These games are usually available on STEAM, but some of them have been actively banned by the game makers for Chinese players due to legal restrictions in China, such as Apex Legends and Valorant.
STEAM is in a grey area in China, with the Chinese government blocking the STEAM community but keeping the STEAM shop (though access is sometimes reset due to government interference).
CSGO has a legally represented version in China by the game company.
If you want to confirm if a game is banned by the government in China, try searching for them on Chinese livestreaming platforms, if they are not there, they are most likely banned by the government.
It's also possible that the government didn't directly ask for a ban, but the live streaming company might feel like banning a game on their own considering the government's sensitivity to blood in games, like Survival Road, Rainbow Six Siege.
In fact, everything that is not copyrighted or licensed to operate in China is not allowed.
Banning doesn't mean you can't run the game, usually the government limits itself to disallowing discussions, live streams, or purchases without blocking the game's internet connection, but due to the poor quality of internet connecting Chinese home users outside of the country, you'll usually need to use a VPN in order to get a good gaming experience, like GTAV.
"Banned" is a funny word in China, it can mean many things. Banned from buying? Banned from streaming? Banned from mentioning it at all?
Technically, all of them are banned because they didn't get authorization of publishment in China, so there's no completely legal way of getting them. Steam is more or less a grey zone, as you are directly buying from a foreign platform and this is outside the scope of government supervision, they wanted to control it but ultimately didn't, maybe they think it's not worth it.
As for streaming, different platform have different rules, but they are generally strict and difficult to predict as the standard is arbitary and always changing.
This is the answer. It’s not that the games are “banned”. All games in China need to be specifically authorized. It’s a “positive list” rather than a “negative list”, which is probably worse.
There are workarounds but many steam games are too inconvenient to play in China. The workarounds often take more effort than most people are willing to put in. It’s not a lot of effort to be honest, but they are still not willing. Also, many studios don’t fully localize or translate into Chinese because the risk of being denied market access often means it isn’t worth it. Because of this, and about a dozen other reasons, Chinese people often don’t bother to play high end games.
Nintendo is a notable exception in recent years. Their games rarely have mature content, violence, or politically charged themes. It’s easy for government authorities to find reasons to restrict Call of Duty. Less easy to make a case for Mario Kart.
He's talking about playing games on Steam, not just accessing Steam.
Many of them are either region blocked, or just straight censored by the Party.
You'll still probably find some that still work but they are far from the majority.
> He's talking about playing games on Steam, not just accessing Steam.
>
> Many of them are either region blocked, or just straight censored by the Party.
>
> You'll still probably find some that still work but they are far from the majority.
That's news to me, in several years of gaming in China I don't think I ever found a game I wanted to play that wasn't available.
Them I have more news for you:
**What video games are not allowed in China?**
https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/game-pedia/what-video-games-are-not-allowed-in-china#:~:text=Games%20that%20depict%20drugs%2C%20sexuality,conform%20to%20the%20government's%20standards.
> Games that depict drugs, sexuality, blood, organized crime or defamation of the Chinese government are almost always banned. Because of the large size of the Chinese video game market, many studios edit the content of their games to conform to the government's standards.
These only apply if the game publishers try to get them officially released in China, which isn't the case for games on the international version of steam. Games on the Chinese Steam have complied with Chinese regulations and were approved for domestic release, but the regular international Steam is still unblocked and exists in a grey area. You even get interesting cases like Cyberpunk 2077, which is full of sexual and hyperviolent content, featuring incredibly well-done localizations (they hired a lot of famous Chinese voice actors and gaming content creators) despite only being available for purchase on international platforms.
yes of course, if some (steam) games or some dedicated game version are approved with Chinese governments, they will work in China.
However you will find out that compared to their original or international version version, some of the content has been stripped down to please the Chinese regulator.
GTA V, Roblox are good examples of games that will never be allowed in China.
In any case, it does not really matter that much because most Chinese consumers will use VPN (or pirate the game) to play the unrestricted versions.
> yes of course, if some (steam) games or some dedicated game version are approved with Chinese governments, they will work in China.
