Was steam store ban in China Mainland

[39C5BB]

I cannot link steam store without vpn

[Ogami]

China has their own version of the Steam client that restricts a lot of content and has no forums as far as i know.
You have to download that version if you want to use Steam in China.
The normal version is banned.

[my new friend]

It finally happened.
https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/25/22853520/steam-global-china-banned
You can use https://store.steamchina.com/

[Curse Of Jake]

president xi has banned it for christmas day....we can all be very thankful for his decision.

[Pr0udCh0sen0ne]

Less hackers and communists, I'm happy for this ban

[Myll]

Some news stories try and spin a narrative that a DNS Server issue led to China shutting down Steam's international page (which, Chinese players located outside of China typically use, as it doesn't have the restrictions on all the games as the official Chinese Steam page has).

However, here are some points that Chinese gamers outside of China have stated:
- China's forced page that loads when one pulls up the Steam global page, has messages on-screen from a Chinese ministry, that essentially says "Steam is a Scam" in their language. Valve/Steam should not feel very comfortable right now, because this could have implications for longer term, whether the Chinese Govt even allows the "official" Steam site with restricted game access, to continue.
- The ban on external/global Steam especially for Chinese language access, means that gamers inside China will be restricted from gaming with players outside China, essentially cutting off in-game communication, which all gamers need to understand, is not always communication about the game itself. Sometimes, people are using in-game chat or voice simply to try and have a conversation with other Chinese who are outside China, to get real news, real information, or they're passing information outside of China (that the CCP probably doesn't like having an open mic channel to pass through).

Regardless if the global site ever comes back up again in China, a clear message was sent, that in order to comply with China's official Steam site, a game publisher will have to run the gauntlet to get publishing access to China.

The writing is on the wall - game publishing companies are going to find a much more difficult time marketing games in China now, unless they get compliant with CCP's expectations.

As for Valve/Steam, I really hope they don't give in and cater to the CCP on this one. Valve's senior management should have a fluent, unbiased Chinese individual tell them exactly what the CCP's overlaid graphics on the Steam Global page say, because Valve executives, if they hear the real translation, would be quite offended at what the Chinese are saying about Steam.

[my new friend]

Messaggio originale di Myll:

Some news stories try and spin a narrative that a DNS Server issue led to China shutting down Steam's international page (which, Chinese players located outside of China typically use, as it doesn't have the restrictions on all the games as the official Chinese Steam page has).

However, here are some points that Chinese gamers outside of China have stated:
- China's forced page that loads when one pulls up the Steam global page, has messages on-screen from a Chinese ministry, that essentially says "Steam is a Scam" in their language. Valve/Steam should not feel very comfortable right now, because this could have implications for longer term, whether the Chinese Govt even allows the "official" Steam site with restricted game access, to continue.
- The ban on external/global Steam especially for Chinese language access, means that gamers inside China will be restricted from gaming with players outside China, essentially cutting off in-game communication, which all gamers need to understand, is not always communication about the game itself. Sometimes, people are using in-game chat or voice simply to try and have a conversation with other Chinese who are outside China, to get real news, real information, or they're passing information outside of China (that the CCP probably doesn't like having an open mic channel to pass through).

Regardless if the global site ever comes back up again in China, a clear message was sent, that in order to comply with China's official Steam site, a game publisher will have to run the gauntlet to get publishing access to China.

The writing is on the wall - game publishing companies are going to find a much more difficult time marketing games in China now, unless they get compliant with CCP's expectations.

As for Valve/Steam, I really hope they don't give in and cater to the CCP on this one. Valve's senior management should have a fluent, unbiased Chinese individual tell them exactly what the CCP's overlaid graphics on the Steam Global page say, because Valve executives, if they hear the real translation, would be quite offended at what the Chinese are saying about Steam.

It isn't up to Valve to decide these things. China gave them a choice a few years ago. Either do it their way or lose access to millions of potential customers current and future.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/11/17451484/steam-china-announced-valve-perfect-world

[Myll]

I would say that Valve/Steam does have a choice - to continue business as usual, how they want to proceed, regardless the CCP. If they lose Steam China, so what? The Steam China site has barely 100 games on the entire platform, and the CCP is already making moves to cut off all external gaming access. Essentially - Steam has already lost Chinese business with such a limited revenue stream on the official site, so rather than Kowtow to Chinese officials, Steam should actively market to Chinese OUTSIDE of China, who do not have to use the official China site to play games (the math would show that Chinese outside China with access to 100K+ games are more likely revenue sources than in-China buyers of just 100 titles). And Steam shouldn't pressure any game publishers who produce games that will knowingly not get China approval for the official Steam China page, either.

These are not people that you give in to, ever, for business or otherwise. Valve as a corporation would make a colossal mistake to Kowtow at this point, because they'd lose the respect (and possibly a lot of business) from those of us who care about these things.

[nullable]

Messaggio originale di Myll:

I would say that Valve/Steam does have a choice - to continue business as usual, how they want to proceed, regardless the CCP. If they lose Steam China, so what? The Steam China site has barely 100 games on the entire platform, and the CCP is already making moves to cut off all external gaming access. Essentially - Steam has already lost Chinese business with such a limited revenue stream on the official site, so rather than Kowtow to Chinese officials, Steam should actively market to Chinese OUTSIDE of China, who do not have to use the official China site to play games (the math would show that Chinese outside China with access to 100K+ games are more likely revenue sources than in-China buyers of just 100 titles). And Steam shouldn't pressure any game publishers who produce games that will knowingly not get China approval for the official Steam China page, either.

If the economics really shook out like you claimed, that would explain why every other business has already done this...

IE it's wishful thinking.

Messaggio originale di Myll:

These are not people that you give in to, ever, for business or otherwise. Valve as a corporation would make a colossal mistake to Kowtow at this point, because they'd lose the respect (and possibly a lot of business) from those of us who care about these things.

Valve is a video game store. You act like this decision, "How do we do business in China?", hasn't been done ten thousand times already. Valve is just another company that needs to follow Chinese laws and the whims of the Chinese government to have access to those markets.

If consumer behaviors or protest could keep companies out of China it surely would've happened by now.

And it's not really Valve's job to solve the China political, social, or economic problems with the rest of the world. They're just a games store. Not the tip of the spear....

[Afterglow]

Status Update:
Actually, Steam Store was banned on Christmas day(before that technically).
The domain "store.steampowered.com" is affected and any requests to the domain will be forced to stop by China government's Internet censoring "firewall".
A special method, which is called "SNI blocking" by some developers, is used by the "firewall".
"SNI blocking" works by reading the headers of HTTPS requests and find the destination of the requests, then the "firewall" will randomly break the requests to make Steam Store seems to be not stable rather than simply block it.(Just like what happed to GitHub in China)

[Strike Freedom]

asdasd

[.]

ok

[Špokas]

Messaggio originale di Ogami:

China has their own version of the Steam client that restricts a lot of content and has no forums as far as i know.
You have to download that version if you want to use Steam in China.
The normal version is banned.

.

[173903727]

Messaggio originale di 拾寒:

I cannot link steam store without vpn

没有吧 你是在国外登录的吗

[{ИЯm} Keith]

Sweet! So we're getting Devotion back on Steam then ?

[{ИЯm} Keith]

Messaggio originale di Myll:

These are not people that you give in to, ever, for business or otherwise. Valve as a corporation would make a colossal mistake to Kowtow at this point, because they'd lose the respect (and possibly a lot of business) from those of us who care about these things.

Valve is a video game store. You act like this decision, "How do we do business in China?", hasn't been done ten thousand times already. Valve is just another company that needs to follow Chinese laws and the whims of the Chinese government to have access to those markets.

If consumer behaviors or protest could keep companies out of China it surely would've happened by now.

And it's not really Valve's job to solve the China political, social, or economic problems with the rest of the world. They're just a games store. Not the tip of the spear....

To be clear I disagree. It's one thing to abide by copyright, distribution, decency laws. it's quite another to abide by Fascism, Content blocking, censoring even the most mundane political discourse. It's fine for China to block porn, or human rights violating content, or extreme violence. But getting in huff about being compared to Winnie-the-Pooh and banning devotion. Things like censoring truthful news and journalism. Blocking youtube, etc. All that is just unacceptable behaviour for any political leadership. Worse, it degrades into the territory of human rights violation when you require every citizen to log into the internet with I.D. and you monitor them with secret police.

I do not believe that pandering to that kind of behaviour, even for profit's sake is valid, moral or acceptable. Google almost did this with Dragonfly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(search_engine)

We humans are social animals, and the internet's inception was designed to link us together as a community to collaborate, educate, entertain and socialise. Removing or hindering this is a serious infringement on social well being.