Pretty sure that story's hugely inaccurate. Mine's a China account and I am fine. Storefront is all there. All the games in my wishlist are still available for purchase.
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Yeah it's more complicated than people think.
https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/holiday-special-did-steam-really
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"So… we don’t know. And under authoritarian governments like China’s, we are not permitted to know. So we sit. And wait. And perhaps we thank our lucky stars that - in the West - it’s just a percentage of our global game revenue at stake. And not, say, our freedom of speech. Or our life itself. Happy holidays, all."
So, this is what a distopian future is like
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Steam itself doesn't set a good example of how a democracy should work, does it? Over the years, the company has been imposing restrictions, one by one, for reasons either laughable or ... well... non-existent.
Try this: create an alt account, add some funds to your wallet, buy a game and gift it to your main account. It may work once or twice. After that, you'll get a gift purchasing restriction and that will be it.
My point is, Steam has been getting uglier and uglier, but reading any thread having to do with EGS, for instance, you can't help wondering why some people are so full to the brim with love for Steam so that they never get tired of hating EGS. If their love for Valve were just a little bit stronger, they would conceive a child from Gabe without even having sex with him.
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Okay.. what does that have to do with democracy, and why would you create an alternate account to gift things to yourself? Doesn't that go against the tos anyway?
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What is it you do not understand? The example is an innocent one. Steam support knows you haven't broken any rules, they know full well that the sender and receiver is the very same person (same ip, same Steam client). They do not accuse you of anything. They just won't remove the restriction.
Try sending gifts to different people then. The result will be basically the same, with the only exception that you will also read this, "Please note, that if you're using your Steam account for commercial purposes it's a violation etc"
The fact is Steam may restrict you from spending your own money even when they are aware that no violation of any agreement has taken place.
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So... What does that have to do with democracy, and why do you have alt accounts?
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Also, alt accounts created with stolen credit cards infos is laughable or non-existent, right?
Looks like z00rox is not aware that everytime you give some freedom to people, there is always some who will try to take advantage of the system and steal/scam other people. Then you have to take measures against that minority.
Why do this with an alt if you are not going to cheat, scam, farm cards (thus exploiting the system), get cheaper games with a vpn or idk whatever shady reason, else you wouldn't need to use an alt.
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The Commie CCP is preparing for war. Prepares young people for life in the Juche style, everything is only chienese, nothing foreign. Including digital goods, games, movies, music. Closed borders. Digital and physical. You can't go there, you can't come here. You can't go anywhere, you can't do nothing.
And Mao is so young, and young October is ahead!
"Gentlemen it's a nuclear device, time is running out"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fV3USe9dlU
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I remember one chinese guy talking trash to all the enemies on Dust II (CS-GO)
"Eat my shii". "Eat my shii". "Eat my shii".
He was good tho.
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The biggest concern on everyone's mind now is how this will affect CSGO skin prices. The chinese have been jacking up skin prices the last few years.
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https://www.educationviews.org/hollywoods-sinking-ship-sends-f-list-actors-flocking-to-anti-american-chinese-propaganda-films/
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/12/24/hollywoods-sinking-ship-sends-f-list-actors-flocking-to-anti-american-chinese-propaganda-films/
Both of these says a lot of China and what they think of Americans
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American living in China now; it was down briefly yesterday and required a VPN to download updates, but it works fine now. All my games are still sitting in the cart too. Not sure what the commotion is about beyond that, but it's same old same old here.
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It's not surprising people are jumping to the conclusion that China banned Steam considering China's history with games and censorship and they are working on a version of Steam for just China.
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All true, for sure. I kind of think it's pretty in-step with the older iQue line and now the new Switch. It kind of reminds me of South Korea banning Japanese Nintendo products for a while, but of course there's a lot more protectionism going on here.
Anyway, if anyone's curious, it's just a normal day on global Steam here for this user. My games and everything were still playable yesterday during the outage, so we'll see what happens.
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Fake news, it was a DNS attack that caused the temporary block.