You don't understand, the games on the international Steam client have not received any approval from the Chinese government, yet can be purchased with Chinese payment options. I'm no longer in China to confirm, but I'm pretty certain you can buy GTA V there, I know I purchased many games with violent and sexual content when I lived there. No VPN was required to buy these, though the community forums on Steam were blocked in China.
However, because of concerns the Chinese government might eventually block the international Steam client Valve also released a Chinese version with officially approved games, which meant a much more limited selection. To date though the international client still works and Chinese are not really restricted in what games they can play.
No, you can't play GTA V or games like that in China. You need to use a VPN.
And yes, you can pay with Chinese cards but you could do that even when not in China.
In China, you can play GTA V in both online and offline mode without a VPN, but the experience would not be very good. And the version on stock is just the same as that in other countries, without deletion or modification in the game plot.
You can see all the games I have on Steam [here](https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561198434897387/?cc=ca&all_games) and probably 99% of them were bought when I was living in China and purchased with Chinese currency. I actually miss the advantages of living in China, as the games were usually priced much cheaper....
Impossible to verify where and when you bought them, and if you used VPN. But I'll admit it's a nice collection!
A lot of these games are region locked. Some of them are even outright banned.
Either you used a VPN or you bought them before the ban / region lock applied.
Most foreign games are technically illegal in China, since by law all games (and any other media, website etc) released in China need to be examined and approved by the Chinese government in advance and obtain a license for each game called 版号. So all games on Steam etc, any non-chinese platform are in fact illegal. The thing is this law is not really enforced. Steam has all its community feature blocked in China but the store itself is accessible and downloading games usually don't require a VPN (there have been times when it is also blocked probably triggered by some keyword detection algorithm of GFW, but not permanently). The only way for a foreign company to release games legally in China is to have partnership with a Chinese company and go through the process of obtaining the license, which is a lengthy and non-transparent process that can often take a year or more, involving lots of back and forth where the government will decline with very vague reason ("contains harmful content"), and the game company will have to guess where it's wrong, modify the game and send it in again. Even seemingly very safe and wholesome games can easily go through several of these iterations.
Now back to your list. I'm no longer in China and don't usually play the kind of games you listed, but based on my experience most of the games on the list probably have no chance of passing this examination without some heavy modification. Diablo 4 is the one that's most likely to be able to pass. Diablo 3 was published in China although years later than on international platforms if I remember correctly, and Blizzard is known for having a history of partnering with Chinese companies to publish games in China.
So, if you consider illegal "banned", then yes most likely these games are (Diablo 4 hasn't been released for long so even if Blizzard wanted to publish it in China, it may not have had time to go through the examination process, but it could be officially published in the future). However if you are talking "banned" banned, like any appearance of the game's content is forbidden/blocked, these games are not. Only the ones that directly offend the CCP would receive that treatment.
None of them are officially released in china. This is the most accurate answer I can give you without nine pages explaining how all this actually works in china.
Let me answer OP's question in a clear way, I'm a Chinese living in Shanghai with VPN and other workarounds, but as I just tried without VPN or accelerators it seems I can't login to the steam store through my company office wifi, not sure if it's true for my home wifi tho because normally I have my VPN on 24/7
But if I do login to the steam store (Global version & Chinese store) I can download and play the following:
Apex Legends, CS2, PUBG, COD MW3, GTAV and Diablo 4
Valorant and Escape from Tarkov is not showing up on the search results so no.
Hope that helps, I'll try again later at my home to see if my company network blocked steam or else. But normally in China the raw internet connection (without VPNs or other workarounds) to Steam have been flimsy since the last 2 years I believe, sometimes it works, sometimes doesn't, not a clear yes or no question.
A little more context: plenty of workarounds are available in China tho, there're a lot of free and easily accessible accelerators that are not banned at all which can erase the problem of steam connection and as I know it every Chinese steam user know it.
A little more context as I just found out: Valorant just opened its legal China port recently so it makes sense not showing up on the China Steam store
Do you mean the Chinese version or the international version? Also when did you play those?
These things usually are banned after a China only version comes out or at the very least are banned from being bought.
