China regulator approves 86 new video game licences in May in another sign sector is back on track
Chinese regulators approved 86 game licences in May, covering titles from the country's biggest players, Tencent Holdings and NetEase, as the world's largest video gaming market gets back on track after regulatory uncertainties.
The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), the agency responsible for licensing video games in China, published its latest list of approvals on Monday, with an amount in line with previous months this year.
Tencent, operator of the world's largest video gaming business by revenue, received a licence for Ace Force 2, a first-person shooting mobile game. NetEase, China's second-largest video gaming company, was granted a licence for a mobile and personal computer game named Seven-Day World.
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Other titles in the latest batch included Dislyte, an urban mythological role-playing game developed by Lilith Games; Crystal of Atlan, a fantasy-themed action mobile game from a studio under ByteDance; and Light Gap Interpretation, a fantasy world strategy mobile game published by Shanghai-based video streaming platform Bilibili.
The new list reaffirms the picture that China's video game licence approvals process is back to normal after a year-long crackdown that started in late 2021, when authorities imposed an eight-month freeze on game approvals and imposed a three-hours-a-week online game time limit for minors.
However, the domestic video games market is still in the process of recovery amid economic headwinds. Game sales for the China market in the first three months of 2023 fell 15 per cent year-on-year to 67.5 billion yuan (US$9.24 billion), according to a report by video gaming analytics firm CNG.
Some major Chinese players are seeing a recovery in game sales in 2023. In the first quarter, Tencent reported a 6 per cent rise in domestic game revenue to 35.1 billion yuan, while its international gaming revenue rose 25 per cent to 13.2 billion yuan.
Last week the company also unveiled over 30 game updates and new projects in the pipeline, more than last year's total of 26, with an emphasis on potential innovation in game development using the latest technologies, such as ChatGPT-like tools.
Over the weekend NetEase also unveiled 11 new titles and introduced updates to another 30 titles at its annual game launch event, including a collaboration with world-renowned composer Hans Zimmer on the soundtrack for a post-apocalyptic shooter game called Ashfall.
Late last year Bilibili also doubled down on its gaming business, which once accounted for over 80 per cent of its total revenue before being eclipsed by video streaming. Chen Rui, chief executive of Bilibili, took over direct management of the video gaming unit last November.
This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2023 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
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