We’ve been hearing about Steam officially launching in China since 2018 and expected it to be a heavily restricted version of the digital store front. Now it’s finally launched, and there’s only 53 titles available. There’s tens of thousands available in the international version.
Valve teamed up with Perfect World in order to make Steam for China viable. Partnering with a Chinese company doesn’t get around the strict rules governing game releases and censorship in the country, though, so it should come as no surprise the selection of titles is so limited. As PCGamer reports, it’s actually worse than that, because there’s no community features, either.
The message boards are missing, as are all the other community features (Steam Workshop, guides, community pages, etc.) with the exception of user reviews. It’s possible to play games purchased on the international version of Steam through the Steam China client because they can share the same account login. However, that only works if China has approved a title for sale there.
For now, it’s possible to access the international version of Steam from within China, but with an official version now available, how much longer will that remain the case? We are also expecting the PlayStation 5 to launch in the second quarter this year, so we should probably expect a similar reduction in available titles for Sony’s platform, both physically and digitally, when it does.
