Steam officially arrived in China and Sony’s PS5 is also coming

Although the international version of Steam has been available in China for years, an official Chinese release of the popular PC gaming platform has now debuted (via analyst Daniel Ahmad) If Chinese players needed more reasons to celebrate, Sony also announced that the PlayStation 5 will arrive in the country soon.

The Chinese version of Steam currently has only about 40 titles available, with another 10 or more listed soon. Included in this list are, of course, Valve’s own e-sports titles Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. The service is taking too long to arrive – Valve announced that it would bring it to China in 2018, although Chinese players were able to access the service with the global Steam client.

The global version, however, has always run the risk of being shut down at any time by the government, as it contains games that have not been officially approved. According to an interview with Eurogamer, Valve’s official Chinese customer will only contain games that have gone through the official approval process, although the company expects the global version to still be available with the official version.

For Chinese gamers who prefer consoles, Sony is planning to launch the PlayStation 5 in the second quarter of 2021 – but it remains to be seen whether the launch will be affected by the inventory problems seen in the rest of the world. So far, there have only been a handful of modern consoles officially launched in the country, since they were banned from 2000 to 2015. The PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch have Chinese versions, but it looks like the PS5 may be the first next generation console to arrive officially, as Microsoft has yet to announce plans to bring the Xbox Series X and S consoles to the country.

For Steam and Sony, having another billion customers available to buy their products is a big deal. Some developers based in China, however, are less enthusiastic, raising concerns that the Chinese government may block the global version of Steam now that there is an official version. This would obviously lead to less access for players and make it more difficult for Chinese developers to share their games with the world.