Steam locks millions of gamers out of PC store, workarounds discovered
Millions of Steam users have found themselves locked out of certain store pages following a new policy change.
For Steam users located in Australia, Valve has now added a new requirement that users will have to verify their age using a credit card in order to browse 18+ content.
Games like Cyberpunk 2077 and Doom Eternal are confirmed to be blocked, as are hundreds of other games that have been flagged as containing 18+ content.
If you haven’t verified your age on your Steam account, you’ll simply be blocked from viewing these pages on the store, nor will you be able to see the games on the home page or search bar.
Advert
The only official method to unblocking this is to verify your age using a credit card, which is only available to individuals aged 18 or over in Australia. Debit cards don’t work, as they can be used by people under 18.
Moreover, payments via credit cards are less common in Australia than debit cards. A bulletin from May 2026 by the Reserve Bank of Australia showed that only around 23% of payments made in 2025 were done via credit card, as opposed to 49% made by debit cards.
This was previously an issue for UK residents without credit cards after the Online Safety Act 2023 was introduced. In August 2025, UK users who hadn’t verified their age using a credit card were unable to view store pages for certain games with 18+ rated content.
Steam users in Australia have found workarounds for the new age verification system
However, some users on Reddit have discovered potential workaround solutions for this, which have been verified by other users. GAMINGbible was unable to verify this for ourselves, so take this with a grain of salt.
“Quick tip for all my Aussie users: I saw others on r/steam saying that a ZIP (BNPL service) card will work if you have ZIP PAY as it’s basically a credit card. So could be worth trying out for anyone who can’t access,” reads a comment by Luka77GOATic on Reddit, with many replies claiming that the solution works.
It seems this might be the best solution for any Australian Steam users who don’t own a credit card, but do own a ZIP card. However, other users shared additional methods which could potentially work.
“Seemingly some banks have debit cards that work, some that don't. The word is that the banks that do have debit cards for adults and debit cards for minors so there might be something in the background that classifies these cards as different through the payment service that might satisfy the age verification requirement,” another user writes, so be sure to check with your bank if your debit card may qualify.
“Created a virtual CC number in the bank app and set the spend limit to $1, add the card to Steam, steam do the $1 hold hard to verify the card, the virtual card then gets canceled because the spend limit was met, but it remains on steam as a payment method so works around the keeping a card on the account scenario - I know it doesn’t help those without a CC but hopefully helps those who want to keep their main card details off steam,” reads another comment.
In any case, be sure to approach this with some caution if you don't know what you're doing. Check with your bank to see if an option does exist for you to verify your age with Steam.