Valve to officially launch Steam in China

Steam is set to finally launch in China, a move that opens up the gaming distribution platform to a massive market of gamers.

Valve will partner up with Chinese developer Perfect World to develop a local version of Steam. But local gamers will have to sit tight for now, as no launch date has been given yet.

Perfect World has previously worked with Valve to release DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in China.

The two companies will work close together to actively promote Steam's launch, marketing, and game lineup in the country, and Valve said no changes are planned to worldwide operations and services as a result of its announcement.

Despite not being officially available, Steam's hardware survey in February showed that Simplified Chinese users accounted for the second-highest share of players on the platform.

China accounted for 40.5 percent of the 40 million global sales of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG).

That's despite localisation plans for PUBG only being announced in late-November, with promises by local tech firm Tencent the game's content would "accord with socialist core values."

It'd be safe to say that Steam and Perfect World are working to ensure that the games adhere to those values.

A few months ago, Steam Community was blocked in China with no warning, giving gamers no access to the user inventory and profile pages, however access to the store was still available.