Tencent and NetEase absent from 67 new video game approvals in China, as ByteDance and Bilibili emerge as big winners
- China’s two largest gaming companies have not been granted licences for new video game titles in a year, even as approvals resume one-month cadence
- TikTok owner ByteDance, which has been retreating in gaming in recent months, and video streaming platform Bilibili received approval for new titles
China’s publication regulator granted licences to 67 video games on Tuesday in its third and biggest approval of new titles for smartphones, personal computers and consoles in mainland China since the end of an eight-month hiatus.
Tencent’s shares have slumped 26.8 per cent in Hong Kong since the end of last July, when the last list was released before a licensing freeze that only ended in April. NetEase’s shares have fallen 10.7 per cent in the same period.
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The list is a slight uptick in approvals from last month, when the agency approved 60 new titles for sale in China, marking a slow recovery for China’s game developers. In April, the list included just 45 titles.
However, the new list offers some good news for the company on the gaming front. ByteDance, which runs its gaming business under the in-house brand Nuverse, won a licence for the mobile title Crystal of Atlan.
The game’s operator Shenzhen Linzi was fully acquired by a ByteDance-related entity in April last year, according to business registry tracking firm Qichacha. Labelled as an action role-playing game, Crystal of Atlan once had the most reservations of any title on the Chinese game store TapTap.
Bilibili, known for its video streaming and gaming platforms, secured a licence to publish Forged In Shadow Torch, a role-playing game developed by game studio TiGames, on PC and PlayStation 5. The company had already published the game overseas through Valve’s popular video game store Steam, contributing to anticipation for the title in China.
Also approved this month are Infinity Kingdom by Yoozoo Games, Eternal Return: Infinite by Hong Kong-listed iDreamSky, and Biphase by Seasun, the gaming subsidiary of software developer Kingsoft.
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Still, the number of new approvals remains much lower than in past years. After the country’s first eight-month licensing freeze in 2018, new approvals fell 85 per cent to 1,365 in 2019. In the first seven months of 2021, before the second suspension, Beijing approved just 679 titles.
Against this backdrop, gross sales revenue for China’s gaming industry rose just 6.4 per cent last year, down from 20.7 per cent growth in 2020.