Video game approvals may have resumed in China but poker and mahjong are out in the cold
- In the first quarter, Chinese regulators approved 795 domestic video games, none of which came from the poker and mahjong genre
- The world’s biggest video gaming market was once full of low-budget poker games
It looks like China’s government has crossed poker and mahjong games off the approvals list as regulators this week gave the green light to another batch of new video games after a nine-month halt last year, signalling stricter controls over online gambling.
China’s top content regulator – the State Administration of Press and Publications (SAPP) – suspended the licensing process for new games for nine months last year, restarting it on December 19. The regulatory hiatus, part of a broader government restructuring, came as Beijing tightened its controls over video games to combat youth addiction. As a result, China’s gaming market, the world’s largest, recorded its slowest revenue growth in 2018 in at least a decade.
Of the 959 domestic video games to have obtained a licence since December 19, only one is from the poker and mahjong category – and that was on the very first day approvals resumed.
“The rate of approvals is slower than it has been in prior years,” according to a Niko Partners report. “This is primarily due to a crackdown on titles in the poker and mahjong genre after China’s government became concerned about real world money being used in these games.”
Calls to the Chinese Communist Party's propaganda department, which oversees the SAPP, went unanswered.
