The first time I played Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Black Box Studio was already gone. Disbanded. I wanted to give them my money, but there was no one left to take it.
That hit me hard — missing the chance to pay for a childhood favorite.
See, back in the day in China, most of us played this game as a cracked copy. No other way. No official retail. No Steam. No way to pay even if you wanted to. We were kids with dial-up internet and a dream — and a pirated ISO from a local PC café.
So years later, I thought: maybe a physical PS2 import copy would help. A kind of spiritual closure.
Luckily, I didn’t get scammed. Found an old-school seller who knew his stuff. Got it at a fair price. We talked a bit about why I was buying it — he was genuinely happy for me.
Also grabbed a few titles on Steam during sales. Two bucks each on average. Felt good.
I have mixed feelings about this franchise. Part of me still hopes it can rise again. Make something world-changing. Like it once did.
One more fact: before Steam’s regional pricing in China, major pirate forums were seeing millions of downloads for a single AAA title. After China was moved into the same low-price tier as Russia, and after CNY settlement plus Alipay/WeChat integration went live, legitimate user numbers exploded within just a few years.
This doesn’t mean Gabe was wrong — rather, it shows that “service issues” come with a precondition. In markets where per capita income is a fraction of Western levels, price itself is the most fundamental service. First make it affordable, then make it enjoyable. That’s how Steam won in China.
That said, this is a much longer story — one that really needs the full historical tapestry of Chinese player culture to do it justice. Maybe I’ll write a separate piece on it someday.
I’m not sure if I would read that (if it is longer text), but I think lot of others would. It’s just interesting to read from an end users perspective from a country we don’t see and live, not only because of language barriers.
BTW do you use a translator? How common is English knowledge of gamers in China?
Just a quick heads-up — I’m a Chinese player sharing some honest thoughts here. I’m using AI to help with translation, so please bear with me if anything sounds a bit off. My goal is to connect, not to sound perfect.
I’m using AI to help polish and translate my writing, but the real challenge is cultural. It’s not that Chinese players are bad at English — it’s that we really care about whether our voices are actually seen and heard.
I originally wanted to post this on an English-language forum, but I’m not familiar with the rules yet, and I haven’t figured out account registration. That said, the Chinese version of this piece has gotten some pretty good feedback, so I do believe what I’ve written here can be helpful to you as well.
That’s totally okay and I am glad you found a way to connect to people. I myself use Ai translation (I run the Ai models locally on my machine) here and there. In example I have a blog and sometimes it happens that Chinese sites or forums link to my posted articles. Just out of curiosity I use translation tool to see what they are saying. I know sometimes can translation from a very different language like Chinese to English sound off, unless you use the highend models. In your case it didn’t sound wrong, the opposite in fact, it sounded too “perfect”.
For longer articles and posts (I mean if it is much longer than the initial post here), I would suggest to add a disclaimer at the end. Just in case something sounds strange or is plain and simple wrong (can happen with Ai). And nobody can say you would hide using Ai or anything like that. There is absolutely no problem in using Ai to translate text, so keep doing it. Thanks for your replies and the time for explanation.
I’d say it sounds a bit elaborate.
That OP used AI explains why it sounded like it did.
thanks