PUBG, Fortnite, Game of Thrones: These popular video games still need licences in China to cash in
- Around 5,000 titles are still waiting to be cleared for commercial launch in China, after a nine-month regulatory hiatus last year
It is not spring yet in the world’s biggest gaming market.
China’s top media regulator has stopped accepting new applications for game licences as it struggles through a backlog of thousands of titles from a previous nine-month hiatus, one industry source and a state-run news outlet said this week.
An official with the SAPP confirmed the suspension with state news outlet the Paper on Wednesday, adding that the application process is under adjustment.
China’s video games industry suffered its slowest growth in at least a decade last year after the suspension of approvals for new games amid a government restructuring. The SAPP – formed in April and now under the Communist Party’s propaganda department – resumed the process at the end of December, and has since licensed more than 500 titles largely in chronological order.
