In an effort to cut Russia off from the rest of the Western world, various governments have forced the country to turn to China or to develop sanctioned sectors such as agriculture. Today, we learn that Vladimir Putin wants a complete ecosystem (software and hardware) centered around entertainment. In other words, a national Steam!
Towards a Steam made in russia?
For the moment, it’s just an idea floated here and there, but it does appear in official documents available on the Kremlin website. Via a guy fluent in Russian via PCGamer, we can see this passage:
“Consider the issue of producing home consoles, portable consoles and game consoles, as well as creating an operating system and a cloud system to provide games and software to users.”
For the moment, all this is just a project, but it’s not impossible that this system could see the light of day if relations with Russia continue to deteriorate.
Nevertheless, we can imagine a platform similar to Valve’s on which we can buy games and software. A cloud system is also planned for saving games. On the hardware side, we’d see machines equivalent to the Steam Deck and Steam Machine (RIP).
The only drawback is that, while the software can be managed entirely in-house, this is not the case for the hardware. Russia does not have a highly-developed semiconductor industry. The only solutions are to turn to Western hardware… or to opt for Chinese hardware. Given the good relations between the two countries, this is an option worth considering.
