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Twitch is now stuck in China. The main streaming game site is no longer accessible and its application has been removed from the local Apple Store, after seeing its popularity increase last month. Abacus.
Last month, Twitch clinched third place among free apps in China, while locals began downloading the app to watch eSports games at the Asian Games. The public channel CCTV chose not to broadcast the Asian Games. Users therefore had to find alternative ways to watch the competition, especially as China performed well during the event and brought back two gold medals. Although the performance was not broadcast by the broadcaster, the two Chinese victories were then covered by the official media.
Twitch, owned by Amazon, has seen a sharp increase in the number of viewers over the past year, particularly Fortnite Tyler "Ninja" Blevins has become a first-rate celebrity and the most popular and most watched streamer on the platform. The number of Twitch's monthly active streamers doubled in 2017 compared to 2016. But there were not many Chinese users, because its servers are based abroad, which means that feeds are delayed. We contacted Twitch for a comment.
The latest censorship follows the Chinese government's move to ban any Western media platform that seems to be gaining popularity, often as a precautionary measure even before something controversial happens. Social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter remain permanently banned, and Google, which has been out of China for eight years, is reportedly developing a censored search engine for reinstatement.
Many people on Weibo across China responded on Monday to the initial connection termination reports by some sort of group report, in which they would indicate whether they could connect to Twitch's website in their specific province. Although many citizens said they could not, the site remained accessible yesterday for some in scattered provinces in northern and southern China, meaning that censorship was neither consistent nor geographically limited. "Why can not I connect? [the northeastern province of] Liaoning? "One user asked, while another said," I'm still watching now [the northeast city of] Changchun.
The rapid rise and fall of Twitch in China, which will probably soon become a hit in the history of Chinese censorship of Western Internet platforms, does not bode well for the Steam game distribution service and its ambitions. 'East. Steam's parent company, Valve, announced last June its partnership with Perfect World, a video game developer based in Shanghai, to launch a Chinese version of Steam. Few details were given about what an organized version of Steam would look like that would respect local laws. Valve promised The edge to keep it up to date, saying "more information, including launch details, will be available shortly" in June, but since then, has not responded to several follow-up requests.
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