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https://twitter.com/Stutsies/status/1474748979326111751 From the fake news creator himself.
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yeah, I think this article tells exactly the truth:
https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/holiday-special-did-steam-really
Steam is not straight-out banned in China, I can still buy and download games anyway. For now just a little messy, but tomorrow is not promised. And I may say it was not a very big shock in chinese community, since we vaguely knew this may come, one day or another.
As a chinese player who have been playing video games on both PC and console for 20 years, I've witnessed how the domestic market turned from a newborn dynamic playground to a dead-end factory which is full of trash imitations and leaves little place for real creations. There was a point when I feel really sad for chinese gamers and developers, it‘s two weeks ago on Dec11th. A well-known chinese developer, microsoft MVP Mao XingYun gave up his life by jumping off Tencent building. He worked as Lead Engine Programmer in Tencent TimiF1, which, from what I know, is a position paid with 2 million（$310,000） a year. He was such a kind person to share his programing and developing experience, answer others'questions and encourage them through social media freely for the past 9 years. Even in October I could feel his passion for creating chinese 3A games by posting several articles depicting the future. And then be caught between dream and reality, the dream of making chinese game market a better place, and the reality that dream will never come true. I can still feel this sorrow in my heart, for him and for the future shrouded in dark clouds.
But I'm still buying some chinese games cause I know there are developers still fighting and struggling, this year we have little gems such as Dyson Sphere Program, Moncage, Firework, INSIGHT, NARAKA, F.I.S.T., Eastward and so on. And thanks to steam, they seem to be welcomed by overseas players as well. Wish they can now seize a better fate and MAO's story never happens again.
And besides, I've seen many comments above full of misunderstandings about China. I’m not going to get mad or something. They are…partly true, or I may say these misunderstandings can only blame on CCP themselves, since every single social media that we can use for international communication is BANNED in China. The authorities are so afraid of people speeking or knowing some watered-down history that should be knowledged. Neither do they have the courage to admit their mistakes. With that "Great Wall", most of what you've learned about China come from the opposite. Sometimes I feel hilarious when watching some videos on youtube,videos I'm ’not admitted to watch legally‘, videos about Tiananm Square, tibet or tiwan. Cause from his words, his meaningful but outdated arguments, I can tell he literally knows little about China dailylife and society nowadays, while at the same time being an expert on chinese political relationships. What a strange and deformed situation it is.
So on the other hand, is China this bad? Hard to say. It's a mixture of goodness and badness. If you ask me to list things I'm not satisfied with, it will be one mile long, while my life does become way better and extremely convenient in these years. I dont have to go out with cash or cards with me anymore, all I need is my phone. with a QR code I can pay for traffics, shopping, meals, show my vaccination records, book tickets; also there is digital Medical Insurance Card for hospital; In restaurants just order my food on the phone, if I decide to stay at home, I can get anything I want through onlineshop in 2-3 days(food in 45 minutes and groceries in half a day) without paying for Express. if there's something to do with the government, no need to visit the office and wait, just apply on the official APP for any registrations or certificates that is required.
I live in the most morden city in China. But as a travel enthusiast, I’ve been to 25 provinces(there‘re 34 totally) in China, including Hongkong, Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, and also 10 different countries, covering Asian, East Europe, North America and North Africa. I know that there's a huge difference between living in somewhere and traveling to somewhere, but at least I’ve been there myself, see how they live and talk to local citizens. In Tibet I even met some Tibetans who are really thankful to CCP from the bottom of their heart, which I dont understand tbh. I mean, I myself dont have much trust in the party,why you? But this happens, nevertheless. CCP shows its people only achivements and pretend not to see the elephant in the room, while opponents only magnify the weaknesses and ignore the strengths,actually both of them exist in the real world.
Then…uh democracy? my account would get banned if I give my opinion on social media(in China), so you know my opinion huh.
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Interesting read, with as many new insights as opinions I'd agree with.
I really wish there'd be a greater exchange with Chinese gamers. Usually you only notice them when some clashes based on nationalism take place. If I wouldn't have any other contacts with Chinese ...