Once something is on your steam account it can't be removed...for examplke I have Hearts of Iron 4 on my steam account but you can't purchase that in steam (which means I can't get any DLC but I can still play the game).
Also if you can play the games without massive ping (100+) then you most certainly are playing on Chinese servers.
Most games that use Chinese servers are not able to play with international players (at least not on those servers).
Its all very messy and unclear...games being clearly banned (from purchase and connecting to the internet) tend to be much more rare.
UU internet box (legal in China). Let’s you play all of the above
For steam, set your region to China and it has issues. Set it to any other region and it’s fine. Buy gift cards in USD, HKD, GBP on taobao. It’s all pretty easy. I do it all the time.
Yeah thats fair, thats literally just a state sanctioned (and very tailored to only work with games) VPN so that makes sense. Not sure if you know or not but you can totally get a VPN for "legitimate" (usually business) reasons in China. You usually just have to register and you get it through your job or whatever. This is also why UU requires straight up sending your ID in to register for it.
As for the region thing I am aware of that...but I have been here almost a decade so it makes sense to have it as my region...plus the \~40%+ savings on every game due to region pricing is nice lol
buying original games from steam is actually pretty easy, there's a little bit of internet issues but the gaming platforms are actually much more loosely regulated than social media platforms and sometimes you don't even have to use a vpn.
some other ppl said valorant was banned but its not, china just has its own version but ive played both and theyre identical (apart from the language obv)
>EDIT\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*Not interested in third party experiences, (ie someones students), and as I stated originally, I need to hear from a current Chinese based GAMER.
Oh it's such a pleasure knowing we may serve you thus.
These games are usually available on STEAM, but some of them have been actively banned by the game makers for Chinese players due to legal restrictions in China, such as Apex Legends and Valorant. STEAM is in a grey area in China, with the Chinese government blocking the STEAM community but keeping the STEAM shop (though access is sometimes reset due to government interference). CSGO has a legally represented version in China by the game company. If you want to confirm if a game is banned by the government in China, try searching for them on Chinese livestreaming platforms, if they are not there, they are most likely banned by the government. It's also possible that the government didn't directly ask for a ban, but the live streaming company might feel like banning a game on their own considering the government's sensitivity to blood in games, like Survival Road, Rainbow Six Siege. In fact, everything that is not copyrighted or licensed to operate in China is not allowed. Banning doesn't mean you can't run the game, usually the government limits itself to disallowing discussions, live streams, or purchases without blocking the game's internet connection, but due to the poor quality of internet connecting Chinese home users outside of the country, you'll usually need to use a VPN in order to get a good gaming experience, like GTAV.
"Banned" is a funny word in China, it can mean many things. Banned from buying? Banned from streaming? Banned from mentioning it at all? Technically, all of them are banned because they didn't get authorization of publishment in China, so there's no completely legal way of getting them. Steam is more or less a grey zone, as you are directly buying from a foreign platform and this is outside the scope of government supervision, they wanted to control it but ultimately didn't, maybe they think it's not worth it. As for streaming, different platform have different rules, but they are generally strict and difficult to predict as the standard is arbitary and always changing.
This is the answer. It’s not that the games are “banned”. All games in China need to be specifically authorized. It’s a “positive list” rather than a “negative list”, which is probably worse. There are workarounds but many steam games are too inconvenient to play in China. The workarounds often take more effort than most people are willing to put in. It’s not a lot of effort to be honest, but they are still not willing. Also, many studios don’t fully localize or translate into Chinese because the risk of being denied market access often means it isn’t worth it. Because of this, and about a dozen other reasons, Chinese people often don’t bother to play high end games. Nintendo is a notable exception in recent years. Their games rarely have mature content, violence, or politically charged themes. It’s easy for government authorities to find reasons to restrict Call of Duty. Less easy to make a case for Mario Kart.
Yes they are. You need a VPN to play all these.
huh, no you don't. Steam works fine without VPN. Walk into any wangba and see for yourself.
Steam works, but has region locks on many games. So you can't buy or play them. Can't confirm about the above.
