China Grants Publishing Licences to 45 Foreign Video Games
- Kyle Chua
- Dec 29, 2022
- 2 min read
China's crackdown against video games is coming to an end.
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.
Other foreign games approved include CD Projekt's Gwent: The Witcher Card Game and Klei Entertainment's Don't Starve.
The regulator also approved 84 domestic games for the month of December.
Apart from Tencent, NetEase, ByteDance, XD Inc and iDreamSky also received game licences during the month.
The total number of licences granted this year, however, are sure to be fewer than in previous years. China reportedly approved 76 imported games in 2021 and 456 in 2017.
The new approvals come over a month after Beijing proudly announced that gaming addiction among minors has been "basically solved". The state-aligned China Game Publishers Association Publications Committee found in a survey that more than 75% of gamers aged under 18 have capped their playing time to three hours a week, suggesting the strict restrictions proved effective.
The optimistic results of the survey likely helped convince Beijing to ease its crackdown and let the domestic market bounce back. The country remains the largest market for games, generating billions of dollars on a quarterly basis.
China'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, which are to be published by Tencent Holdings in China.
The regulator also approved 84 domestic games for the month of December.