China Ends Gaming Approval Freeze, Grants First Licences Since July 2021

China granted publishing licences to 45 games belonging to companies such as Baidu and XD.

By Reuters | Updated: 12 April 2022 10:41 IST

China Ends Gaming Approval Freeze, Grants First Licences Since July 2021

Photo Credit: Reuters

Online gaming at an internet cafe in Beijing in 2021

Highlights

China's gaming regulator has granted licenses after nine months
The regulator previously termed gaming addicition as "spiritual opium"
China's gaming regulator previously stopped approving games in 2018

China's gaming regulator on Monday granted publishing licenses to 45 games belonging to the likes of Baidu and XD's Party Star, ending a nine-month long freeze that has dealt a blow to many of the country's tech giants.

The National Press and Public Administration published the list on its website. Reuters reported that China had granted a license to XD Party Star earlier in the day.

Other companies whose games received licenses included iDreamSky, 37Games, a subsidiary of G-bits Network Technology Xiamen, Shenzhen Zqgame and Yoozoo Games, the list showed.

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US-listed shares of Chinese gaming firms NetEase and Bilibili jumped 8 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively, in premarket trading.

Chinese regulators stopped approving game monetisation licences in July last year, impacting heavily the likes of industry giant Tencent Holdings and NetEase and putting thousands of firms in the industry out of business.

The pause coincided with a move by China in August to impose new gaming time limits on under-18s, a stringent social intervention that it said was needed to pull the plug on a growing addiction to what it once described as "spiritual opium".

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The freeze was almost as long as an earlier suspension in 2018 when China stopped approving new video game titles over a nine-month period as part of an overhaul of the regulatory bodies that oversee the sector.

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What are the best games of 2021? We discuss this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Spotify, Gaana, JioSaavn, Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music and wherever you get your podcasts.

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