There are roughly 20,000 games currently available on Steam, give or take a few thousand. Many of these games are great. Several are absolute masterpieces. And many of them, of course, are the kind of weird crap that get thrown together over a weekend and sold for a few quid. Games like Calvin Tucker's Farm Animal Racing, and The Last Hope: Trump VS Mafia. These are both real games that I swear I haven't made up.
Steam as you and I know it has a lot to offer, then. Quite possibly too much. Still, I think I'd take this overwhelming amount of choice over the recently launched version of Steam in China, which comes with a grand total of 53 titles. For comparison, Steam added around 10,000 titles to the platform in 2020 alone, according to Statista. How many of those do you think made it into China's selective total of 53?
This newly launched Steam China (which you can check out here) is headlined by giants like DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but there aren't many more that you would recognise. I should also point out that pretty much all of the games on this new version of Steam are also available on the international version, so I really have no idea why you'd make the switch.
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PC Gamer explains that for games to release on an official Chinese storefront, they need to go through a much stricter certification process involving the famously not-so-chill Chinese government. Because of this, and various cultural reasons, there aren't many international games that would make it through the process.
Steam China is also currently lacking community features, which means users can't go to a forum or anything of the sort to discuss tricky segments, share tips, or even alert other players to bugs. There is still a a section for good old-fashioned Steam user reviews, however, so many more community features are incoming.
Featured Image Credit: Steam