Summary
We don’t know much about North Korea’s gaming habits. For the most part, its residents are only allowed to play consoles and games developed within North Korea’s borders. However, since 2013, there has been a singleSteamuser in North Korea’s capital city, and the mysterious gamer has gone viral again after they disappeared.
Steam’s download pageincludes a satellite view of the world with yellow dots that represent where Steam is being used. Parts of the world where Steam users are plentiful, like the US and Europe, are pretty much solid yellow blocks. Northern Canada and central Australia, where people are fewer and farther between, have far less dots. Then there’s North Korea which, since 2013 when these satellite records began, has just one dot.
That dot could be a building, or it could be a single person. Whoever it is, people have been watching it and theorizing as to what they might be playing for over a decade. That’s why, when the dot disappeared, people noticed.Reddit user Kirby_coltellinoshared a shot of the satellite map onthe Steam subreddit, popping a red circle around North Korea to highlight that the dot has disappeared.
North Korea’s Only Steam User Disappeared
Then They Came Right Back, But Where Did They Go?
That sparked new theories about why the North Korean suddenly stopped gaming after, at least, 12 years, but don’t worry, they weren’t gone for long. As pointed out byPC Gamer, an updated satellite map is now available, and the dot in Pyongyang is back. In fact, the site claims that the dot has disappeared from time to time before now, and this was just the first time anyone noticed. Clearly we need to be keeping a closer eye on Steam’s solitary North Korean dot.
The lonely dot on the coast of Antarctica represents scientists who spend their free time hosting offline LAN parties. Seriously.
Now that they’re back, people are interested to know where they went. However, due to the nature of North Korea and how little the rest of the world knows about the nation and its residents, we might never know why its only Steam user briefly stopped gaming. Maybe there was an internet outage in Pyongyang, or maybe they just needed a break. All gamers need to stretch their legs and take a screen break now and again.
I’d love to know what exactly they’ve been playing on Steam. We occasionally learn about what gamers in the Vatican have been playing, so the North Korean Steam stats must be out there somewhere.Baldur’s Gate 3made headlines whenits devs revealed two people in Vatican City were playing it on Steam, and thenCult of the Lamb did the sameas someone fired it up in the holiest place on Earth right after the pope passed away.
