China’s games industry at a turning point amid regulatory crackdown, with Korea offering a vision of its future
Chinese authorities stopped approving new games starting at the end of March and the hiatus is expected to last for another four to six months
For a vision of what their future might look like, China’s gaming companies only need to look at South Korea, currently the world’s No 4 games market by revenue.
China’s tighter regulation of its gaming industry, ostensibly to protect minors from harm, is expected to see consolidation in the sector in the short term, forcing game publishers to adopt a more global approach to survive, according to analysts and company insiders.
In 2011 Korean authorities banned minors under 16 from playing online games between midnight and 6am, and a year later imposed monthly limits on how much time adults and minors could respectively spend playing. The moves accelerated a consolidation already underway in the country’s gaming market, with the number of gaming developers shrinking by half to about 14,000 firms from 2009 to 2014, according to a report from Beijing-based research firm CNG, citing data from the non-profit Korea Economic Research Institute.
Chinese authorities stopped approving new games starting at the end of March and the hiatus is expected to last for another four to six months amid a broader government reshuffle, according to one government source.
Regulators have also vowed to cap the number of new game releases and limit the time children spend on games under Chinese president Xi Jinping’s call to address myopia among minors.