Steam is facing serious competition from China with the platform “WeGame”. The platform is set to be internationalized now. But what does that mean for us players? Asia games like Lost Ark could find a direct route to Europe.
The online giant Tencent, known for publishing numerous games in the Chinese market, aims to continue growing. Its gaming platform “WeGame”, where users can buy games, interact with other players and developers, and participate in community activities, will soon go international. With this, Tencent is trying to establish “WeGame” as a direct competitor to Steam.
What is WeGame? So far, WeGame is “only” a platform for around 220 games and the successor to Tencent’s old publishing platform. However, with a push into the global market, this could change quickly. It will also become attractive for Asian developers to publish on the new platform in order to attract customers worldwide.
WeGame International likely a response to Steam in Asia: Tencent’s move is seen as a direct response to Valve officially expanding its platform Steam into China.
Route for games from China directly to the West
What does that mean for Europeans? For “us”, the worldwide release of the WeGame platform means that we may enjoy typical Asian titles faster, which otherwise would take many years to reach the West. Publishers and developers are encouraged to at least provide an English localization in a timely manner to appeal to customers around the world.
In the future, we might not have to wait as long for games like Lost Ark, Monster Hunter Online, or Dragon’s Dogma.
Headquartered in Hong Kong bypasses Chinese “censorship laws”: WeGame is said to operate from Hong Kong in its global version, a special administrative zone within China. This way, it is not subject to the strict regulations of the Chinese government. At the same time, Chinese users can still access the service. Thus, WeGame circumvents strict censorship measures (e.g., regarding violence or nudity) and can quickly add games to its catalog without having to painstakingly revise them first.
The announcement from Tencent came shortly after Valve, which is also pushing into the Chinese market and apparently already has a large player base there. About a quarter of the 43,000,000 daily users on Steam use “Simplified Chinese” as their language.
