Zloth

Zloth

I smell a... wumpus!?
So it seams Chinese folks like Playerunknown's Battlegrounds… rather a lot. A few MILLION players have shown up over the month of October to play it! In August, English was at 40.53%, Chinese at 16.64%, and Russian at 12.76%. Now Chinese is 56.37%, English is 21.24%, and Russian is 6.2%! It seems to have bumped the average PC up a bit, too (PUBG has higher requirements than Dota 2).

Right now, 2.5 million people are playing PUBG. The next three games combined (Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and Warframe) don't even make it to 1.5 million.

In short, this is a MASSIVE invasion! I don't think I've seen the like since World of Warcraft took off in Asia. So, what will it mean? Chinese players are waving a ton of money around - publishers are bound to notice.

P.S. Wayback has the old surveys at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170415000000*/http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/
 
Why invade physically? We own USA financially already :)
 
Most people are pretty sure they are just there because you can make real money out of the game by farming drops and selling them via Steam.
 
Well I'm wondering:

First, will China even let this keep happening: http://www.pcgamer.com/pubg-faces-china-ban-for-deviating-from-socialist-core-values/

Second, if it does, will players start spreading around Steam or will they be like some of the other popular multiplayer games and players will just see Steam as a game launcher and not a store?

Third - again, is China going to let a big store like that show up or will they cripple it to let somebody in China make all the money?

Fourth - with such a big market in China, are game companies going to cater to Chinese tastes and Chinese government censorship? What form would those things even take?
 
Update: China is fine with it happening as long as you give one of their companies a cut. At least with a shooter like PUBG.

Also, Simplified Chinese is now almost two thirds of all accounts (64.35% through the November survey).
 
Errr, that doesn't look like serious $'s at all. It's definitely all about PUBG, though.
 
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