China’s National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA) has published its last batch of game licenses in 2024. Here is how many titles the government approved compared to previous years.
Ananta
On December 24, the NPPA approved 122 domestic video games, the largest batch this year. In addition, 13 titles from foreign developers received ISBN numbers.
The list of imported games includes Uncharted Waters Origin, Monster Hunter Outlanders, EverMerge, Asphalt 8: Airborne, and Passpartout 2: The Lost Artist. The most interesting title here is Red Alert: Glory, a mobile strategy game that will be operated by Tencent in China.
When it comes to domestic titles, one of the most notable projects is Ananta (无限大), an upcoming free-to-play action RPG (aka “anime GTA”) developed by NetEase’s subsidiary Naked Rain.
This brings the total number of video game licenses issued in China this year to 1,416, including 1,306 domestic and 110 foreign titles. As reported by the South China Morning Post, this is the highest number of approvals since 2019, when the NPPA licensed over 1,500 products.
The 1,416 approvals is up 31.7% from 1,075 last year and nearly 2.8x the total of 512 titles licensed in 2022. However, this is still well below the 2,095 approvals in 2018 (via Niko Partners).
Overall, this is a positive sign for the Chinese games market, which has struggled with regulatory pressure in recent years. The most notable change came in 2021, when the government took child protection measures by allowing underage users to play online games only from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and public holidays. In July 2021, China also started the infamous licensing freeze, which lasted for 263 days and hurt many domestic and foreign companies.