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Valve, alongside its commercial partner in China, Perfect World, informed us of the current evolution of Steam China, after the two companies held themselves silent on the subject for more than a year.
Eurogamer attended a short presentation by Perfect World CEO Dr. Robert H. Xiao in Shanghai, where a small number of local and international journalists were informed that the companies were "one step closer" to the launch of Steam China, which will be separate from the international version of Steam. A handful of throwing games have been revealed, including Dota 2 and Dota Underlords. No actual launch dates or larger windows were mentioned for Steam China itself, nor was there any insight into how this showcase could unfold, nor any details of its features, other than the fact that it supports VR, multiplayer games, interesting games "innovative and creative ideas" and "games to a player with a rich history". As far as we know, none of the non-Chinese launch games had official approval for the moment.
According to Xiao, "the Steam China project is going well and smoothly" – but what is it exactly? At present, Steam is already widely available for Chinese players. At present, we have tested and confirmed that it was possible to buy, download and play games via the Steam Store in China, as usual, without any problem – and without the need for VPN. Community features, such as discussion forums, are not available, but otherwise the current platform is still a huge loophole in the Chinese government's strict regulation of gaming. Where this can take several months of administration and applications for a game to go through the approval process – if it succeeds at all – or many revisions of a game's content for it's sake. ensure that it meets the different Chinese standards, this same game can already be purchased. and played in China, unfiltered, unregistered and unchanged, on an old regular steam engine.
This prompted Steam to see its total number of players skyrocket during the freezing of the approval process by the Chinese government late last year, as Chinese players flocked to the platform. to continue playing despite the drought. It also means that many developers and publishers rely on a surprising number of readers on the vast Chinese audience. Some of them said that at least 30% of their players were Chinese. Suspicion, however, is normal. Steam can be eliminated or completely blocked, once the final version of Steam China is released, but even that – along with the fate of more than 30 million Chinese user accounts, purchased games, developer backup files that matter on them – is not clear.
In fact, Valve is not sure of herself. Eurogamer has been meeting with Valve's DJ Powers, who works within the company's business development team, at the event, to try to better understand what's going on exactly. As you will read, it is clear that even Valve can not explain – or perhaps more accurately, can not say – what will happen to the international version of Steam out in China. The company also can not say what will happen to the accounts and ownership of tens of millions of Chinese players, who may or may not access the international version of Steam once the official Chinese version is available.
This is a fairly broad topic of discussion, and Powers tackles some of the most delicate topics surrounding Steam in general. It should be noted that Powers seemed serious where he could be and self-conscious enough to know when he was caught in a delicate situation.
So, Steam is available as is in China – yesterday, I was able to buy, download and play a game without a VPN – so what is behind all this? Was it an internal decision?
Powers: Steam China will therefore be a much better experience for Chinese customers. Local servers, all localized content, so different from the fact that it's just a service for Chinese players, as opposed to now, where Chinese players are coming on Steam, but you know, it's in outside of China that they have access.
So, was it a decision on the part of Valve to start Steam China?
Powers: I am not sure I know the origin of the conversation. We have been working with Perfect World for a long time. They released Dota and CS: GO in partnership with Valve. I think in a sense we've been working with them for a long time on what Steam would look like in China, but I do not know the genesis.
I guess I'm dancing around this: there is regulation in China on what suits a Chinese audience. So was it a driving force behind Steam China that was a bit more organized in that sense?
Powers: Yeah. We want Chinese customers to have very high quality access to Steam games. To do this, it is necessary to have a set of games approved by the appropriate channels and to have a local service. The servers that are there can have fast download times, the features obviously improve their quality of life.
Will there be some kind of community, forum or discussion space, since I know this is something you can not access in China right now?
Powers: Yes, I think our long-term goal would be to offer these features to the public. We are full of hope.
And on the subject of "curation", I know this has obviously been addressed in the past with Steam in the rest of the world, and this is not something that you are passionate about. Your attitude is essentially all that is legal, so have you changed your attitude? Or do you think China demands a different attitude from that?
