By 2023 there will be 354 million Chinese PC gamers

That'll be more than the current population size of the U.S.A! You can already see the Chinese influence by looking at Steam with the survey showing the Chinese language being the second most common language by 25.58%. A Chinese only indie game named Scroll of Taiwu managed to become the second best seller right behind PUBG and be in the top 10 most played games on Steam for a while. Earlier this year the Taiwanese horror game Devotion was the #1 best selling game on Steam and sold over a million copies in less than a week before being abruptly taken off Steam. The temporary game licensing freeze in China pushed even more Chinese indie developers to publish their games on Steam, Scroll Of Taiwu was one of the more popular ones.

Nikopartners research shows that the Chinese online PC game industry is currently worth $15.21 billion and estimated to reach $16 billion by 2023. There was 312.4 million Chinese PC gamers in 2018 and 79.7 million of them were spending money on games. Foreign games made up 60% of China's PC gaming revenue in 2018.

Esports is the strongest long-term driver of growth. It's revenue was $6.3 billion in 2018 with 11% YOY growth and making up 41.4% of total PC Online games revenue.

• China is the largest and most important market for PC online games, accounting for more than half of PC online games revenue worldwide.
• China domestic PC online game revenue was $15.21 billion in 2018. Revenue is forecast to remain impressive, reaching $16 billion by 2023.
• There were 312.4 million PC online gamers in 2018 and 79.7 million of them spend money in games. The number of PC online gamers is projected to reach 354 million in 2023. (More than the population of the entire United States).
• Tencent and NetEase remained the Top 2 game publishers in China, and foreign developed games comprised about 60% of total revenue in the market.
• China’s 138,000 internet cafes are a very important part of Chinese online gaming, even more important for gamers engaged with esports.
• Esports is currently the most important long-term driver of growth for the PC online games market. Esports game revenue was $6.3 billion in 2018, up 11.1% YoY and accounting for 41.4% of total PC online games revenue. Esports game revenue is projected reach $9.5 billion in 2023, accounting for 59.4% of PC online games revenue.
• Despite a temporary game licensing freeze and the introduction of new regulations under a new regulator, the State Administration of Press and Publication (SAPP), Chinese gamers kept up their consumption of PC games.
• Game licensing resumed in December 2018. A clear regulatory process was outlined in April 2019, domestic and foreign games have been licensed, and the 12-month regulatory reform seems to have finished. It is a positive sign for all developers and publishers.

Neat, Steam doing a survey for what the Epic store and Tencent store will have as far as users go.

Crikey, there's tons of them!

China is all PC console is irrelevant in China

PC wins again.

We made a great deal with GINA, and now Console will pay the price.

@Ant_17: Except Epic themselves blocked the Epic Store in China due to legal issues and WeGame already has 200 million users but has the severe disadvantage of having to go through China's approval system to obtain games and at any moment a game freeze can happen and stop the flow of games to WeGame like what happened last year and Tencent took a big hit especially when they had to take down Monster Hunter World from their store and refund everyone. This has made Steam more appealing to both Chinese gamers and developers since it operates in a gray area that allows them to bypass government regulation to let them play and publish games regardless of the game freeze or ban.

@NoodleFighter: Huh, weird that Epic is banned there.

I respect Chinese PC gamers. They don't whine or review bomb games over the tiniest inconvenience like western Hermits.

@Ant_17: Epic isn't banned, they blocked the store themselves to avoid any possible trouble for selling games to the Chinese that the government doesn't approve of since they have staff in China and therefore are technically officially operating in China. Plus Epic's tactic of trying to strong arm their way into the market would most likely end up with them getting banned anyway. This is one of the main worries Chinese gamers have over Steam officially coming to China because they fear the Chinese version will be heavily compliant with government approval and they'll lose access to the global version of Steam. The Epic Store is basically banned in South Korea though as any game that isn't made by Epic can't be purchased or downloaded through it.

