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Low regional pricing (currency, Steam regional prices are set by currency,) discounts/e-rebates for store credit, free keys. Valve isn't freewheeling in China, Steam China operates through Perfect World.
But I just saw I was wrong about Cyberpunk's peak, SteamDB has it at 1.05 million. The difference isn't so stark now, and like I said above, the game is clearly very good, and I'm sure I'll play it eventually.
It can also be true that something other than the even very high quality of the game as responsible for its popularity. 2 million concurrent is incredible but I want to know is this a single player experience truly worthy of those numbers, or is it something else. I think we'd be seeing those numbers soaring among western gamers if it were paradigm-defining. It might be, in a month we might see over 3 million, with a million playing in the west. Maybe not, but even if it just playing to market, that's absolutely valid. MiHoYo of Genshin Impact, Honkai, Zenless Zone Zero, play to the western market in having attractive women and no hamfisted politics in their games. China could do nothing but publish AAA knockoffs with fanservice and no politics and devour the market, and they'd be valid to do it, but that wouldn't make the games amazing themselves, and that's what I'm interested in.
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