China Grants Publishing Licences to 45 Foreign Video Games

China's crackdown against video games is coming to an end.

Valorant. Credit: Riot Games

According to Reuters, the country's video games regulator has granted publishing licences to 45 foreign games for a domestic launch. Among the foreign games approved by the National Press and Publication Administration are Pokémon Unite and Valorant.

Internationally, the former is published by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo, while the latter is published by Riot Games. But in China, the two games are to be published by Tencent Holdings, which also received licences for three other foreign games.

Tencent only received its first commercial game licence in more than a year last month, a sign that the domestic industry is starting to normalise. The Chinese internet giant is said to be heavily dependent on both self-developed and imported games for revenue, so it was hit particularly hard during Beijing's year-long crackdown.