Advertisement
Video gaming
TechPolicy

Tencent, NetEase win new Chinese video game licences in March, as Beijing grants 86 approvals

  • China’s two largest video gaming companies, along with dozens other smaller studios, received approvals for 86 new domestic titles in March
  • A spate of recent approvals, consisting of local and imported games, suggests that the pace and volume of China’s video game approvals are stabilising

Reading Time:2 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
The Tencent headquarters in Shenzhen, China. Photo: AFP
Iris Dengin Shenzhen

Chinese regulators granted 86 video game licences for March, covering titles by market leaders Tencent Holdings and NetEase, days after issuing approvals for a batch of foreign games, in a sign of further normalisation after a year-long industry crackdown.

The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), the agency that oversees online games in China, published on Thursday the latest list of approved titles. The amount is in line with the 88 titles approved in January and 87 in February. It is also higher than any monthly domestic approval tally seen in 2022.

03:50

Slide, tap, hold: Why ‘maimai’ keeps attracting new players 10 years on

Slide, tap, hold: Why ‘maimai’ keeps attracting new players 10 years on

Tencent, the world’s largest video game publisher by revenue, received the green light for The Last Blade, a martial arts-themed action mobile and personal computer game. NetEase, China’s second-largest video gaming company, got a licence for mobile combat game Mission Zero.

Several highly-anticipated games from smaller studios also won approvals, including Love and Deep Space, a three-dimensional action romance game developed by Shanghai-based PaperGames.

Approvals for domestic games, totalling 261 so far this year, already exceeded half of the number granted for the full year of 2022, when the NPPA approved 468 domestic games in seven batches.
Earlier this week, regulators also announced 27 newly licensed foreign games, the second batch of imported titles in less than three months. They include Tencent’s mobile discovery puzzle game Merge Mansion, developed by Finnish studio Metacore, and NetEase’s dance and rhythm game Audition: Everybody Party.
Advertisement