Chinese Gamers Are Using a Steam Wallpaper App To Get Porn Past the Censors

If you have been on Steam, the world's largest PC gaming platform, you might have noticed an anomaly on the chart of the top 20 most popular apps: Wallpaper Engine. The software is pretty cool -- it lets you download animated and interactive wallpapers for your machine's monitor -- but it's hard to explain why an obscure wallpaper app consistently ranks alongside global blockbuster franchises like Counter-Strike or Dota. From a report: The epiphany will come when you begin to read Wallpaper Engine's many reviews. More than 200,000 of them are written in Chinese, stretching from 2016 to 2022. And these reviews almost all talk about one thing: porn. Or more specifically, about using the software as a cloud drive and a video player for exchanging adult-only content.

Online porn is banned in China, so people there have to get creative to access it. Steam is one of the only popular global platforms still available in the country, and its community features, international high-speed servers, and increasingly hands-off approach when it comes to sexual content have made it an inevitable choice. Chinese users now make up at least 40% of Wallpaper Engine's global user base, MIT Technology Review estimates. Last year, users in China suddenly needed to use VPN services to access certain Steam services. As the reviews show, now they are afraid they may soon lose this rare community, either because of platform content moderation or the possibility that China might block Steam altogether.

Um...Sagan was wrong..

[beheaderaswp]

Sagan was wrong...

It's porn that finds a way...

Re: Um...Sagan was wrong..

[saloomy]

Until the authorities find and kill steam for it. Seriously, why review it that way, and why /. It?

Re:

[Unnamed Chickenheart]

Because people here care more for their own humor than the Chinese people's well beating. :^)

Re:

[arglebargle_xiv]

It's a total footgun by any government that wants to control what their population sees and hears to also ban pr0n, because that immediately incentivises a large chunk of your population to figure out how to get around any blocking measures to get their pr0n fix, and once they've bypassed the blocking they may as well stay and read all the stuff the government doesn't want them to.

If you want to do this right, have an official policy on pr0n being banned because it saps and impurifies all of your precious

Sneakernet?

[bill_mcgonigle]

You can get a quarter-terabyte USB drive for $20 in China.

Seems like most young Chinese men could copy data between drives, with much less effort than using a Wallpaper app as a VPN.

priorities

[phantomfive]

Porn is banned, but government officials cheating on their wives, having multiple mistresses, and stealing billions from the people with corruption...that is not banned.

Re:

[AmazingRuss]

Bans and laws don't apply to rich people.

Re:

[Ostracus]

Wish someone had told Bernie Madoff [wikipedia.org] that.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

His problem was that he was fleecing too many rich people.

If you want to stay out of trouble, you have to steal from the poor and give to the rich

Re:

[ChatHuant]

As the man said: Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi.

Political leaders engaged in hypocrisy

[Latent Heat]

News at 11.

Civilization in China goes back a long time. Government officials in the West have been doing this for hundreds of years whereas officials in China have been this way for thousands of years.

Re:

[phantomfive]

If they've been doing it for thousands of years, then they have plenty of experience fighting corruption (and yes, China does have a long history of fighting corruption, giving them plenty of experience. It's just that the current leaders don't want to apply that experience).

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: Political leaders engaged in hypocrisy

[hdyoung]

Youre confusing culture and government. China as a culture is thousands of years old and is to be greatly respected for its longevity. Their current form of government is under a hundred years old, and is to be treated like a young teenager thats experiencing severe growing pains and nobody is certain if theyre gonna get past the delinquent-teen stage.

Re: Political leaders engaged in hypocrisy

[r2kordmaa]

That's wishful thinking for Chinese. Their culture is decades old, cultural revolution deliberately destroyed every aspect of old culture it could get it's hands on. Even then, just because history can be traced for millennia, does not mean culture actually carries that long. Modern Rome has nothing but location in common with ancient or even medieval Rome, few hundred years is enough to morph culture to be completely different and it happens constantly, everywhere. Culture is not static, people merely thin

Re:

[drinkypoo]

It's officially banned, and if they don't play the game just right, they'll get in trouble for it too.

Re:

[Brain-Fu]

I see what you did there.

Porn, shmorn. Those are illicit messages.

[Glasswire]

Sending banned political news and content embedded in steganographic images

Steam-y

[bustinbrains]

It's in the name.

"increasingly hands-off approach"

[AmazingRuss]

Look but don't touch it?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Everything always revolves around sex

[kyoko21]

The wars between VHS and BETA was settled over porn.
The wars between HD-DVD and BluRay was settled over porn.
The wars over freedom and censorship will one day be settled over porn.

Re:

[AmazingRuss]

... and the very next day even nastier porn will come out and the war will resume

Re:

[bn-7bc]

No the VHS/Beta war was dictated by tape length for blank tapes (thus was before EP,LP etc beta ( well actually betamax to avoid confusion with the professional betacam format ) had shorter tapes ( because sony insisted on keeping the cassettes smaller) thus recording multiplre programs on a tape became difficult (and in the US you where unable to recird a complete football game which apparently was important. Allso to a lesser degree fou to strict licensing on tech betamax ones were only produced by sony a

Why are they banning porn in China?

[gweihir]

I mean, the Chinese government is authoritarian and immoral. But usually they are not _this_ stupid...

Re: Why are they banning porn in China?

[gzqx]

For a start, confucianism is definitely against porn, and unlike Christian which involves a god which get easily challenged in modern world, confucianism is still influential in china. Also, there is worry that allowing porn in a society unbalancedly developed will inevitably lead to sexual exploitation in poorer parts of the country.

Re:

[gweihir]

So no actually good reasons and a few bogus ones. Got it.

Re: Why are they banning porn in China?

[gzqx]

How you got it, afaic second reason is pretty convincing to me

Re:

[keltor]

Porn is banned in 23 countries. Those 23 countries added together make up slightly more than 1/2 of the world's population. There's also a number of other countries where it's restricted if not actually banned - generally how much influence the "West" has generally dictates how "free" porn is. 95% chance this article is bull shit though. In my friend's list it's the Westerners (Europeans and Americans) who use Wallpaper Engine not the Chinese and Korean people. I definitely see it just as often as CSGO

Re: Why are they banning porn in China?

[r2kordmaa]

Veneer of competence, if you believe it you are a victim of propaganda. They usually are this stupid, you just don't hear much about all the unbelievably stupid shit they constantly get up to.

About on thing, Porn

[Grokew]

As the reviews show, now they are afraid they may soon lose this rare community, either because of platform content moderation or the possibility that China might block Steam altogether.

If you were so worried about they taking access away, then why the F did you leave a review explicitly saying that you use it to share porn?

You ruined it for everyone

way to blow their cover....

[jinchoung]

narcs!