China’s video gaming regulator has approved a new batch of 15 foreign video games, with titles from League of Legends-maker Riot Games, Nintendo and Sega among those to be released in the domestic market.
The mobile version of Valorant, a popular first-person shooter from Riot, which is based in the US but owned by Tencent Holdings, is among the titles approved on Wednesday by the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), the agency in charge of licensing video games in China.
Under Chinese regulations, an overseas video game cannot be monetised in the country without a government permit. Getting approval often involves localisation with censorship of sensitive content and it must be operated through a Chinese partner – often Tencent and NetEase, the country’s two largest video gaming companies.
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Valorant’s arrival on smartphones in China has been highly anticipated since the PC version found great commercial success on the mainland, where it launched last July. That was three years after its global release.
Tencent touted the title as its “most important game published in 2023”. The tech giant credited Valorant as a major contributor to its first-quarter domestic game sales this year.
The regulator also approved three titles for the Nintendo Switch, including the role-playing game Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and platform adventure game Super Mario 3D World + Bowser’s Fury. Tencent is the official distributor of the Switch in mainland China.
The Pokémon game was released globally together with the related title Pokémon: Let’s Go, Eevee! in November 2018. Eevee was approved for sale in China in April.
Another approved title is Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage, a Japanese rhythm game developed by Colorful Palette and published by Sega in 2020. The mobile game, based on the Japanese virtual pop star Hatsune Miku, will be operated in China by Nuverse, the video gaming unit of TikTok owner ByteDance.
The approval comes days after the Chinese social media giant clarified the strategy for its video gaming business going forward, following an earlier retreat in the market marked by hundreds of lay-offs and shutting down or selling off parts of its business.
Nuverse said it is entering a stage that requires patience and “longtermism”, as it now refocuses on creating “fun games”. ByteDance appointed a new head of the unit after the company started internal restructuring of its video gaming business last November.
The NPPA has approved 61 foreign games for sale in China so far this year, which includes two previous batches of approvals in February and April. That is about two-thirds of the 98 such licences approved in all of 2023.
The domestic gaming market is seeing competition heat up over the summer holiday as several new titles such as Tencent’s DnF Mobile and miHoYo’s Zenless Zone Zero try to attract players to their platforms.
China’s video gaming market saw total sales grow 7.6 per cent year on year to 72.6 billion yuan (US$10 million) in the first quarter, according to data released by market research institute CNG.
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