It would seem that the Chinese government’s continued efforts to bring the games industry to heel has extended to the global version of the Steam storefront, assuming the latest news holds any veracity. Initial reports are coming in stating that the global form of Steam and all of its community pages have been suddenly blacklisted, making the Chinese version of Steam, which has a significantly limited library of games and no community features like discussion boards or the Steam Workshop, the only option for players in the country.
The block was first noted by a dataminer by the name of Ricky “iFireMonkey” Owens, who shared screenshots of the global Steam website appearing on a list of blocked sites for the country. The Verge independently ran its own verification via Comparitech and affirmed the claim.
What isn’t clear, however, is where the block is coming from; initial assumptions were that the block is part of China’s continued effort to corral the gaming industry, but an update from this past Saturday notes conflicting reports are coming in that this is the result of a DNS attack. In either case, Chinese gamers are currently dealing with a much less robust version of the storefront.
