China ends freeze on game approvals, grants first licenses since July 2021

China’s gaming regulator on Monday granted publishing licenses to 45 games owned by Baidu and XD’s Party Star, ending a nine-month freeze that has dealt a severe blow to many of the country’s tech giants.

The national press and the public administration published the list on its website. Reuters reported that China licensed XD Party Star earlier today.

Other companies whose games have received licenses include iDreamSky, 37Games, a subsidiary of G-bits Network Technology Xiamen, Shenzhen Zqgame and Yoozoo Games, according to the list.

U.S.-listed shares of Chinese gaming companies NetEase and Bilibili jumped 8% and 8.6%, respectively, in premarket trading.

Chinese regulators stopped approving game monetization licenses in July last year, which had a big impact on industry giants Tencent Holdings and NetEase and put thousands of companies in the sector to bankruptcy.

The hiatus coincided with a move by China in August to impose new playing time limits on under-18s, a tough social intervention it said was needed to end a growing addiction to what she once described as “spiritual opium”.

The freeze was almost as long as an earlier suspension in 2018, when China stopped approving new video game titles over a period of nine months as part of an overhaul of the regulatory bodies that oversee the industry. .

© Thomson Reuters 2022