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It looks like Steam Community has been blocked in China

It looks like Steam Community has been blocked in China

After years of existing in China in a legal grey zone, it looks like Steam might be about to get the boot from the region.

Reports from ValveTime and GreatFire show that the Steam Community page has been blocked since last Friday. Steam itself, and the digital storefront, are still up at time of writing, but this surely cannot be good news for Valve's business in China.

For a game like Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, for example, close to 40 per cent of its playerbase is based in that region.

SteamSpy figures point to there being at least 15m Steam users in teh region, making it the third biggest market for the company behind Russia and the USA.

Steam exists in something of a grey area, with users able to purchase many titles that would not pass Chinese censorship laws. This has been the case for a while now, with the Government able to ban Valve's storefront at any point.

Were Steam to be ejected from the Chinese games market, this would be surely good news for Tencent's own WeGame competitor.

This isn't the first time that Steam has been blocked around the world - earlier in the year, it was booted from Malaysia following Fight of the Gods.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.