Seven years after its original release, FTL: Faster Than Light is getting Steam achievements - and, all being well, they should arrive later this week.

When developer Subset Games launched FTL - its critically acclaimed real-time strategy rogue-like in space - back in 2012, a total of 51 achievements were already baked into the experience. They weren't, however, part of Steam's achievement ecosystem.

Come FTL's imminent update, though, proper Steam achievement support will be implemented, meaning dedicated players can finally share their FTL prowess with peers.

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Alright, confession time: I have never finished a runthrough of FTL.

FTL is probably my favourite game. I listen to the soundtrack every day, as I work, or unwind, or try to concentrate for just a minute. But the game? I can't finish it. In fact I'm not even getting close to finishing it, am I. The first run is just the beginning. There are all kinds of variations on your ship, that you unlock by beating that impossible final boss, that I've never used, or even really seen. But I don't care. FTL is not a game I play to finish, it's a game I play to feel at home.

For some reason, I feel incredibly calmed by the fact that space is infinitely, infinitely big and I, as a result, am infinitely, infinitely small. I know some people whose stomachs turn at the thought of that, and to be fair to them I completely understand why. It's not comforting, at least on the surface, to be told that you're insignificant, or that you don't matter, or that, I don't know, everything you've ever thought or said or done will be long, long forgotten soon enough, your hopes and dreams lost to time immemorial, your friends and family gone, your legacy dead, all things meaningless for infinitely longer than they ever had meaning. I do get why you wouldn't want to be reminded of that.

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Video games are a small window into Chinese life, but they're a window nonetheless, and video games themselves, in China, are huge. China accounts for more than half of the entire planet's PC gaming revenue. In fact, despite it being smaller than mobile gaming there, China's PC gaming market alone made over $15bn in 2018; more than half the entire amount of revenue made in the US gaming industry overall, including consoles, mobile, the lot. Going by the numbers of analyst firm Niko Partners, as of 2018 there were a total of about 630 million gamers in China - a little over 8 percent of humans on the planet.

Huge. But we know there are lots of people in China, and we know lots of them play games. What's really interesting is that these people are playing games in what is, on paper, the most aggressively censored system around. I suspect this sort of thing is why economists love visiting China, even if doing so is a risk: everything is a case study.

Games are no different. Under Chinese law, video games can't contain anything that "threatens China's national unity, sovereignty, or territorial integrity". They can't harm "the nation's reputation, security or interests". They can't promote cults, or "superstitions". They can't "incite obscenity, drug use, violence or gambling" - although loot boxes are, of course, fine (in fact Niko Partners analyst Daniel Ahmad reckons a Chinese game may have invented them as far back as 2003) - and they can't include anything that "harms public ethics" or China's "culture and traditions". They also can't include any "other content" that might violate China's constitution or law, whatever that may be, and they have to be published in China by a Chinese company.

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