author: Bart Swiatek
Steam Download Almost Grinds to a Halt in Russia Because of Local Authorities
Due to the decision of the Russian telecommunications agency Roskomnadzor, the operation of some websites and online services has been greatly slowed down. One of the platforms that have suffered is Steam.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- Steam is running very slowly in Russia for some time now - the maximum game download speed has dropped to just 70 kbps;
- The situation is related to the decision of Roskomnadzor agency and the conflict between the Russian authorities and Twitter.
Russian Steam users now have to put up with extremely slow performance (via GameRant). The average game download speed has dropped from 10 Mb/s to 70 kb/s, which obviously makes it difficult to use the library (not to mention playing multiplayer titles).
The reason for this situation is a decision by Russia's agency in charge of supervising communications entities and technologies - called Roskomnadzor - which has limited network bandwidth in the country in the case of website using Internet addresses that contain a certain string of characters (t.co).
The reason for the situation is a conflict between the Russian government and the socialmedia platform Twitter, which is the main target of Roskomnadzor's actions. The local administration accuses Twitter of failing to remove content considered to be harmful to society, despite repeated requests. The mentioned body notes that this includes 2,569 cases in which users of the platform encouraged minors to commit suicide, 450 posts containing child pornography, and 149 posts with information on drug use. Since 2017, Roskomnadzor has sent more than 28 thousand complaints and requests to Twitter to remove the listed content.
It should be noted here that in reality the causes of the conflict are more complex. In August last year, Twitter started tagging posts of some Russian media with the tag "state-affiliated media". In response, the Russian parliament passed a law enabling the authorities to punish platforms for discriminating against Russian media and not responding to requests to remove content (the popularity of Twitter among Alexei Navalny's followers was also significant).
We can only wait for further developents and express hope that Russian gamers will not remain victims of the conflict between their country and the technology giant for too long. It's worth noting that slowing down the transfer is only the first step and Roskomnadzor may take further ones - including a complete ban on Twitter in Russia (let's hope Steam doesn't end up taking collateral damage in the process).