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The Global version of Steam has been banned in China
- Thread starter Einherjer
- Start date
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Thank you ! I did not know this.
I mean officially devs need to work with someone outside the country now to get their games on the store so probably yes.
I'm not sure what it means yet but if it really is the case where Chinese players can't access regular Steam now it'll a big blow for some devs and Steam's attractiveness as a whole. Just recently we saw insane numbers from games like Sea of Thieves or It Takes Two and those are games that were able to reach a huge new audience with Steam in China. I hope that's not lost.
This is kinda huge no?
For example I just checked Monster Hunter World and from the ~200k total reviews ~80k are in chinese (english ones are ~75k for comparison), steam purchases only.
I checked the link GrrImAFridge posted above and I can't find the game there (could be searching wrong though).
Does this mean that a lot of these players won't be able to get these games anymore, or is there some kind of workaround?
For example I just checked Monster Hunter World and from the ~200k total reviews ~80k are in chinese (english ones are ~75k for comparison), steam purchases only.
I checked the link GrrImAFridge posted above and I can't find the game there (could be searching wrong though).
Does this mean that a lot of these players won't be able to get these games anymore, or is there some kind of workaround?
This is probably bigger news that some people realize. I'd wager a good chunk of ports we've seen over the years are largely to court China's audience. I'm sure some of them will still find that audience but if this is restrictive enough it could send tremors through the industry with some surprising after effects.
VPNing is huge in China to get around restrictions like this. It's gonna hurt chinese indie devs though
How so? They won't be able to publish their games in the global Steam?
It has been on and off for years and this time it really seems like more "serious". You can still occasionally open the store if you refresh the page couple of times. The community has been long banned for years, no questions about that. We still have access to game library and cloud saving...at least for now.
Using UPN is very common for Chinese steam users, especially for multiplayer games like monster world hunter and PUBG because these games don't have mainland server anyways.
Using UPN is very common for Chinese steam users, especially for multiplayer games like monster world hunter and PUBG because these games don't have mainland server anyways.
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This. China no longer relevant might as well put those banned games back to the store.
Wonder if Valve was aware of this before hand or not. Probably not with the way things have been going.
Wait, why are they random?
I guess random isn't the right word, as they are asking for help also. Just seems to be popping up a lot more frequently
Devotion wasn't banned; it was delisted voluntarily (or "voluntarily", rather) by Red Candle itself. There's nothing -- well, nothing at Valve's end, anyway -- preventing Red Candle from relisting the game but making it unavailable in China.
I feel bad for the indie devs but hopefully many of them planned ahead. It's not like this wasn't bound to happen.
A sadly expected day yet still I feel for Chinese gamers that gotta jump through hoops to access the global version of steam now.
It's weird how people brush off this type of news story. It's beyond cooked how controlling the CCP are. It's disturbing.
You mean Steam users making forum posts in their native language? Like anyone else?
Ugh
Obligatory fuck the CCP.
If they truly think they can continue on like this without the chinese people getting sick of that at some point then they are in for a shocker.
Thankfully I hear VPN is pretty popular in China so at least people can get around it. Hopefully indie developers find ways around it.
Obligatory fuck the CCP.
If they truly think they can continue on like this without the chinese people getting sick of that at some point then they are in for a shocker.
Thankfully I hear VPN is pretty popular in China so at least people can get around it. Hopefully indie developers find ways around it.
No clue it was posted on the steam sub reddit there was also this post:
Some people have said it's just a local outage maybe that's true no idea.
Almost one year later (well, two years later than rumors about it started, in fact) I'm still not sure of how "Steam global" and "Steam China" interact with each other.
I know the latter was supposed to be Valve's attempt to prepare ahead for this day, but I also remember reading that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese user base was sticking with the global version and I'm not sure if there's a direct transfer of "library ownership" between the two.
I know the latter was supposed to be Valve's attempt to prepare ahead for this day, but I also remember reading that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese user base was sticking with the global version and I'm not sure if there's a direct transfer of "library ownership" between the two.
Oh that's good then! Hopefully it's just someone misunderstanding something then.
Well, censoring globally to Chinese standards to avoid ban would be even worse than offering local version.
Exact opposite of bending up imo. More like insurance against bans.
Unfortunately? I mean, what could, or should, Valve do about this?
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