The full story of what’s happening is hazy
Steam has existed in a grey area in China, technically not following rules which require all games be approved yet never drawing the ire of authorities. Many have long expected it to eventually be banned, though, especially after Valve partnered with Perfect World to launch the limited Steam China. This might now be happening. Maybe. Or it’s possibly being hindered, at least. This all started with a big stink on Christmas Day that led some to declare Steam had been banned by the Great Firewall which restricts access to many sites outside China, but the reality is not so clear cut.
Steam is not outright down in China, mind. Access seems intermittent, sometimes not loading, sometimes loading slowly.Game Developer(the site formerly known ha-ha-hilariously as Gamasutra) relay reports that many users are able to get on Steam, they just might have to retry or wait a few minutes. You can see the inconsistency yourself with Great Firewall testing tools; whilesomequickly declare it’s blocked (stoking belief in a ban),otherswith more patience might show you it loads sometimes, or after a long delay.
Chinese authorities hardly display a public list of banned websites, so people are left guessing what’s going on. They’re known to use a variety of methods to block access too, as well as often interfere with sites and services rather than outright blocking them. All of which means, we don’t know for certain what’s going on right now. But many assume it’s a first step in cracking down on Steam, attempting to push people onto the censored local version.
While precise numbers on Steam’s popularity in China are elusive, you can infer a lot from the fact that Simplified Chinese is the second most popular language on Steam, after English.Valve’s statssay almost 25% of users are using Simplified Chinese. That’s a huge number of people facing potentially losing access to games (or forced to use workarounds like VPNs), and a big financial concern for developers.
