Steam Getting Blocked in India By ISPs

Several ISPs in India have been restricting access to Steam leading to the possibility of a ban in the country.

Steam Could Be Blocked in India

From a report by afkgaming.com, several people have claimed that Indian ISPs have been blocking access to Steam. This issue was shared by IndianShrekt on Twitter who is with West Bengal’s Alliance Broadband Pvt Ltd who have supposedly claimed that the Steam pages have been banned due to a government order. As of today, this issue has been resolved with Alliance Broadband but the issue is also affecting other ISPs including GTPL, Channel 3 Cable Internet, BSNL and TATA Fiber. The reports state either sporadic service or a complete ban on Steam services.

What is Going On?

RishiAlwani on Twitter has been documenting the issues and gives me a good idea of what is happening. A new directive from the Indian Government is behind this issue but some believe it to be something that has been misunderstood by ISPs. The directive has been covered by business today.in, and bans games under three categories; Games that involve betting, games that can be harmful to the user, and games that involve a factor of addiction. This is quite a vague selection of categories as you could argue any game involves a factor of addiction.

It’s quite unfortunate that the ISPs and Indian Government can just ban access to Steam without any thought of clarification surrounding it. Personally, it sounds like the rules are being made by an out-of-touch generation who don’t have the expertise to deal with the “video game addictions” that this directive is targeted at. Of course, I’m not from India nor am I familiar with their Government so I can’t really speak on that matter.