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Then Eve, Being A Force

Laughed At Their Decision



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JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory

the chinese indie game scene fascinates and excites me and i really, really wish i could find good sources for like. information on it


JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory

like just on a very basic level

what's the ACTUAL status of steam in china?

because, there's a LOT of games being put out all the time that only exist in simplified chinese on steam. yet, steam is blocked in china without a vpn. Which means that either

  • everyone is using a vpn to access steam (wouldn't surprise me from what i know)
  • these games are ports of games sold on other sites and the steam versions are just one version that you can buy when you'd normally buy them somewhere else, on sites i don't know about
  • steam isn't blocked in the way i understand it

i genuinely don't know! but china IS the biggest fucking gaming market in the world, way outpacing america and other stuff, and there's a TON of cool indie games coming out... i wanna know about em!


JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory

i just wanna learn, and it's so, so so fuckin hard to find sources on china that aren't just like. western media shitheads going SHAME ABOUT THAT GOVERNMENT THAT'S SO OPPRESIVE UNLIKE AMERICA LOL SHAME SHAME

dude i wanna hear about the studio that made volcano princess! that game is 10 bucks and has more fucking steam reviews then dwarf fortress and is an obviously indie project! who made it? what did they do? what's going on there? i wanna learn! but no instead i gotta read 10 articles that spend 2 hours talking about the great firewall and 0 time talking about indie games

fuck offfffff


JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory

So apparently, steam ISN'T blocked in china. What's blocked is discussion pages, workshop pages, community content; that stuff needs a firewall; but even with steam adding a "steam china" section that has a very limited number of "approved" games you can still access the global store without a vpn or anything. Additionally, to sell a game in china usually you would need an incredibly difficult to get license that involves a lengthy, complex, expensive process that's nearly impossible for most indie devs. This is in that "everyone is very scared this will suddenly change" category, from what i can tell; i.e. if steam DID suddenly get blocked by china except for the Official China Store it would completely kill the indie games market on there. But as of now, it's a place where you can sell a game without necessarily needing a license, so it's one of the best possible spots for indie devs


JuniperTheory
@JuniperTheory

jesus christ that's a good factorio-esque Conveyor Belt Game

jesus fuck

wow

hoo boy


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in reply to @JuniperTheory's post:

steam is just a distribution platform, they're probably selling it on others too. not so much a port.

but also: there's plenty of people who most comfortably read simplified-chinese printed characters who aren't currently living in china

(and in a few cases, chinese-language game devs who can't release their game idea in china)

the general impression I have is that steam's made some inroads in the chinese dev scene and is one of the bigger game distributors there, but I also don't know enough chinese to really start to try to search the chinese web to see if there's anything like freem or itch over there.
so in short I'm pretty much in the same boat where I don't even know where to start looking.

in reply to @JuniperTheory's post:

in reply to @JuniperTheory's post: