The image is by Alex Castro.
According to a report from The Gamer, Steam Global has been banned in China. Only the Chinese version of Steam remains accessible in the country, which currently offers a limited library of just 103 games, a very small fraction of the over 110,000 games that Steam Global has at this time of writing.
Ricky Owens, a reliable leaker and data miner, noticed the ban and sent out a picture of a blocked website in China. Comparitech has a tool that checks if a site is blocked in China. The tool indicates that the domain store.steampowered.com has been blocked in all parts of the country, but the domain is still available.
The only way for Chinese players to get to Steam China is through the ban. In addition to having far fewer games, the only mainstream titles being Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2, Steam China also comes without any community features, including the Steam Workshop, Community Market, discussion forums, and the activity section that shows any current broadcasts.
The country has spent a lot of time cracking down on gaming, and the apparent ban on Steam Global is a rough way to end the year. In order to comply with the 10PM curfew that China set to prevent kids from gaming late at night, Tencent rolled out facial recognition technology. China implemented a new rule one month later that restricts children from playing games for more than three hours a week. Even though the game was heavily modified to comply with China's strict rules, it was banned.
The Verge reached out to Steam but didn't hear back.
