Chinese people who want to play Steam Global have been faced with a problem since Christmas Day: The service is no longer available in the People’s Republic. The Gamer reported on the alleged Steam lock, citing reports from those affected on social media such as Reddit and Twitter. While those affected initially blamed the Chinese government, a third-party DNS attack can no longer be ruled out. Steam China can still be reached, but the national branch of the gaming portal only has a good 100 titles on offer.
Chinese censorship practice
In principle, a block would be plausible. The government and authorities of the People’s Republic have been pursuing significantly increased censorship on the Internet since 2021 than before. In recent months, for example, the authorities have blocked foreign online services several times if the content does not meet the requirements of the conservative socio-political line of the state leadership around President Xi Jinping. National services were hit in the same way, whereby the censorship, among other things, “anti-Chinese elements”, including in particular “effeminate, feminine men” are a thorn in the side – protagonists with long hair can thus be just as sufficient as alleged or actual criticism of Xi Jinping.
There are also restrictions on children and young people playing online. These are primarily expressed in a time limit of three hours of online gaming per week, spread over one hour each from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday as well as on public holidays. The authorities also enforce the limit through online monitoring.
In addition, they block access to unpopular games or make the offer in China virtually impossible due to conditions, such as with Fortnite. This is probably one of the reasons why Steam China has remained marginal with just 100 titles since its launch in February 2021 and only has two international game hits with Dota 2 and Counterstrike Global Offensive.
(mon)