In a surprising turn of events it seems as though Valve has been working on a variant of Steam for the Chinese market specifically that will directly cater to the government’s restrictive guidelines and help distribute games to one of the largest audiences in the world and it just recently got released to the public however it’s certainly… different.
As of writing, the store only has access to around 53 games and there is no community features or forums for users to communicate with aside from the game reviews which are directly tied to the international versions of the games that are present on the store. This was expected in a way as the ridiculous amount of censorship that must be adhered to in order to sell a game in China is ridiculous and they wouldn’t want people to find unregulated places to converse with each other. What makes this all the more sillier is that the international version of Steam still works fine within the region so there is literally no point in using the localised version at the current moment, Saying that though this could be setting a dangerous precedent that the normal version of the client may be coming offline in China soon and in which case the poor public there will be stuck with the pathetic excuse for a storefront there and many companies that rely upon massive sale boosts from the chinese market will be cut off from a huge source of revenue. Hopefully this doesn’t end up becoming the case.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.