Steam has been banned in Vietnam.
As first reported by Game Developer and spotted by our sister site, GamesIndustry.biz, it’s unclear exactly why the PC platform has been banned, but GI.biz proposes it may be due to “Valve’s business operations”.
However, as reported in Vietnam.net, it’s possible Steam has been taken down in Vietnam after local game developers complained about the scope and size of Steam’s vast portfolio of games, claiming Vietnamese devs cannot compete with Steam’s releases given they are subject to government approval and thousands of international games on Steam are not.
Citing it as “an injustice to domestic publishers”, Vietnamese studios reportedly say that local game development “will die” if Steam is able to keep releasing games without the same government scrutiny as domestic games.
At the time of writing, there’s been no formal word from Vietnamese authorities or Steam about the “ban”, but according to players, all Vietnamese internet providers have “decisively blocked access” to both the Steam launcher and Steam’s website, and unhappy players have taken to the Steam Forum to share their dismay.
“TLDR: the online game monopolies of Vietnam complains that they can’t extort the market share our Lord and Savior Gabe Newell rightfully earned,” said one unhappy Steam user.
“So they wanted to brand him and Steam as illegal platforms. Now they have just gone ahead and blocked the platform in Vietnam, forcing users to tinker a bit with their DNS to bypass.”
ICYMI, Steam is taking the unprecedented step of auto-refunding players who bought Ghost of Tsushima Director’s Cut in countries where PSN isn’t available.
As developer Sucker Punch is “part of the PlayStation Studios family”, it seems a decision has been made to pre-emptively refund all pre-orders to players who can’t legally sign up for PSN after fans review-bombed Helldivers 2 so badly, Sony eventually reversed the decision.