China seems to be closing its doors to Steam, as the country has banned its users from accessing the Community portion of the game market platform.
For reasons yet unknown, the Steam Community part of Steam has been blocked by China by as much as 100 percent since Tuesday, Dec. 19. This was according to Greatfire.org, a website that monitors online censorship implementations within the country.
Chinese users of Steam, however, need not fear too much since the online store can still be accessed, which means games can still be bought, with discounts, promos, and all the other features of the market platform. However, should they want to create a forum thread about a particular game or activity, they would not be able to do so due to the ban.
PC Gamer has suggested that the ban for Steam Community could be due the rapidly changing aspect of gaming in China, perhaps due to the popularity of "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG)," which actually led to the dramatic increase of Steam users in China. Other reasons could have been due to the impression that China wanted to ensure the advantage for its local businesses, of which Steam isn't. Otherwise, it could have just been an alleged crackdown on speech and assembly, as the socialist country might be worried about its youth.
This, however, was not the first time China has censored other companies. One such notable example was Blizzard's massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (MMORPG) "World of Warcraft," which is still one of the most popular in its genre. The MMORPG had to remove blood, violence, and other questionable themes just to abide by core socialist values.
One recent act of censorship also came in the form of the near-ban for "PUBG," where the game was facing an impending prohibition from the country earlier in the year until Tencent, a leading Internet service provider in
China, bought the license for it. Even then, "PUBG" still had to abide by core socialist values.
Valve, the developer and owner of Steam, has not yet commented on the issue.
