October 19, 2022
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0Chinese Steam Gamers Use Wallpaper Engine to Watch Porn
The fact that Steam users from China have found an alternative way to view online porn banned in the country, was told by the authors of the MIT Technology Review journal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
They found out that the Chinese use a popular application with animated Wallpaper Engine for this. In it, residents of the country exchange various videos “for adults.”
Do you know about Chinese censorship on the internet? Read more here.
What is Wallpaper Engine?
Wallpaper Engine (WE) is a platform tool that allows people to download/upload similar interactive wallpapers.
Wallpaper Engine has more than 200 thousand reviews on Steam from users from China, and many of them mention porn. The owners of the application, among other things, thank the developers for not limiting the content to “adults.” Users also recommend the videos they found to each other.
According to MIT Technology Review estimates, the Chinese makeup about 40% of the Wallpaper Engine user base. The share of app reviews in Chinese also accounts for 40% of the total. The utility is constantly included in the list of the 20 most popular Steam applications which journalists also associate with the activity of the Chinese.
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When did this become known?
The publication drew attention to the fact that in 2020 Chinese journalist Cui Jianyi told in one of the local media about the popularity of the application for watching videos “for adults.”
Then he found out that in the Wallpaper Engine database you can find a lot of videos with porn and hentai anime, most of which were uploaded by Chinese users. In addition, he found among the videos “pirated” copies of films, including “The Joker.”
What do the developers say?
Wallpaper Engine developers, apparently, do not see a problem in such use of their utility. One of the creators of the program, Kristyan Scutta, said in an interview with Chinese media in 2019 that there is nothing wrong with uploading adult videos to the platform. In the application itself, such videos receive a mandatory “18+” mark.
Online porn is banned in China, and downloading adult videos or reposting messages about them on social networks is considered a crime. Despite this, residents of the country continue to look for ways to access such videos. As Jianyi noted, this is quite logical, since viewing erotic content is a basic human need.
What will happen next?
Chinese Steam users are worried that access to the Wallpaper Engine may be blocked in the future. According to Daniel Ahmad, senior gaming analyst at Niko Partners, Steam as a whole operates in China “in a gray zone.”
According to the laws, the platform should be completely blocked in the country, but for some reason, it is still available, albeit with restrictions.
