When you have been on Steam, the world’s largest PC gaming platform, you might need observed an anomaly on the chart of the highest 20 hottest apps: Wallpaper Engine. The software program is fairly cool — it allows you to obtain animated and interactive wallpapers in your machine’s monitor — however it’s onerous to clarify why an obscure wallpaper app constantly ranks alongside international blockbuster franchises like Counter-Strike or Dota. From a report: The epiphany will come whenever you start to learn Wallpaper Engine’s many critiques. Greater than 200,000 of them are written in Chinese language, stretching from 2016 to 2022. And these critiques virtually all discuss one factor: porn. Or extra particularly, about utilizing the software program as a cloud drive and a video participant for exchanging adult-only content material.
On-line porn is banned in China, so folks there must get inventive to entry it. Steam is among the solely common international platforms nonetheless obtainable within the nation, and its group options, worldwide high-speed servers, and more and more hands-off method relating to sexual content material have made it an inevitable alternative. Chinese language customers now make up at the least 40% of Wallpaper Engine’s international consumer base, MIT Know-how Evaluate estimates. Final yr, customers in China all of a sudden wanted to make use of VPN companies to entry sure Steam companies. Because the critiques present, now they’re afraid they might quickly lose this uncommon group, both due to platform content material moderation or the chance that China would possibly block Steam altogether.
