Indonesia has blocked Steam, Yahoo, PayPal, and more for license violations

Indonesia has banned PayPal, Yahoo, and notable gaming websites including Epic Games and Steam due to their failure to act in accordance with recent licensing rules.

In November 2020, registration was made necessary for all domestic and offshore companies offering online services in the country. However, signing up for this process also gave authorities the power to urge platforms to release data of specific users and to take down any content that the government deems unlawful or "disturbs public order" within a maximum of 24 hours.

Recently, firms were pressed by the authorities to register under the new licensing rules by Wednesday or risk having their platforms taken down. While over 5,900 domestic companies and roughly 100 foreign companies had registered by Monday, some including Meta and Google did not do so until the deadline was extended till Friday.

Samuel Abrijani Pangerapan, a senior official at Indonesia's Communications Ministry has revealed that some sites have now been taken down as a result of not registering. These include Yahoo, PayPal, Steam, Epic Games, and more.

The move has proved quite controversial and has received massive backlash from numerous people on social media with hashtags like "BlokirKominfo" (which translates to "Block Communication Ministry") trending on Indonesian Twitter and people complaining about how the government had damaged the country's gaming industry and freelance workers depending on PayPal.

The affected companies are yet to publicly respond, so it remains to be seen if they will register under government regulations.

Source: Reuters