Foreigners in China cannot buy games.

[Manda]

Foreigners living in China have several option to pay in China, while the most common are WeChat and Alipay. We most of the time having an UnionPay card, which provide more or less the same service than PaySafeCard.

When trying to buy a game on steam form China, while WeChat, Alipay and UnionPay are proposed options, foreigners cannot complete payment as they are not allowed to pay abroad.

Here, there could be a simple option: link your UnionPay card to Paypal, as Paypal allows you to pay abroad, and use Paypal to buy games on Steam.
HOWEVER, Steam does'nt propose Paypal in China.

Valve, don't you really want my money ?

[cumlord 丁肇雄]

Did you ever figure this out?

[cumlord 丁肇雄]

Subscribing to discussing

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Foreigners visiting don't need to do anything as they can still use their account set to their home country and use all previous available methods of payments from said home country.

[ペンギン]

1. "Foreigners visiting" .... -> Missed topic

2. From what i know, Paypal is not common in China. It's not an issue only for Valve. As you said, 微信 as example or via other 腾讯 services. Even (some?) western creditcards are not accepted in China. Shopping was always only possible via detours and exchange and probably always will be. Like QQ points recharge as example

[JVC]

Don't really see any prospect of this changing. Changing it would mean a torrent of westerners using vpns and similar to suddenly pretend they lived in Argentina or whatever, all claiming they'd be entitled to buy stuff for the local prize.

Likewise, why accept Chinese payments systems in the first place? China doesn't adhere to international commercial laws or even their own commercial laws and the courts aren't independent. So any western investor is pretty much bound to be defrauded whenever a dispute arises.

But it is Steam's choice what kind of financial exposure they'll accept when dealing with countries that don't comply with the rule of law.

[Manda]

So,

cSg|mc-Hotsauce님이 먼저 게시:

Foreigners visiting

Nope, as:

ペンギン님이 먼저 게시:

1. "Foreigners visiting" .... -> Missed topic

Yes, as I am living in China since 2 years, and for 2 more years.

R. Racoon (丁肇雄)님이 먼저 게시:

Did you ever figure this out?

Nope, that's extremely annoying.

[Timoh]

Living in China as a foreigner these days?
Good luck with everything.

[Edifier]

This isn't an issue with Steam, it's with Government of China. They are not too fond of foreign people and like to keep an eye on them as much as possible.

[Crazy Tiger]

Paypal doesn't do direct business in China, so they can't be offered as payment option by Valve. They bought GoPay to be able to do transactions in China.
A bit of the same as why Valve has created Steam China together with Perfect World to fully utilise the market in China.

Foreign companies simply have restrictions in China and have adhere to those, if they want to do business in China. So there isn't much that can be done at this point.

At least that was what a Chinese friend told me earlier this year. Not sure whether something has changed in that, might ask her when I get the chance.

[ChronicKillR]

I've lived in China for 4 and a half years and it's only been recently that they stopped accepting Unionpay. It seems many of the comments are from people that don't know ♥♥♥♥ about the world. Unionpay isn't only used in China, it is like "Visa" or "Mastercard" in Asia, you can get a Unionpay card issued by banks in about a dozen countries. It is accepted in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, etc etc. So, whatever the reason is, it isn't "cause China 'insert political diatribe here'." Now, China did recently make rules to curtail the amount of time children spend gaming, but WeChat pay and Alipay are still accepted forms of payment for people with Chinese IDs, so clearly it isn't that.

It could be like what the U.S. did about 15 or 20 years ago when the internet made overseas gambling accessible to Americans who lived in places that had laws against gambling. The U.S. government passed a law that meant that credit card companies and banks could be held liable for allowing it's card holders to transfer funds to overseas casinos. So, banks and CC companies made it very difficult to use them for that, though it took those casinos about 5 mins to create shell companies in order to circumnavigate the law. So perhaps Unionpay has been tasked with a similar limitation on foreign game purchases, but that's purely speculation.

