STEPN App Will Ban Mainland China Users Soon: What Happened?

In a rather shocking announcement, the move-to-earn app STEPN announced that they will ban Mainland China users soon. Although the company will not remove user accounts from China, the move certainly doesn’t bode well for its user growth. What led STEPN to this decision though? Read on to find out more.

Why STEPN app is banning users in Mainland China?

Starting from July 15th at 24:00 UTC+8, STEPN will not provide any GPS and IP-based geolocation services to users from China. According to the company, the move came as part of the firm’s compliance with the Chinese Law on geographic data restrictions in China.

Under the law itself, only entities with special authorization from The State Council in China can perform surveying and mapping work within the country. In its Twitter post, STEPN made it clear that the team has never planned to start its operations in China. Thus, to avoid breaking any local laws, the app will cease to support users from China soon.

What did the Chinese users say?

Many STEPN users in China certainly find it disappointing about the ban. However, some fans felt grateful as they had hit their fitness goals while using the app. One user even commented that working out is meant to be fun in nature. So, STEPN or not, staying healthy is way more important than anything else.

STEPN’s governance token $GMT fell more than 18% upon the announcement. However, the token price has recovered swiftly since. As of writing, $GMT is trading at $1.06. In comparison, the token reached an all-time high of $4.50 at the end of April this year.

Given that STEPN is about to lose a huge chunk of users from China, it is unclear how the app will grow its user base in the coming months. In particular, the app depends heavily on new users to burn $GST and $GMT tokens to level up their Sneakers. At the end of the day, we should just invest what we can afford to lose in any P2E games.