China bans the global version of Steam – the ban came on Christmas Eve
As users from China report, the global version of Steam from China is no longer available, although the Chinese are crazy about PC gaming. The ban came on the evening of December 24th. The users in English-language forums react in two ways: Generally it is said that one wonders why it took so long.
Where did the news come from? The news surfaced on the night from Friday to Saturday. It spread through forums such as Resetera, reddit or the well-known dataminer “Santa Ricky” on Twitter.
Around 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve, German time, on December 24th, the web site domain “Steam” is said to have been blocked in China. This means that the international site Steam with all its sub-functions can no longer be reached easily from China.
However, we do not know any further details about the message, any clear statements from the Communist Party, people are only speculating what might be behind it.
China has its own page of Version, but with less than 100 games
What could be behind it? In forums one suspects that the ban on “Global Steam” is a logical consequence of the fact that China has had its own version of Steam since February 2021, but hardly anyone uses it because there are only 98 games instead of 60,000 as in the international one Version.
In recent years, the Chinese government has taken a rigid course against online gaming, and mobile games in particular have been targeted. Officially, there are fears for the eyesight of children and youthfulness, because in China myopia earns money because children stare like crazy at the cell phone.
In recent years there has been a ban for months that no new games may appear, and severe play time restrictions for children and young people that came with facial recognition software.
In general, China has the industry in a strong grip, giant corporations like Tencent have close ties to “the party”, but fear any press article in party-affiliated newspapers where online gaming has already been described as “digital opium”.
The rushing days when Chinese corporations made profits in the gold rush seem to have been over for a few years now – now you are balancing on a thin line.
Billion company brings technology that forbids all Chinese under 18 to play video games at night
How is this discussed?? There is not so much solidarity in English forums. There are about 3 opinions:
- Some say “I wonder why that didn’t happen earlier” – essentially, China is trusted to do anything that goes in the direction of censorship and restriction
- Others say: “Oh, that probably means that there are fewer cheaters in CS: GO and that I can finally play PUBG again” – Chinese players are often decried as cheaters
- Third parties say: “They will probably just use VPN and we will hardly notice anything”
In any case, nobody seems to be really surprised by the report.
Here we deal with the phenomenon why Chinese players are considered cheaters:
Reference-mein-mmo.de