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No mahjong, corpses or back-stabbing concubines: all you need to know about China’s new video game censorship regime
- China’s top media regulator is accepting new applications for publishing online games
- Mahjong, dead bodies, and imperial concubines are to be banned
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
The Chinese government has ended its long freeze on new video games but it is not all good news for the world’s biggest gaming market.
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China’s top content regulator began taking new applications for publishing online games in the country on Monday, after it introduced changes to the approval process last week, according to research firm Niko Partners.
The move signals the end of China’s gaming freeze. The State Administration of Press and Publications (SAPP) suspended the licensing process for new games for nine months last year, restarting it in December. Since then more than 1,000 games have been approved by the regulator. In February, however, the SAPP stopped accepting new submissions from its local branches, as it struggled through a backlog of thousands of titles created by the previous halt.
Niko Partners first reported that SAPP would start taking new submissions from April 22, citing unnamed sources. The move came after a closed-door meeting held by SAPP on April 10 to communicate new rules regarding game publication in China – and after new application forms were published on the regulator’s website on April 19.
New rules introduced in SAPP’s meeting were previously shared online by attendees including G-bits Network Technology (Xiamen) Co., and reported separately by Niko Partners.
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