Stas Shostak, a Ukrainian indie dev responsible for an in-development stock market simulation game, shared a letter from Valve that explains the matter:

“This past week, our bank notified us that they will begin requiring that we provide intermediary bank information for all wire payments to accounts in Russia and Ukraine. In addition, they will no longer be allowing payments to Belarus.

“We are working to understand all the new requirements, create a path to collect this information from you and send it to the bank. This will take us some time to complete, but will not be available for the payments to the affected accounts due at the end of March.”

Developers can either wait for Valve to cut through the red tape or move their payment details to a bank outside of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine, though Shostak is skeptical, expressing concern that the matter won’t be cleared quite so quickly.

This matter adds a new layer of sanctions-related problems, as purchases and game sales have been withheld to Russian gamers, payments to Russian streamers are being halted, and multiple publishers are either halting sales to Russia or are redirecting Russian profits to Ukrainian aid.