Roughly a fifth of Steam's total audience is from China.
That's according to Niko Partners' Daniel Ahmad, who said on Twitter yesterday (below) that the userbase from that part of the world stands at over 30m. At last guess, Steam's total userbase is around 150m.
Ahmad gives DOTA 2 credit for kicking off Valve's platform in China, but says that localised releases and a wider variety of games have helped matters.
There have been a number of big successes in the region, too. The Scroll of Taiwu topped the Steam charts on launch not that long ago - despite only being available in Simplified Chinese - with 600,000 copies sold, Ahmad claims.
All of this proceeds Steam officially launching in the region. The marketplace exists in a legal grey area that could see it swallowed up at any second.
Earlier this year, Valve announced a partnership with local company Perfect World to roll out an official version of Steam in China. There's no word yet on when this will be launched.
How this will fare against Tencent's own WeGame isn't clear. Being a Chinese company with a real heritage and investment in games, it stands to reason that the Big T could be a real roadblock for Valve in the region.
Steam has more than 30m users in China.
— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) October 17, 2018
It initially gained popularity due to DOTA 2, but has grown due to more localised games, regional pricing, local payment methods + wide variety of games banned/blocked in China.
Perfect World/Valve are creating a China only ver. of Steam. pic.twitter.com/weK09n2qmC
