It's not a surprise because the localized version of steam done in cooperation with Perfect world, a Chinese publisher, was in development specifically for this

It's not a surprise because the localized version of steam done in cooperation with Perfect world, a Chinese publisher, was in development specifically for this purpose, I believe, i.e. the inevitable/planned replacement of foreign with local and fully controlled. Otherwise there wouldn't be a need to do it for Valve. Not surprising really considering how hard it is to publish a game in China to begin with -- you basically have to have a local company representing you, and they usually take 80-90% of your profits, that's on top of the the 30% share that stores take, and go through an extensive bureaucratic process, with various forms of censorship of course, and even then there is no guarantee that you will be allowed to publish. China tries and succeeds at playing the globalization game in a way that everyone else ends up dependent on them, but not the other way around. And the global corporations are stampeding over each others heads to betray all the principles there still are in the west for that sweet sweet access to the giant Chinese market, for the time being they are still allowed to that is.