There’s also the fear among Chinese users that one day Steam or the developers themselves will turn against such uses of the software.
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But Ahmad says the recent changes have driven Niko Partners to upgrade the risk assessment of a Steam ban in China to “high.” It’s unclear why Steam’s service is only partially restricted, as most foreign websites are either completely blocked or not blocked at all in China. Several confirmed to MIT Technology Review that since 2021, VPN services are required to access some services, like browsing and purchasing games, while other functions, like downloading and playing games, remain unrestricted. Many Steam users are worried that this precious paradise could be lost any day. Most adult-only websites are banned, and such content is also routinely removed from social media, cloud drives, and all other online services. The lack of access to porn in ChinaĬompared with countries like the United States, where pornography websites are legal and easy to find, China maintains a much harder stance. Neither the developers nor Steam responded to MIT Technology Review’s requests for comment. No matter what you upload to it-even those crazy videos-I don’t think there’s any problem,” Chinese publication Xiaoheihe quoted Skutta as saying, after he laughed at the question. “What’s wrong with that? Wallpaper Engine is only a framework. When Kristjan Skutta, one of the main developers, was invited to China in 2019 to attend an event, Chinese media asked what he thought about the fact that the app was being used to watch certain types of videos.
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The developers, who keep a relatively low profile online, likely know how their software is being used thousands of miles away. The user proceeded to log over 5,000 hours in Wallpaper Engine. “What’s the sickest is that someone straight up uploaded porn to the Workshop,” reads one March 2019 review in Chinese, upvoted by 456 others. The top 70 most upvoted reviews of all time on Steam for this software are all written in simplified Chinese. They are also some of the most devoted users of Wallpaper Engine. Compare this with 40%, and it’s clear that Chinese users are overrepresented in Wallpaper Engine’s user base. A different stat by Steam suggests that 21% of overall traffic came from China in the seven days before the publication of this story.
Meanwhile, only 24.75% of total Steam users set their default language as simplified Chinese, according to Steam’s latest sampling survey, from June 2022. (Language is a common proxy for Steam users’ geographical distribution, which is hard to collect on Steam.) More recent reviews follow the same trend: during the first seven days of July, the software received 2,907 Steam reviews, and MIT Technology Review has found that 40% of those were written either in simplified Chinese or by someone with a simplified Chinese username. It’s impossible to know exactly how many of Wallpaper Engine’s users are from China, but evidence suggests that at least 40% of them are Chinese, almost twice Steam’s Chinese user percentage.Īmong the nearly half a million Steam reviews of Wallpaper Engine, 40% were written by someone whose default language was simplified Chinese, compared with English at 28%. His article in the Chinese media helped bring the software’s hidden uses to the attention of those who were not yet in on the secret. There he found porn, hentai anime, Donald Trump memes, and even pirated copies of Hollywood movies, like Joker. Having been a gamer and a Steam user, he downloaded Wallpaper Engine and tested it. Did people like to change their wallpapers so often?”Ĭui Jianyi, a Chinese writer and journalist, wrote about the phenomenon in 2020 after he saw someone mention it on social media. “It was at least two or three years ago when this went viral,” says Zhou, a Chinese gamer in Beijing who asked to use only his last name due to privacy concerns.
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