TECH NEWS – Valve’s popular digital store and service is once again available in the Southeast Asian country, but the same cannot be said for its biggest rival, Epic Games Store, for example…

On Twitter, Daniel Ahmad, senior analyst at Niko Partners, confirmed that Valve has registered with Kominfo, the Indonesian authority responsible for the ban, so that the prohibition on Steam has been lifted and is now available in the country without any problems. However, Epic Games and its store and services and Electronic Arts have not yet come forward, leaving both the Epic Games Store and Origin on the ban list. But Valve is not the only one to have announced its withdrawal, as Ahmad added in a reply tweet that Yahoo services and PayPal are available again in Indonesia!

Kominfo, the Indonesian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, however, has kept serious companies on its ban list: besides Epic Games and Electronic Arts, just mentioned, Ubisoft, for example, is not available from Indonesia because the companies either forgot to agree or do not want to accept the new laws, as the Indonesian authorities have empowered themselves to force the signatory companies to provide user data if they “violate public order”, and can now, for example, oblige Valve to remove content that is deemed offensive.

Ahmad added that Steam returned to the country not because the Indonesian government had backed down but because Gabe Newell’s company had signed the necessary paperwork. Reuters added that Google, Spotify, Netflix, Meta (parent company of Facebook, Oculus and Instagram) and ByteDance (parent company of TikTok) have also signed what the Indonesian authorities have put in front of them.

Interestingly, Kominfo apologised to the players, but they had the nerve to add that the rules should still be respected. But this is unlikely to calm tempers.

Source: PCGamer