The power of the state strikes back. Chinese players are excluded from almost all social services on Steam.
The Steam program by Valve is one of the largest gaming platforms on the internet. Thousands of games can be purchased, installed, and played here. Each game receives a large community page where users can discuss, create guides, showcase screenshots and artworks, or even publish modifications.
For a large part of the player base, many of these services are no longer accessible. Since December 15th, Chinese users of Steam can no longer access 94% of the Steam services. This essentially means that the following features are no longer accessible for the Chinese player base on Steam:
- Steam profiles of other users
- Groups
- Badges
- Game hubs (forums/guides/achievements)
- Workshop
- The marketplace
Playing games, chatting with friends on the friends list, and online matchmaking do not seem to be affected by this censorship. Only all social functions of Steam that are not directly related to purchasing or starting the game are no longer accessible.
The true reason behind this action can only be speculated at the moment. Most comments on Reddit assume that China wants to extend its authoritarian power, and thus larger social networks based in America are being swiftly blocked.
Additionally, Steam (at least in China) has a major competitor, namely the platform WeGame from Tencent. Tencent has been suspected since September of transmitting users’ personal data to the Chinese government. Some users suspect that China wants to rein in Steam to better monitor the population with WeGame.
How much of this is conspiracy theory and how much is sad truth will probably come to light in the coming weeks and months.
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