Valve, alongside its business partner in China, Perfect World, has given us an update on the progress of Steam China today, after both companies had been silent on the topic for over a year.

Eurogamer attended the brief presentation, given by Perfect World CEO Dr. Robert H. Xiao in Shanghai, where a small number of local and international press were told the companies were "one more step closer" to launching Steam China, which will be separate from the international version of Steam. A handful of launch games were revealed, including Dota 2 and Dota Underlords. There were no actual launch dates or broader windows mentioned for Steam China itself, mind, nor a look at how that storefront may shape up or any details on its features, barring the fact it'll support VR, multiplayer games, interesting games with "innovative, creative ideas," and "single-player games with abundant storylines". As far as we could tell, none of the non-Chinese launch games had official approval just yet, either.

In Xiao's words, "the Steam China project is undergoing solidly and smoothly" - but what is it, exactly? As it stands, Steam is actually widely available for Chinese players already. As of right now we've tested and confirmed it's possible to buy, download and play games through the Steam store in China as usual, with no issues - and no need for a VPN. Community features, such as discussion forums, are unavailable, but otherwise the platform as it stands still acts as a huge loophole in the Chinese government's strict regulation of games. Where it might take many months of admin and applications for a game to get through the approval process - if it gets through at all - or many revisions to a game's content to ensure it meets the various Chinese standards, that same game can already be bought and played in China, unfiltered, unregistered and unchanged, on regular old Steam.

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Dota Underlords now has a prototype battle pass.

Valve's take on the burgeoning auto chess genre is giving the Proto Pass, as it's called, out to beta testers for free. The idea is Valve gets feedback on how it works so it can make the Dota Underlords Season 1 Battle Pass as good as it can be.

"Like many aspects of the beta, the Proto Pass is a learning experience for the Underlords team," Valve said in a post on the Underlords website, "so please keep the feedback coming so that we can adjust plans for our Season 1 Battle Pass accordingly."

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So, you want to get into Auto Chess games. ACs...Auto Battlers? Regardless of what you call them, these games have quickly become some of them most popular and exciting games out right now.

The genre is simple on the surface. Using money you acquire every turn, you buy units from a shared pool that smack the enemy's units until either you or your opponent wins. But the beauty's in the depth. There's plenty of variables to consider once you're deep into Auto Battlers, like items, the placement of your units, unit upgrades, character classes / factions and the bonuses they provide. Once you better understand these games they reveal themselves to be the hardcore strategy titles they truly are, demanding you play meticulously or end up beaten or worse, broke.

Dota Auto Chess, Dota Underlords, Teamfight Tactics and Auto Chess all have their distinct differences and individual perks, and everyone's bound to have a favourite. This article will introduce you to all four of the Auto Chess games and delve into what sets them apart from the others, highlighting unique features to help you figure which ones to start playing.

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The auto chess wars have begun.

Sparked by the surprise success of the Dota auto chess mod, created by Chinese team Drodo Studio, a number of big-name publishers and developers have quickly turned around efforts of their own - and they're proving early doors big hits.

Auto chess games are "auto battlers", that is, they're turn-based competitive multiplayer strategy games in which you send units out onto a board divided up into squares, then the combat plays out automatically. There's more to the genre than this, of course, but that's essentially it.

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