It is unfortunate if I have to switch regions, because games are cheaper here. And for people saying, well then people with VPNs blah blah, your payment address for the card you use has to match the region. That's why I can't use my U.S. bank and credit card to pay in the China region. Anyone who is gonna go through all the effort to try to establish an overseas address and bank account just to save $10 on a game, probably could find more productive things to do with their time.

Looks like I'll just have to have my local friends use their wechat pay account when I want to buy games for now.

[crunchyfrog]

ChronicKillR님이 먼저 게시:

I've lived in China for 4 and a half years and it's only been recently that they stopped accepting Unionpay. It seems many of the comments are from people that don't know ♥♥♥♥ about the world. Unionpay isn't only used in China, it is like "Visa" or "Mastercard" in Asia, you can get a Unionpay card issued by banks in about a dozen countries. It is accepted in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, etc etc. So, whatever the reason is, it isn't "cause China 'insert political diatribe here'." Now, China did recently make rules to curtail the amount of time children spend gaming, but WeChat pay and Alipay are still accepted forms of payment for people with Chinese IDs, so clearly it isn't that.

It could be like what the U.S. did about 15 or 20 years ago when the internet made overseas gambling accessible to Americans who lived in places that had laws against gambling. The U.S. government passed a law that meant that credit card companies and banks could be held liable for allowing it's card holders to transfer funds to overseas casinos. So, banks and CC companies made it very difficult to use them for that, though it took those casinos about 5 mins to create shell companies in order to circumnavigate the law. So perhaps Unionpay has been tasked with a similar limitation on foreign game purchases, but that's purely speculation.

It is unfortunate if I have to switch regions, because games are cheaper here. And for people saying, well then people with VPNs blah blah, your payment address for the card you use has to match the region. That's why I can't use my U.S. bank and credit card to pay in the China region. Anyone who is gonna go through all the effort to try to establish an overseas address and bank account just to save $10 on a game, probably could find more productive things to do with their time.

Looks like I'll just have to have my local friends use their wechat pay account when I want to buy games for now.

You're right at least mostly.

While the "china government is at fault" is NOT the real go to reason, it does not mean it's not some sort of cause or effect.

We've seen many times over the years on Steam that payment provisions come and go for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's down to pure old fashioned lack of security and exploits (like PaySafeCard had in some regions some years ago), or simply it ain't worth Valve using it because fees negate the use or something.

So it might actually be there's an issue with UnionPay in general there, caused by something economical or otherwise. But it could also be something the CCP are insisting on behind the scenes that Valve aren't keen to agree with.

At this point we will never know because that sotr of info never gets shared for pretty obvious reasons.

Though I agree the CCP is awful, but that doesn't make it fair to blame them for everything.

[Shotgun]

ChronicKillR님이 먼저 게시:

So, whatever the reason is, it isn't "cause China 'insert political diatribe here'."

There's a reason why a Chinese version of Steam is being made, and it has nothing in common with the will of Chinese gamers and game developers. I'm not going to judge the intents and actions of the Chinese government (at least here), but I will point out the big elephant in the room and say that the government has a big motivation to marginalize and then get rid of international Steam, and if they are indeed doing this, then they wouldn't exactly be forthright about their motivations and methods.

Payment processing issues could be one of the first steps in this direction. Remember, Valve needs to follow Chinese laws as a condition for doing business in China, and could easily be mandated to stop taking payments from China by the government. I'm not pulling this out of thin air either. In fact, most Chinese developers believe that international Steam will soon be blocked completely:

https://www.pcgamer.com/why-chinese-developers-are-worried-about-steam-china-launching-next-week/

[长官]

This isn't only a Steam problem. I noticed many other foreign owned company websites offer payment with Alipay (my preferred payment method) but they do not allow you to buy anything if you have foreign passport.

[Wavey]

I'm guessing still no solution?

[Manda]

The only way I've found was to left China. Praise the flight ticket