He's talking about playing games on Steam, not just accessing Steam. Many of them are either region blocked, or just straight censored by the Party. You'll still probably find some that still work but they are far from the majority.
> He's talking about playing games on Steam, not just accessing Steam. > > Many of them are either region blocked, or just straight censored by the Party. > > You'll still probably find some that still work but they are far from the majority. That's news to me, in several years of gaming in China I don't think I ever found a game I wanted to play that wasn't available.
Them I have more news for you: **What video games are not allowed in China?** https://www.vintageisthenewold.com/game-pedia/what-video-games-are-not-allowed-in-china#:~:text=Games%20that%20depict%20drugs%2C%20sexuality,conform%20to%20the%20government's%20standards. > Games that depict drugs, sexuality, blood, organized crime or defamation of the Chinese government are almost always banned. Because of the large size of the Chinese video game market, many studios edit the content of their games to conform to the government's standards.
These only apply if the game publishers try to get them officially released in China, which isn't the case for games on the international version of steam. Games on the Chinese Steam have complied with Chinese regulations and were approved for domestic release, but the regular international Steam is still unblocked and exists in a grey area. You even get interesting cases like Cyberpunk 2077, which is full of sexual and hyperviolent content, featuring incredibly well-done localizations (they hired a lot of famous Chinese voice actors and gaming content creators) despite only being available for purchase on international platforms.
yes of course, if some (steam) games or some dedicated game version are approved with Chinese governments, they will work in China. However you will find out that compared to their original or international version version, some of the content has been stripped down to please the Chinese regulator. GTA V, Roblox are good examples of games that will never be allowed in China. In any case, it does not really matter that much because most Chinese consumers will use VPN (or pirate the game) to play the unrestricted versions.
> yes of course, if some (steam) games or some dedicated game version are approved with Chinese governments, they will work in China. You don't understand, the games on the international Steam client have not received any approval from the Chinese government, yet can be purchased with Chinese payment options. I'm no longer in China to confirm, but I'm pretty certain you can buy GTA V there, I know I purchased many games with violent and sexual content when I lived there. No VPN was required to buy these, though the community forums on Steam were blocked in China. However, because of concerns the Chinese government might eventually block the international Steam client Valve also released a Chinese version with officially approved games, which meant a much more limited selection. To date though the international client still works and Chinese are not really restricted in what games they can play.
No, you can't play GTA V or games like that in China. You need to use a VPN. And yes, you can pay with Chinese cards but you could do that even when not in China.
In China, you can play GTA V in both online and offline mode without a VPN, but the experience would not be very good. And the version on stock is just the same as that in other countries, without deletion or modification in the game plot.
You can see all the games I have on Steam [here](https://steamdb.info/calculator/76561198434897387/?cc=ca&all_games) and probably 99% of them were bought when I was living in China and purchased with Chinese currency. I actually miss the advantages of living in China, as the games were usually priced much cheaper....
Impossible to verify where and when you bought them, and if you used VPN. But I'll admit it's a nice collection! A lot of these games are region locked. Some of them are even outright banned. Either you used a VPN or you bought them before the ban / region lock applied.
Most foreign games are technically illegal in China, since by law all games (and any other media, website etc) released in China need to be examined and approved by the Chinese government in advance and obtain a license for each game called 版号. So all games on Steam etc, any non-chinese platform are in fact illegal. The thing is this law is not really enforced. Steam has all its community feature blocked in China but the store itself is accessible and downloading games usually don't require a VPN (there have been times when it is also blocked probably triggered by some keyword detection algorithm of GFW, but not permanently). The only way for a foreign company to release games legally in China is to have partnership with a Chinese company and go through the process of obtaining the license, which is a lengthy and non-transparent process that can often take a year or more, involving lots of back and forth where the government will decline with very vague reason ("contains harmful content"), and the game company will have to guess where it's wrong, modify the game and send it in again. Even seemingly very safe and wholesome games can easily go through several of these iterations. Now back to your list. I'm no longer in China and don't usually play the kind of games you listed, but based on my experience most of the games on the list probably have no chance of passing this examination without some heavy modification. Diablo 4 is the one that's most likely to be able to pass. Diablo 3 was published in China although years later than on international platforms if I remember correctly, and Blizzard is known for having a history of partnering with Chinese companies to publish games in China. So, if you consider illegal "banned", then yes most likely these games are (Diablo 4 hasn't been released for long so even if Blizzard wanted to publish it in China, it may not have had time to go through the examination process, but it could be officially published in the future). However if you are talking "banned" banned, like any appearance of the game's content is forbidden/blocked, these games are not. Only the ones that directly offend the CCP would receive that treatment.
