Reporting by XinZhiyuan
EDIT: LRS
Steam has always been the spiritual harbor for the majority of players and friends, but due to the lack of supervision, prevention of game addiction and other reasons, it has long been in a gray area. Recently, a reporter found that the steam main domain name was blocked by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the official response said that there was a violation, but the specific reason is not clear.
Steam is sick again!
According to Blue Whale Finance, after the relevant reporters inquired into the domain name information filing management system of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, it was found that the main site domain name of the famous game platform Steam was Steampowered.com included in the blacklist of illegal domain names.
Combined with the current feedback from netizens, although the current Steam master station can still be accessed normally, it has occasionally begun to appear unable to connect.
For this blocking, some netizens said that this is purely a "traffic password", and every winter promotion, and even daily life will come to a wave of steam.
So Steam crashing is not news, not collapsing is.
However, combined with the news that Steam no longer provides Chinese mainland CM server before, maybe this time Steam shouted the wolf is really coming!
Prelude to steam china?
As early as the evening of June 13, 2018, CCTV13 Channel news broadcast column, CCTV made a statement on the initiative of Perfect World and V News Agency to launch the "Steam China" (Steam Platform) project a few days ago. CCTV highly praised the significance of the cooperation between Perfect World and V Society for China's cultural creation and game industry, and China's cultural and creative introduction has added new platforms to go out.
But it also reveals a message, that is, the games sold on the Steam service platform are not conducive to domestic supervision, such as "that game 5" and so on violate the core values of socialism, the purpose of launching the Steam China version is to allow Chinese players to play healthier games.
The state has realized that the current audit mechanism is still flawed and needs to be optimized. The report specifically mentioned that as of the end of last year, only 9800 games had been officially approved in China, and a large number of games were in a regulatory vacuum and ambiguity, and these situations had actually affected the development of China's game industry.
If the state is going to optimize for this aspect, then Steam China is obviously a good test. At present, the live broadcasting platform has banned a large number of games.
CCTV clearly stated in the report that the "Steam China" project will only list games reviewed by China, so if the game platform increases supervision, most of the AAA-level blockbuster games may still have no chance to land on Steam China.
In addition to the purpose of "bringing in", Steam China can also help Chinese games "go global", mainly to help domestic small and medium-sized game manufacturers expand overseas markets, but the specific help measures are not detailed, it may be that overseas-oriented games are faster than domestic-oriented reviews.
In February 2021, the Steam platform was officially launched, and stores and inventory can only display reviewed games, and without the community, there is no trading and workshop.
So far, the Steam platform has only a total of 103 reviewed games, which is why a large number of players have not transferred to the national service.
If you ban access to Steam clothing one day, some players are worried that so many games in their warehouses are all silver flowers, and they can't say don't want it!
In fact, the "Schedule of Specific Commitments of the People's Republic of China on Trade in Services" signed by China at the time of its accession to the WTO clearly promises that there are no restrictions on audiovisual services, including entertainment software, in terms of market access, cross-border delivery and overseas consumption, which has not been changed so far.
So don't worry too much, but the balance between entertainment demand and regulation still needs to be explored.
This year, the State Press and Publication Administration issued the "Notice on Further Strict Management and Effectively Preventing Minors from Addicting to Online Games", which strictly limits the time to provide online game services to minors, and all online game enterprises can only provide 1 hour of service to minors from 20:00 to 21:00 every day on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and statutory holidays, and must not provide online game services to minors in any form at other times.
With the introduction of the new regulations, many experts and front-line educators said that the landing of the document will effectively weave a safety guardian network to prevent teenagers from indulging in online games, which will help create a green network ecological environment, and will also guide more teenagers to access the Internet according to law and rationally.
Some experts believe that online game addiction is a social problem, and anti-addiction work is a systematic project that requires the joint efforts of all aspects of society.
Compared with the national one-size-fits-all supervision of minors, the entertainment needs of adult players have been very well taken care of, but how Steam regulates, the majority of players can only wait.
Will piracy revive?
Entertainment occupies an important place in human life, from playing mahjong, fighting landlords, Texas Hold'em, to today's various video games, everyone's entertainment is different, but everyone needs entertainment.
Just as reading is also an entertainment, the knowledge that can be gained by reading "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and playing the best games of the Three Kingdoms theme is similar, but indulgence is absolutely harmful.
More than ten years ago, students were crazy addicted to all kinds of martial arts or famous novels, when the teachers shouted "read big books", excessive indulgence can easily lead to academic waste, it may also lead to excessive partiality, thinking that they are a piece of writer's material, but not everyone is Han Han.
Games cannot be completely banned, and gamers will not choose not to play games because they cannot play them.
If the official channels can't play, then they will find ways to play pirated copies, pay less money, and the state will have less tax revenue.
In order to prevent young people from indulging in games, in June 2000, the government issued the "Opinions on the Special Governance of Electronic Game Business Sites", stopping all activities related to the production, sale and operation of game consoles.
Regulators' concern at the time was that video game business premises disrupted social order and brought potential harm to the physical and mental development of teenagers.
Game console products from Manufacturers such as Sony and Nintendo cannot be publicly sold in China, but consumer demand for game consoles is real, and this situation has spawned China's parallel cargo game console market. While almost all console products, including the Nintendo Wii, Microsoft XBox360, and Sony PS3, are manufactured and assembled in China, they can only export, not enter the world's largest market.
Countless players can only experience the favorite foreign games and consoles through parallel goods, cottages and piracy. For a considerable period of time, the imported game machine market has become a deformed ecosystem of parallel goods piracy.
In 2013 alone, the direct damage caused by the game console ban was more than 83 billion yuan.
On January 6, 2014, the thirteen-year ban on game consoles was lifted, but the development of Chinese game technology has lagged behind that of foreign countries.
If the Steam service is banned again, it is bound to promote the development of the pirated game market, Ranger Network, 3DM and other websites that provide games and downloaded content will once again receive attention, and stand-alone games will become the hardest hit areas of piracy. Other domestic game platforms, Tencent and NetEase, will receive some user dividends in the short term.
But who is right about what to do?
Resources:
https://news.mydrivers.com/1/805/805842.htm
https://www.sohu.com/a/512778127_116126
https://nb.zol.com.cn/783/7839403.html