Steam has officially arrived in China and Sony’s PS5 is officially coming too

Although the international version of Steam has been available in China for years, an official Chinese version of the popular PC gaming platform has now debuted (via analyst Daniel Ahmad). If Chinese gamers needed more reason to celebrate, Sony also announced that the PlayStation 5 will arrive in the country soon.

The Chinese version of Steam currently only has around 40 titles available, with around ten more listed as coming soon. Included in this list are, of course, Valve’s own esports titles. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. The service is slow in coming – Valve has announced it will bring it back to China in 2018, although Chinese gamers were able to access the service with Steam’s global client.

The global version, however, has always had the risk of being shut down by the government at any time, as it contains games that have not been officially approved. According to an interview with EurogamerValve’s official Chinese client will only contain games that have gone through the official approval process, although the company expects the global version to still be available alongside the official version.

For Chinese gamers who prefer consoles, Sony plans to launch the PlayStation 5 in the second quarter of 2021 – although it remains to be seen whether the launch will be plagued by inventory issues seen elsewhere in the world. So far, there have only been a handful of modern consoles officially released in the country, as they were banned from 2000 to 2015. The PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch all have Chinese versions. , but it looks like the PS5 is the first next-gen console to officially arrive, as Microsoft has yet to announce plans to release the Xbox Series X and S consoles in the country.

For Steam and Sony, having an additional billion customers available to purchase their products is a big deal. Some developers based in China, however, are less enthusiastic, raising concerns that the Chinese government is blocking the global version of Steam now that an official version exists. This would obviously lead to less access for gamers and make it harder for Chinese developers to share their games with the world.