Report: Steam is finally coming to China next year

Well, here’s an interesting rumor: Sina Games is reporting that next year, the video game distribution platform Steam will begin officially operating in China. According to the report, the platform is currently in the middle of the government approval process.

For now, this report should be taken with a heaping pile of salt, because the Sina Games article is extremely light on details and says nothing about its sources beyond “information has been leaked.” Among other reasons to be skeptical, it’s not clear whether an online gaming platform like Steam could legally operate in China at all. Foreign online games must be operated in China by a local partner, but as Steam is a gaming platform rather than a game, it’s not immediately clear whether that law would apply.

That said, it is certainly possible that if Steam was applying to the Chinese government for approval, that information might be leaked to the press by gaming fans in the relevant departments of the Chinese system.

Steam is already available in simplified Chinese and is accessible in China, but not it does not officially operate there at present. Currently, some region-locked games are unavailable, the platform does not accept Chinese e-payment options, and the lack of local servers can make download times absurdly long.

If Valve truly does aim to launch Steam in the country, it could ultimately prove to be a massive new source of revenue for the company, but it may not be such a boon for gamers themselves. An official Chinese Steam would mean much easier purchases and much faster downloads, but it would also probably mean that any games not officially approved by China’s Ministry of Culture would no longer be available to China-based users in the Steam store. Since few foreign game developers even apply for MOC approval, Chinese users would likely be stuck with a very meagre assortment of games.

(See: Here’s how Diablo 3 will be censored in China)

And of course, in the case of any games censored for their Chinese release, the official Chinese Steam store would have to carry the censored version rather than the original game. Because of this and because of China’s rules for online game operation, Chinese Steam users would likely have to be walled off from the rest of the gaming world, with limited interaction (if any) permitted with Steam users in other regions.

At this point, though, all of that is speculative. We’ve contacted Valve for comment on this story, and will update it if we hear back.

(via Sina Games)