Chinese gamers use wallpaper applications to circumvent ban on adult content

A wallpaper app is ranked in the top 20 in China as gamers use it to get around countrywide restrictions.

Wallpaper Engine, an application for the computer that allows you to add animated, interactive wallpapers, is being used to circumvent China’s porn ban.

Users are able to upload and share mature content without flagging the country’s automatic censors.

Steam, a digital games marketplace, promotes a top 20 list of its most popular apps on its storefront. Nestled right between popular games such as Call of Duty and Half-Life: Alyx, viewers can see something a little odd: Wallpaper Engine, and only for a couple of dollars, Technology Review reported.

The application’s popularity isn’t because people really enjoy changing their wallpaper — it’s become one of the primary ways Chinese gamers share mature content.

Inside Wallpaper Engine’s Workshop, where you can find and download user-submitted items, is a mature setting.

Toggling that setting allows you to find more than 120,000 static and animated pictures of both anime and real people getting frisky.

Wallpaper Engine is listed in the top 20 apps and only for a couple of dollar

Under many of the images are a number of comments in Chinese, hinting at the truth behind the popularity of the app. While this was mentioned briefly by Kotaku, it hasn’t really picked up in Western conversations.

So how does Wallpaper Engine get around China’s censorship laws? No one really knows. Steam operates as it always has without much oversight, despite China’s harsh regulation on game publishing.

According to gaming analyst Daniel Ahmad, Steam is “one of the only platforms in China where it’s sort of operating in the grey area.”

It’s only a matter of time before Chinese government officials drop the axe on Wallpaper Engine — and Steam as well. While most Chinese internet users require VPNs to get around the firewall, downloading apps and games through Steam remain unrestricted as of this writing. How long this will last, however, is anyone’s guess.

If you’re interested in video games and China, good news — Chinese universities are using games like Genshin Impact to recruit new students.

And don’t be surprised to see Chinese companies investing more heavily into gaming in the future: Chinese mega-firm NetEase recently invested heavily into a new game studio that features industry veterans.

Written by Junior Miyai on behalf of GLHF