The global version of Steam has been under attack in China. According to a December 25th article from TheGamer, the global version of the video game distribution service had been banned in China. However, days later, it was revealed that the service had not actually been banned. Rather, it was blocked within the country for several hours.
Based on the updated reports by Khee Hoon Chan, a DNS attack took place on Steam. This prevented many Chinese gamers from accessing the global storefront.
“I can confirm that there is a DNS attack because some of our friends had trouble visiting the website,” said Xuan Li, the co-founder of Chinese publisher Thermite Games. He went on to say that DNS attacks, like the one we saw take, place “once a year” and are “not super frequent, but still scary.”
Despite some conflicting initial reports, the global version of Steam can still be accessed in China at this time.
The Profit‘s Take:
The crackdowns in China are now nothing new. I’m just wondering where does it end? We are seeing slowed growth, layoffs, limited access to services, etc. Regardless of whether this ban was just for a few hours or if it’s more indicative of things to come, this clearly hurt small indie game developers because it limits their means of distribution. China is now punishing gamers, gaming companies, and gaming devs. It’s clear that the Chinese government isn’t playing favorites when it comes to these regulations.