Powers: I mean obviously the market is different, where there is only one process by which the games must pass. The way we manage Steam around the world, where it's really the developers who come to us, who register, who ship their game, just can not have the same operation here. And so, we work with the processes in place and we will have as many games as possible on the platform, but there is just a limit, and by definition, you have to sort of be more organized.
Do you think there are lessons to be learned from this approach that you could possibly apply in a Western environment?
Powers: I do not know about lessons. I think it will be interesting to see how a market responds to a better organized showcase. I know we know a good part of it. I have been with Steam for a long time and I remember that when Steam was very organized for a variety of reasons, we worked very hard to eliminate some of those barriers over the years. but, yes, I think we're just going to be interested in consumer reaction. If we learn something that tells us that we should be more open to this type of showcase, we will take that data and study it, for sure.
And we also expect companies to "self-regulate" in some way. I think Tencent is an example where he put in place time limits for young players before government regulations came into effect. Are you going to consider self-regulation of some things too?
Powers: There are just policies and laws in place that we have to follow, so yes, we will respect all these rules.
So it is rather a reactive sense of "whatever local laws, what we will do"?
Powers: Yeah.
Let's get back to the forums – if I wanted to find something unpleasant about the Steam forums in the rest of the world, it would not take me long. Obviously China being China, it's not going to fly here. Have you thought about how you're going to handle this right now? If you are going to have forums, will it take some sort of moderation?
Powers: I think we have some, but nothing is in place that we could talk about for now.
D & # 39; agreement. You talked about the possibility of creating a different and well organized version of the store. Do you have an idea of its appearance, even visual?
Powers: We do, we did not bring it here. And you know, when the time comes and hopefully soon we will have more information on the timing of the launches and their appearance, but internally we have a lot of ideas for what this experience will look like. , and it's great. . We are all very happy with the direction it takes. It's really good. The advantage of having a smaller gaming group, is that you can really present them in a difficult way to make on Steam in the rest of the world. We are delighted to tell you more about it. It's just that I can not talk about it.
Well. So, changing topics – part of the negative sentiment towards one of your rivals, the Epic Games Shop – are based on a rather broad anti-Chinese sentiment, with at least one Tencent property, with elements such as "security risk" that rises a lot, justified or not. Are you worried about the idea of a similar attitude with regard to Steam, now that you are kind of in favor of Steam in China and that you work more closely with the people involved here ?
Powers: I really do not want to comment on other services, it 's not really appropriate for me to talk about it. We are waiting for the enthusiasm of Chinese customers. Dota and CS: GO were very well received here, and we followed a similar process to get these games to a Chinese market. So a lot of it is not new to us. It's a different animal – it's third party games and it's not all that belongs to us, but we really expect a very positive reception. And as you said earlier, many Chinese customers are already Steam customers and we strive to make it as enjoyable as possible, with payment methods and download speeds, and so on. localized content. So we will continue to rely on that and create the best possible service for that clientele, and I think that will be well received. I will not let myself be dragged into other problems.
Are you going to have exclusive games at Steam China here?
Powers: No no. Our approach has always been rather non-exclusive. We think that the games are the best when they are available in as many places as possible, and our approach with Steam China will be the same. If you send a game on Steam China, we will be happy to send it elsewhere; We encourage you to ship it elsewhere.
And you also mentioned that many players like to play Steam in its current version. Let's say I'm a Chinese citizen and I want to play, I do not know, FTL, and I played a hundred hours in FTL and I do not want to lose all my backups and everything else – what's going on when Steam China arrives? Will my backups be moved? Will I lose my library? Am I going to keep my library?
Powers: Our goal is to make sure your library stays, your data, your backups stay, you lose nothing.
What happens if I have a game like this on Steam, but not on Steam China at launch?
Powers: Nothing will change about global Steam.
So, will Global Steam still be available in China?
Powers: Nothing will change about global Steam.
Well, could something external prevent Global Steam from being available in China?
Powers: I mean, no matter what, yes. There are always externalities that you can not control. But the direction we are taking is that global Steam remains as it is today.
Valve / Perfect World paid for flights and round trips.
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