Valve’s presence in China has been an interesting topic, especially in the past few months. Although the global version of its Steam storefront has been available for quite some time, it wasn’t “approved” by the government per se, which meant that it could be yanked at any time. Just earlier this year, Valve released a government-approved version of the Steam in the country. The client offers a handful of games as it only contains titles that are approved by the Chinese government and adhere to its strict regulations, for example, regarding the display of blood and gambling.
However, there are now widespread reports that the global version of Steam has been added to a blacklist in China and cannot be accessed anymore. This applies both to the Steam client and the Steam Community page, as reported by thousands of users across Reddit, Twitter, and other social media platforms. Meanwhile, the Chinese version seems to be up and running for everyone.
While we don’t have our own sources based in China to validate these claims, the China Firewall Test website is reporting both the Steam pages as “blocked” for us too.