I wouldn't really worry about that based on the Steamspy chart Chinese gamers share very similar taste to Western gamers and not only that they like Japanese games which is what greatly helped a lot of Japanese games come to PC because they buy them almost as much or more than American gamers which is normally the biggest market outside of Japan by far. A lot of the Chinese games popping up lately take inspiration from Japanese games as well. The fact that Divinity: Original Sin managed to make it into the top 50 is pretty impressive at the time of this chart because it only got Chinese language support in December 2017 which is where the data record for the chart ends. Divinity Original Sin 2 didn't have Chinese language support until 9 months after launch and before it still managed be in the top 10 countries that owned the most copies. For story and text heavy games like Divinity that is a big deal because not all Chinese gamers know English that well and with simpler games that aren't as plot heavy they'll just ignore. Nier Automata ranks at 28 on the Chinese chart and it doesn't have Chinese language support even though it does on PS4. Square Enix were very lazy with the PC version in general not having Platinum release a single damn patch plus it costed more on Steam than PSN in China which pissed a lot of them off.

I wouldn't worry about companies trying to pander to Chinese audience but more so trying to please Chinese government censorship so they can release officially there. The only major case of this happening was with Ubisoft trying to be lazy and alter all versions of Rainbow Six Siege just for China so they can officially sell it there. A lot of the games in this chart do not comply with Chinese government policy especially the ones in the top 25. The government wanted to ban PUBG but it was too damn popular for them to get away with.

I really like Chinese American food.

Not in my experience, but hey, you want to have a slightly-racist view of your fellow gamers based on what part of the world they come from, I won't stop you.

Also hidden from having good online. Even @i_p_daily agrees with that.

Oh the online on PC is going to get even better!

@mrbojangles25: how is it racist?

Chinese farming gold in WOW so much Blizzard made the coins.

Chinese ruined PUBG.

It’s a well known fact.

The Blizzard coins are better than Subs. Lets me play all of their stuff for free including WoW.

Hmm I don't know that I'd have an easy time learning Chinese.

@zaryia: not the point but whatever flavors your boat.

You must have missed the review bombing of a game for having a Pooh/Xi joke in it.

PC gaming is death nothing to see here guys.

/s

1. Bullshit stereotype

2. Matchmaking based on ping/location

3. PC's decentralised free services vs. all your online games through the same paid console network. Who would be more at risk and stand to lose more from hackers?

Meh, we already know 20M will migrate to consoles by the end of the year and all 350M by the end of 2023. All hail Sony. PC will be dead again.

No PC bad, console good.

Sony told me so.

Paid online is better with far more limition functions and far less support with it. Because it makes it more cosy. PC is to big which makes it feel cold and soulless.

/s

PC bad, Console good don't you get it.

Brain dead console warriors on this forum are something else.

That’s 25% of the Chinese population! 35% of Americans are PC gamers.

China used to be a good place to live back in the day when the british owned hong kong

Chinese users review-bomb Steam horror hit Devotion over Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh meme reference

That was the easiest Google search to see lol. Doy!

Actually currently their are about 50 million Chinese console Gamer.

Lol I noticed how now that the analysts are predicting something in their favor, they believe it.

That actually makes sense. China is an authoritarian dictatorship so of course they're going to feel strongly about their dear leader being mocked. There's a world of difference between getting upset at that and throwing a tantrum because you have to use a different launcher to play your games. ??‍♂️

You know you're glorifying the colonial era here. How dumb one can be to do that!

If your a western gamer not sure how that's a good thing. But it's irrelevant to me.

That's a lotta Chinese.

@that_old_guy: “Chinese ruin every game”? Really?

It’s a good thing that there are increasing numbers of Chinese gamers.

More players will mean better sales, lower costs, more variety of games too!

Fun. Good for them.

@ProtossRushX: Can you explain your comment? I spend half my time in HK and half in China.

I moved from the UK two years ago, I think it’s absolutely great here!

Epic is actually going to launch in India and get more gamers than Steam and miobile combined. Let the humiliation and domination of Valve continue!

Got a link for that?

Suddenly I'm hungry for some egg fu young and an egg roll. lol :P

Maybe on domestic android/windows knock off consoles and modded/cracked previous gen consoles for pirating but no way for official traditonal consoles. The PS4 as of August 2018 only sold 1.5 million units and the Xbox One plummeted after the initial 100k sales on release in China.

Nintendo: "The reality is that the Chinese market is almost all mobile and PC games"

lol sheep who are excited for the Chinese launch of the Switch.

Good to see that EGS unlocked in China with regional pricing support.

I just noticed that Epic Games store has officially launched in Korea.