Tencent Gears Up To Take WeGame Global In Gaming Showdown With Steam
When it comes to digital stores for PC games, Steam is currently the dominant force. Chinese gaming company Tencent wants to battle Steam globally and plans to roll out WeGame beyond its home market of China. The first country that WeGame will battle Steam in is Hong Kong and reports indicate that a version of the platform for that country is in the works now.
WeGame launched in September of last year to replace the Tencent Games Platform and has been widely compared to Steam. It is much smaller than Steam with a current catalog of only 220 games. Those gamers are a mix of Chinese titles and some from international companies. The goal for Tencent is to expand that catalog greatly as it rolls out to countries other than China.
Tencent’s spokesperson has stated that the version of the online store in development right now for Hong Kong will be available for “overseas users.” On the other hand, Valve is targeting mainland China with a Chinese version of Steam. Valve made this move because the international version of Steam is restricted in China due to governmental restrictions.
Even though an official Chinese version of Steam isn’t available, the service still has many Chinese users. Valve has stated in the past that over 25% of Steam users have Simplified Chinese as their preferred language.
