Chinese Gamers to Finally Get Steam, Sort of

[btarunr]

Valve announced that Steam will finally enter the Chinese market. The Chinese version of Steam will be entirely different from the International version of Steam (available in markets such as Taiwan, India, and Australia). Valve's Chinese partner, Perfect World Entertainment, which already operates a Steam-like DRM platform called Arc, will also operate Steam China, which will go under the brand name "Zhengqi Pingtai" (Steam Platform).

The need for a China-specific version of Steam arises from stringent regulations by China on not just game content, but also data-localization. This partitioning of the userbase cuts both ways, as it keeps data of non-Chinese Steam users from being localized in China. Perfect World will also handle the individual screening and publication of Steam titles to not break any Chinese laws. The platform will initially have 40 titles, including Valve's homebrew "Dota2" and "Dota Underlords." Perfect World CEO Xiao Hong assured gamers that they will benefit from high-bandwidth and low-latency servers spread across China.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[TesterAnon]

As long it works as a containment zone from the rest of the world, sure its welcome by everyone.

 

[Crackong]

Dark Zone ?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

And in 5 years the chinese company will terminate its agreement and launch their new Chinese Steam platform worldwide, and Gabe will look with a surprised pikachu face saying "I never thought they would do this!"

Either that or Steam is about to see far more data breaches.

 

[Vayra86]

Dark Zone ?

More like Red Zone

Anyway yeah, good for them, care factor zero for us.... The more those guys do behind their own Great Firewall, the better. So far I can't say the Chinese influence abroad has been beneficial to gaming, much. Not its userbase, nor its content creation.

 

[Gasaraki]

Oh thank god. We don't need all the Chinese players throwing the stats off in Steam and the hardware surveys.

 

[TheDeeGee]

I wonder how many of them still use XP.

 

[64K]

I wonder how many of them still use XP.

Probably none. Almost everyone in China including the government was using pirated copies of Windows 10 so MS made it free there. This has been a while back that I read about that though. It may have changed but even if it did the Chinese could just revert to piracy.

 

[AlphaCheetah]

Probably none. Almost everyone in China including the government was using pirated copies of Windows 10 so MS made it free there. This has been a while back that I read about that though. It may have changed but even if it did the Chinese could just revert to piracy.

Actually no, MS never made Windows or Office free in China. In china pirated softwares were used by a lot of DIY users, but not by the government or any companys, because that's illegal, MS can sue them and win easily. And almost all OEM PCs there have pre-installed Windows, which prepaid by OEM manufacturers.

 

[64K]

Actually no, MS never made Windows or Office free in China. In china pirated softwares were used by a lot of DIY users, but not by the government or any companys, because that's illegal, MS can sue them and win easily. And almost all OEM PCs there have pre-installed Windows, which prepaid by OEM manufacturers.

This is what I was remembering.

Microsoft tackles China piracy with free upgrade to Windows 10

Microsoft Corp is making its biggest push into the heavily pirated Chinese consumer computing market this summer by offering free upgrades to Windows 10 to all Windows users, regardless of whether they are running genuine copies of the software.

www.reuters.com

 

[btarunr]

And in 5 years the chinese company will terminate its agreement and launch their new Chinese Steam platform worldwide,

Perfect World already operates a globally-available DRM platform called Arc. They'll definitely learn how to make Arc better working with Valve.

 

[Mistral]

CCPSteam...