That hasn't happened yet, though, and it's anyone's guess what the future holds. Aside from the promise of local servers in certain games, what's the incentive for users to switch to a version of Steam with far fewer games? At this point, the only thing that could make Steam China viable is if Steam's global version went away altogether. It isn't on Steam China currently, and the process for obtaining a government license can sometimes take years-a death sentence to small independent studios.Īnd, after looking at the Steam China storefront, it's an easy fear to understand. That could seriously affect games like Tale of Immortal, a Chinese-only RPG that launched on Steam two weeks ago and became one of its most popular games with over 170,000 concurrent players. If the Chinese government were to block Steam's international version, those developers would lose out on access to a global community of customers-and players would be denied access to thousands of uncensored games. Though it was never easily accessible anyway, seeing Steam China without the Steam Workshop, forums, community pages, guides, and everything else makes this version feel barren.Ī lot of developers I've spoken to are concerned about whether Steam's international version will stay freely accessible to Chinese players. Dyson Sphere Program, for example, has over 18,000 positive reviews on Steam China and Steam, which shows just how closely linked parts of these two platforms are despite being mostly separate entities. What's interesting is that instead of having two separate review systems for Steam China and Steam's international version, both clients pull from the same pool of reviews. One weird exception to this is Steam user reviews, which are available on Steam China. Steam China still lets users write reviews for games.
0 kommentar(er)
