In last night’s game update, Valve made Counter-Strike: Global Offensive free-to-play China. Although it wasn’t stated in the release notes, the game was made free by perfect world on their client.
To get CS:GO for free in China, players must verify their identity on their account through Perfect World. Once the user’s identity is verified and has downloaded the game they will be given a straight “Prime status”, which allows them to Prime-only matchmaking competitive games. It’s basically the same as Prime matchmaking in the Steam version of CS:GO, except Steam’s verification requires a mobile phone.
If players are unable to verify their identity, Perfect World will make them pay for a game license like any other consumer.
CS:GO may see an alot of active users as a result of this change to Perfect World access. Though The game in China will not show numbers of users active, because they’re on the Perfect World client and not the Steam client.