Vietnam Blocks Steam Platform, Possibly Due to Complaints from Local Game Developers

According to reports from Vietnam.net, Valve's gaming platform Steam has been banned by Vietnam (the initial ban was on May 7). This ban is mainly carried out at the network level, that is, the Vietnamese Internet Provider (ISP) blocks Steam. Launcher and access to related domain names such as Steam website.

As a result, Vietnamese players are unable to log in to Steam, and even purchased games cannot be played due to the inability to connect to Steam's authorization domain. Many Vietnamese gamers have expressed their frustration on Steam's community forums.

The reason behind Vietnam's decision to block Steam remains unclear, with neither Vietnamese regulatory agencies nor Valve providing any explanation or response.

However, this move may be related to the lack of oversight of Steam's games by Vietnamese regulatory agencies. In Vietnam, game developers are required to obtain approval from regulatory agencies before releasing their games, following a pre-approval mechanism.

In contrast, all games on Steam bypass Vietnamese regulatory agencies' approval, with developers only needing to submit their games to Steam to release them to Vietnamese players. The only review process is conducted by Steam itself.

This situation has sparked discontent among local Vietnamese game developers, who claim that Steam is unfair to them. They argue that if Steam can continue to release games without undergoing approval, local Vietnamese game developers will ultimately be forced out of business.

Some gamers have discovered that Vietnamese ISPs are using DNS systems to block Steam, and a temporary workaround is to use third-party DNS servers. However, this workaround is unlikely to last long, as ISPs may take further measures to block users from accessing Steam-related domains.