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Oh I can imagine what it was like. So do this kind of mess happen on chinese social medias, even having a neutral opinion will sometimes get attacked, which always makes me cnfused and wonder whether these persons are really so proud of this country that could not bear any questioning or they are just acting out the feelings of culture-inferiority by being irritable. I think this might be both reason(one of those) and result of CCP cutting people off from the world. For one thing, there are amount of persons not capable of making their own judgement so the government decide to keep them in kindergarten. For another, No one can broaden their horizons or revise their views without opening their eyes.It turns out to be an unavoidable ending for those who are locked in enclosed information cocoons to get brainwashed and lose their ability to judge day by day.
Despite that, the majority of chinese player I‘ve met in my life are nice, sensible and easy to talk with. (here ’player‘ I mean true users that will buy and play games, not including those who always download cracked games and only use steam for CSGO/PUBG cheating, yeah I’ve seen bunches). The reason why chinese mainland players rarely take the initiative to talk to foreign players is super simple: Living in a relatively closed cultural circle, We are not accustomed,or even afraid to use English.
Don't get me wrong, chinese students do learn English, since the age of 7 to about 20, but almost never use it anywhere outside school unless they study/travel abroad or work in foreign enterprise, cause everything here in daily life is written/spoken in chinese. Here's one thing I feel interesting but wierd: Many of us chinese players have twitter accounts and have followed favorite developers, when we see them posting exciting news, we would translate into chinese and spread it asap, share with friends and community, act like it‘s New Year's Eve, but barely tweet or leave words under the original post. So, It may take years for this to change if there is going to be one.
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Happy Cake Day!
Chinese think the populace's productivity will drop because of gaming, which is only true for teens and a niche of middle aged gamers (from the 80s-90s).
The whole country doesn't play games, damn. How come this country wants all work no play
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Apparently, Chinese Steam (with only 57 games approved - and thus available - at the moment) is the only option for people out there.
Players in China are reporting that the Steam storefront and all of the Steam community pages have been blacklisted, meaning they are no longer accessible in the country. Back in February, Steam China launched, with a much smaller collection of games on sale. This site is still up and running, but Steam Global, the full Steam site with far more games on offer, has been taken offline in the country on Christmas Day.
The move comes as a surprise, but fits with the pattern of the Chinese government's actions around video games in the past 12 months. Fortnite was shut down in China on November 15 this year. Children were limited to three hours of gaming a week, and cryptocurrency was banned. In order for new games to be allowed to be developed, they had to be free of several elements thought to be anti-Chinese, including the presence of "effeminate men". Two months after the restrictions, it was reported that not a single game had been approved.
Dota2 and CS:GO, two of the most popular games in China, are both on Steam China and will be largely unaffected by this decision. However, many other games, especially by smaller developers, rely on the huge audiences China offers in order to stay afloat. For example Monster Hunter World, by no means a small title, has more Chinese reviews on Steam than it does English language ones. Of the ten most recent reviews for It Takes Two, Game of the Year winner at The Game Awards, nine of them are Chinese. Call of Duty Mobile, though a mobile game and therefore not affected by Steam, has as many players in China as it does in the rest of the world combined. The nation is a huge market for developers, but without Steam, this market has been virtually snuffed out overnight, on Christmas Day.
The fact the site is blacklisted means Steam is not just temporarily down, but has been deliberately banned. Confirmation of this has been shared by users on Twitter, ResetEra, and Reddit.
It's unclear how this will affect Chinese games going forward. Most will still be able to land on Steam China, meaning they can still sell in the country, but if developer access to Steam Global is as restricted as player access, it may mean that Chinese devs need to partner with devs from outside China to land on the main Steam site - and doing so may risk missing out on Steam China. It's also unclear what this means for Devotion, the horror game infamously removed from Steam for disparaging references to Xi Jinping, China's head of state.
What is clear is that this is probably China's biggest restriction on the gaming industry yet.
Source: https://www.thegamer.com/steam-banned-china-christmas-day/
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