The main website was blacklisted by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in December 2021, making it inaccessible without a VPN, but the client itself is perhaps more complicated. The best way to describe access to Steam from within mainland China currently would be as disrupted. However, the window that Steam provides, while not yet slammed shut, has been slowly closing for some time. There's a sizable market of Chinese gamers forced to rely on a foreign platform like Steam to support their own country's developers
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An announcement of domestic game license approvals being granted for the first time in nine months as of April of this year was good news, but in the months following, many of the companies listed as having their license granted had in fact either already given up on the project and switched focus, or had ceased operations entirely, so domestic developers are clearly feeling the pressure. The impact of this on developers is impossible to measure, but it surely has repercussions. This indicates that there's a sizable market of Chinese gamers out there who are forced to rely on a foreign platform such as Steam in order to support their own country's developers. There are many games listed on Steam that only offer Simplified Chinese (the form of Chinese spoken within mainland China), with some achieving sales numbers nearing a million, pushing them to the top of the Steam sales charts – despite a lack of English language support. Ironically, this bureaucracy – where games license approvals have previously been shut off for months without notice, and only 50 to 60 applications are granted a month when approvals are actually being made – means that Steam not only offers Chinese developers and gamers a way to the international market, but it also provides a platform where they can connect to one another. This obviously goes both ways, with Steam providing both Chinese gamers and developers with a window to the global games market which starkly contrasts with the strictly regulated domestic market enclosed by layers of bureaucracy. Games accessible on Steam are not licensed for domestic release, and yet, for many international developers, Steam opens the door to an ever-growing number of Chinese gamers that they'd have no hope of otherwise reaching. Steam supports Chinese language, and more crucially, it is possible to pay for games on Steam using the Chinese currency Renminbi either through WeChat Pay or Alipay, the two largest e-payment services in China.
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Steam's position as the leading PC games distribution platform currently extends even to mainland China, where it uncomfortably sits in a complex, gray area as an unofficial distributor. But what role exactly does Steam currently play, and what would change if it were to be banned outright? It specifically named Alipay, CamScanner, QQ Wallet, SHAREit, Tencent QQ, VMate, WeChat Pay and WPS Office.Steam is treading on thin ice in mainland China, and the majority of commentators within the Chinese gaming circle are confident that the platform's days are numbered. Trump’s order calls for the secretary of commerce to review and assess what further apps should be included in the ban.
‘We are trying to articulate to the world and take steps to stop the encroachment of China’s big data strategy - photos, text messages, phone calls to parents - from being fed into this mass tool for global oppression,’ the official said.
The apps targeted by the new ban were chosen because of the extremely high number of downloads, which meant tens of millions of users could be at risk of having their data harnessed, according to the administration official. The move by Trump comes after previous executive orders aimed at banning TikTok, which is owned by China-based ByteDance, were derailed by court rulings indicating Trump overstepped his legal authority. A senior administration official said the order and its implementation has not been discussed with the ‘potential incoming Biden administration.’
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