So, SteamDB creator and dataminer Pavel Djundik posted the above image mined from the latest Steam code. It’s not operational yet, but it seems to give an indication of what you might need – at some unknown and even possibly non-existent point in the future – to get your game approved on Steam in China.
Pavel also noted: “For anyone curious, they’re adding ‘realms’, one for steamglobal, and one for steamchina. There’s also a separate store category for ‘Steam China Workshop’.” So, some additional trajectory towards new rules for China is in progress. (And it does seem that Steam’s recent text filtering roll-out was done – in part – to have it available for the Chinese market.)
There’s clearly things happening here. But there have been for a long time – since Perfect World and Valve announced a collaboration on Steam China in 2018, and since 2019 saw a larger announce/preview with Western partners at The International 2019 in Shanghai. And now we’re rapidly approaching 2021. So what’s up?