After Blizzard, Valve continues to cause controversy when it bans games related to the Hong Kong protests

Valve has returned to the spotlight in the past few days, but not because of the announcement of hot news related to Half-Life: Alyx or its Valve Index virtual reality headset. Instead, boss Steam seems to be facing a controversy similar to what Blizzard has experienced when ban game Hearthstone player “Blitchung” for speaking out in support Hong Kong protests right on the live stream.
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According to Gizmodo, the developers of two games related to the Hong Kong protests recently accused Valve of banning their games on Steam not because of violating the platform’s censorship policy, but mainly because due to political factors. Two games named “Liberate Hong Kong” and Karma, respectively, weren’t approved to be available on Steam for several months, although Valve claims the process only takes three months. -5 days. In addition to the reason “controversial and possibly illegal content” in response to the question of the Karma development team, Valve did not provide any specific explanation on this issue.

Meanwhile, the “Liberate Hong Kong” development team is too “disappointed and impatient” with Valve’s actions. In a letter to the company, the group accused Steam of implementing an unreasonable censorship clause to maintain “an oppressive regime that suppresses democracy, freedom and human rights.” They are “deeply concerned by this situation” and asked Valve to provide a “detailed explanation for its censorship process.”
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According to Valve’s statement, Karma may contain “illegal content”, but it is not clear what specific content the company is referring to. It is known that Karma is a visual novel style game (role-playing game that uses dialogue to control characters with static graphics) inspired by the “sadness and pain” of the people of Hong Kong. Politically, controversial content is certain, but there is no provision in Steam’s censorship policy that prohibits the game from being shut down because of political conflicts. Moreover, many controversial pornographic and violent products are still released on Steam as usual.
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Of course, in the event that Valve actually bans these games for political reasons, it is not too difficult to understand. Because the mainland Chinese market with this billion people is indeed a lucrative piece of cake that no business wants to ignore. Remember a few weeks ago, the world famous Korean male singer Choi Siwon was boycotted by the people of this country just because he liked the article about the Hong Kong protest. Although he later apologized, Chinese netizens were still extremely angry, even many people suggested that the male singer never come to China to work or intend to profit from it. country of billions of people. Returning to Valve’s story, this company certainly does not want to lose business opportunities to make profits from China. Currently Valve remains silent about these accusations.​