A Steam game programmer claims that PayPal has frozen all of their funds due to alleged violation of the financial platform’s terms of service. Around £80,000 GBP in proceeds were withheld as a result of the programmer’s involvement in the development of adult games (as reported by Game*Spark).
Earlier last month, users were reporting that PayPal payments in certain currencies had been suspended on Steam. According to the official Steam Support page, PayPal reached out to Valve around July 2025, explaining that the bank that handles their payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam. While no concrete reasons were given for the sudden suspension of the transactions, users suspect that PayPal’s actions are likely related to the recent wave of crackdowns on adult games across many digital distribution platforms, with Steam being most prominently affected.
Amidst these intensifying restrictions, a UK programmer reached out for legal advice on Reddit when all of their assets earned through game development for a game published on Steam were frozen by PayPal. According to the Reddit post, PayPal refused to release any of the payments the programmer received for working on a game after determining that the game was adult-oriented. The programmer claims that the game was developed under perfectly legal circumstances and that it does not contain any elements that could potentially violate UK laws. On top of that, the actual sales of the game are not being processed through PayPal, which means none of the programmer’s assets come directly from customers buying the adult content. However, PayPal still argued it constituted breach of their terms of service.
According to the platform’s Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal does not allow their services to be used for transactions related to “certain sexually oriented materials or services.” While transactions for certain physical sexually oriented goods are allowed only in the U.S, according to PayPal’s sexual goods and services policy, transactions for digital goods or content delivered through a digital medium are forbidden worldwide. In an additional clause, PayPal listed their criteria for determining what “sexually oriented goods and services” are – implying that their decisions in restricting content are made on a case-by-case basis.
Apparently, this isn’t the programmer’s first time having legal problems with payment processors. As they state in one of their Reddit comments, they have had their business closed multiple times due to the nature of the content they create – both by major banks and multiple “app banks” like Wise and Revolut. Their reason for resorting to PayPal as means of facilitating transactions in the first place was because they tried to avoid the risk of getting debanked again. However, as PayPal has refused to release their assets for more than a month now, the programmer says they are trying to search for another solution.
