Breaking | Gaming stocks surge after official says China has resumed video game approvals after 9-month freeze

The Chinese government has resumed approvals of video games after a nine month freeze, sending a much-needed message of hope to the world’s biggest gaming market.

Feng Shixin, an official with the Chinese Communist Party’s propaganda department, said on Friday that the country’s new gaming regulator has finished reviewing an initial batch of video games, which will soon receive licenses for domestic publication. It was the first official recognition that the license approval process has resumed.

“The first batch of games have been reviewed. We will hurry up to issue licenses,” said Feng, deputy head of the State Administration of Press and Publications (SAPP), according to multiple Chinese media reports on Friday. “There is a big stockpile of games for review, so it takes a while. We will continue to work hard. [We] hope everyone can be patient,” he said in remarks seen on video, without providing any further details.

Feng’s remarks, delivered at the country’s annual gaming forum held in the southern province of Hainan, remove a huge regulatory overhang that has put China’s major video games producers on edge and knocked billions off market valuations. China gaming stocks surged on Friday.

Earlier this month, the propaganda department established a new body to review ethical issues in video gaming, which was taken as a sign that game licensing would resume soon.

Publishers in China are required to submit games for review to authorities before they can be sold in the domestic market, but the process has been suspended for about nine months as Beijing tightened its control over gaming amid concerns over childhood myopia and online addiction. The SAPP, which falls under the Communist Party’s propaganda department, has not awarded licences to any new game titles since it was formed in April as part of a broader government shake-up.