Steam is suddenly banned in Vietnam

Steam is no longer available in Vietnam after the country suddenly placed a ban on it. While not confirmed by a government entity, all internet service providers in the country have blocked Steam and its forum.

As reported by VietnamNet (translated by Game Developer) alleges this could be in association with Steam’s differing release policies and domestic publishers. Whereas with Steam, people can just release games at will to the public, domestic publishers in the country need to seek government permission. A representative of one such publisher even goes as far as alleging it’s “an injustice to domestic publishers” and the domestic games space “will die” if nothing is done to balance it out.

It’s unclear if the big publishers in the country had a significant hand in the “ban” by ISPs or something or if this something the government is keenly aware of.

Whatever the case is, users have taken to Steam to vent their frustrations of having to play around with a VPN and DNS stuff just to get access to a platform they could previously access with no problems. Considering there’s no Valve contact in Vietnam, it’s hard to say what the plan is moving forward, but as it stands, PC gamers in the country are obviously not happy.