Game publishers and developers located in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine can no longer receive payments from Steam.
Confirmation of the change comes via video game programmer Vadym, who is located in Ukraine and received an email from Steam detailing the change. The email explains that "due to the current environment, we are unable to send bank payments to Belarus, Russia and Ukraine."
Existing banking details registered with a Steam account have been deactivated for anyone located in these three countries. The email goes on to state that bank information can be "corrected," but Valve won't be making any outstanding balance payments out of cycle, meaning waiting an extra month to get paid even if a new account can be linked.
Recommended by Our Editors
It's unclear why Ukraine is included in this list, but one explanation was offered by Twitter user Dark in response to Vadym's tweet, suggesting, "I don't think this was a political move and more they literally can't keep up with the currency worth changes for those areas."
Whatever the case, anyone relying on Steam as their main source of income within these countries now has a huge problem to overcome. An alternative bank account will need to be setup before the next payment cycle, which in the case of Russia may be impossible due to all the sanctions imposed on the country. For developers in Ukraine, you'd hope Valve would be working to come up with a solution for them. Meanwhile, PayPal just made it easier and cheaper to send money to Ukraine.