The top 70 most upvoted reviews of all time on Steam for this software are all written in simplified Chinese. They are also some of the most devoted users of Wallpaper Engine. Compare this with 40%, and it’s clear that Chinese users are overrepresented in Wallpaper Engine’s user base. A different stat by Steam suggests that 21% of overall traffic came from China in the seven days before the publication of this story. Meanwhile, only 24.75% of total Steam users set their default language as simplified Chinese, according to Steam’s latest sampling survey, from June 2022. (Language is a common proxy for Steam users’ geographical distribution, which is hard to collect on Steam.) More recent reviews follow the same trend: during the first seven days of July, the software received 2,907 Steam reviews, and MIT Technology Review has found that 40% of those were written either in simplified Chinese or by someone with a simplified Chinese username. It’s impossible to know exactly how many of Wallpaper Engine’s users are from China, but evidence suggests that at least 40% of them are Chinese, almost twice Steam’s Chinese user percentage.Īmong the nearly half a million Steam reviews of Wallpaper Engine, 40% were written by someone whose default language was simplified Chinese, compared with English at 28%.
His article in the Chinese media helped bring the software’s hidden uses to the attention of those who were not yet in on the secret. There he found porn, hentai anime, Donald Trump memes, and even pirated copies of Hollywood movies, like Joker. Having been a gamer and a Steam user, he downloaded Wallpaper Engine and tested it. Did people like to change their wallpapers so often?”Ĭui Jianyi, a Chinese writer and journalist, wrote about the phenomenon in 2020 after he saw someone mention it on social media. If there's no change - or worse, your connection seems slower - play around more with the download region setting until you find a reliable, low-traffic server.“It was at least two or three years ago when this went viral,” says Zhou, a Chinese gamer in Beijing who asked to use only his last name due to privacy concerns. Hopefully you'll notice faster download speeds after the restart. Your best bet is going to be the closest location to you, but factors like the internet connection between you and that location or volume of traffic to that server may tip the scale in the favor of a server further away.Īdjusting these settings will require you to restart your Steam client before the changes come into effect. Second, play around with the Download region drop-down settings. First, make sure the drop-down labeled "Approximate speed of your Internet connection" is properly set to, well, the approximate speed of your Internet connection. Two of the settings here can help increase your download speed. The settings we're interested in are under the Downloads + Cloud tab.
In the Settings window, there will be many tabs full of all sorts of options and settings that you can play with. This can be accessed by right-clicking the Steam icon in the system tray and selecting Settings from the menu that appears.
Here's how to make the wait time a little less painful:
If you're one of those 40 million, you know what a pain it can be to wait for a game to update or for a new one to download - it's not the speediest process. Steam defines itself as "the ultimate entertainment platform." Its software, available for PC, Mac, and mobile devices, allows people to "play, connect, create." Its gaming library has more than 2,000 titles and it has approximately 40 million users.