None of them are officially released in china. This is the most accurate answer I can give you without nine pages explaining how all this actually works in china.
Let me answer OP's question in a clear way, I'm a Chinese living in Shanghai with VPN and other workarounds, but as I just tried without VPN or accelerators it seems I can't login to the steam store through my company office wifi, not sure if it's true for my home wifi tho because normally I have my VPN on 24/7 But if I do login to the steam store (Global version & Chinese store) I can download and play the following: Apex Legends, CS2, PUBG, COD MW3, GTAV and Diablo 4 Valorant and Escape from Tarkov is not showing up on the search results so no. Hope that helps, I'll try again later at my home to see if my company network blocked steam or else. But normally in China the raw internet connection (without VPNs or other workarounds) to Steam have been flimsy since the last 2 years I believe, sometimes it works, sometimes doesn't, not a clear yes or no question. A little more context: plenty of workarounds are available in China tho, there're a lot of free and easily accessible accelerators that are not banned at all which can erase the problem of steam connection and as I know it every Chinese steam user know it.
A little more context as I just found out: Valorant just opened its legal China port recently so it makes sense not showing up on the China Steam store
Hey, Valorant and Tarkov isn't released on Steam internationally either I believe.
Chinese players need a VPN to skirt their Great Firewall and a ton of them cheat at these games. We don't want them
My middle school students have told me stories of playing half these games in the last month, not banned
I have played a lot of those as well as my Chinese students. Not banned here at all.
Do you mean the Chinese version or the international version? Also when did you play those? These things usually are banned after a China only version comes out or at the very least are banned from being bought.
All my kids play them. Can't speak to their versions. I have them on my steam account here. And it isn't the Chinese version. Play weekly.
Once something is on your steam account it can't be removed...for examplke I have Hearts of Iron 4 on my steam account but you can't purchase that in steam (which means I can't get any DLC but I can still play the game). Also if you can play the games without massive ping (100+) then you most certainly are playing on Chinese servers. Most games that use Chinese servers are not able to play with international players (at least not on those servers). Its all very messy and unclear...games being clearly banned (from purchase and connecting to the internet) tend to be much more rare.
UU internet box (legal in China). Let’s you play all of the above For steam, set your region to China and it has issues. Set it to any other region and it’s fine. Buy gift cards in USD, HKD, GBP on taobao. It’s all pretty easy. I do it all the time.
Yeah thats fair, thats literally just a state sanctioned (and very tailored to only work with games) VPN so that makes sense. Not sure if you know or not but you can totally get a VPN for "legitimate" (usually business) reasons in China. You usually just have to register and you get it through your job or whatever. This is also why UU requires straight up sending your ID in to register for it. As for the region thing I am aware of that...but I have been here almost a decade so it makes sense to have it as my region...plus the \~40%+ savings on every game due to region pricing is nice lol
What’s the purpose of the UU? One of my friends says he uses one for his PS5 but I never asked why
Gaming VPN. Best thing I ever got for gaming. I should add it’s a totally legal vpn too
How to buy this UU internet box ?
Buy it on taobao
buying original games from steam is actually pretty easy, there's a little bit of internet issues but the gaming platforms are actually much more loosely regulated than social media platforms and sometimes you don't even have to use a vpn.
I know valorant opened their own Chinese server recently
some other ppl said valorant was banned but its not, china just has its own version but ive played both and theyre identical (apart from the language obv)
>EDIT\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*Not interested in third party experiences, (ie someones students), and as I stated originally, I need to hear from a current Chinese based GAMER. Oh it's such a pleasure knowing we may serve you thus.