Thanks to PUBG, China now has more Steam users than any other country

The November 2021 Hardware Survey on Steam showed an 8.23 percent increase in Simplified Chinese players since October, bringing the total Chinese readership to 64.35 percent of Steam survey respondents. The UK accounted for 17.02 per cent, and Russia was the third highest at 5.11 per cent. Just one year ago, English was at the top with 44.10 percent of respondents and Simplified Chinese only accounted for 8.60 percent.

The dramatic increase in Steam users in China began in 2012, when Valve and Perfect World partnered to publish Dota 2 in the country. Perfect World later published CS:GO in China, and the two games are now Steam’s third and second most popular games in China. The most popular, however, were released this year: SteamSpy estimates that 78 percent of Steam users in China own the game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

And that means something interesting could happen next year: Tencent acquires the rights to publish and operate PUBG in China. It’s unclear whether Tencent’s government-approved version of PUBG will remain on Steam, or be released via its WeGame service. In the announcement, Tencent did not mention the platform version of PUBG that will be launched, they promised to provide more information soon.

There’s a precedent, though: When Tencent secured Chinese publishing rights to Rocket League (as a free-to-play game), the stuff was released on Steam in China. “While new players will no longer be able to purchase the current version of the game from Steam from this point on,” Psyonix wrote, “the existing community will still have access to the game you paid for in addition to all currently available features.”

If PUBG followed the same route, Chinese players would be able to continue playing on Steam, even though it’s no longer available for purchase. Steam’s massive adoption will probably slow down, though it’s always possible that another game could be caught in China due to a government-sanctioned publishing deal. (According to Niko Partners, Steam operates in a gray area in China, as not all games on Steam are approved for sale by the China Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television Administration.)

In the SteamSpy chart above, China’s active players on Steam overtook the US over the past two weeks.

Baca Juga

Despite the results of the recent Steam Hardware Survey, China isn’t necessarily the most Steam user of any country, at least not yet. The Hardware Survey includes Chinese speakers outside of China, of course, and Chinese is by far the most recognized language in the world. Additionally, the data comes from users who signed in and approved surveys during the month of November, and Steam doesn’t offer survey demographics, only the results.

But if China doesn’t have the biggest users, at least there are close ones. SteamSpy currently has China in second place for user count, with 11.34 percent of the world’s Steam users, while the US accounts for 14.67 percent. However, this estimate, which is based on general user profiles, does not cover users who have not entered their location into their Steam profile. SteamSpy logged over 20 million users as ‘Other’ on December 8.

And China has the most active userbase by far according to SteamSpy: 19.48 percent of the world’s active Steam population over the past two weeks compared to 14.17 percent in the US. This is backed up by more Steam data itself. According to seven days of Steam records, the United States downloaded 58.6 petabytes of data, which is almost over the 57.2 PB mark in China. SteamSpy estimates that Chinese players have far fewer games on average than American players, so the following petabytes of data in China represents more individual players than petabytes of data in the US.

If this trend continues, expect to see more games on Steam with Chinese language support—currently, there are over 4,500. It’s also interesting to see if there’s a reverse effect as well: more Chinese games are releasing on Steam with or without English, Russian, and other language support. Tencent’s Europa game, for example, is currently appearing on Steam. Alternatively, or at the same time, we can see Tencent’s work to become a world platform.

Other Interesting Articles: