Any game company that wants to sell their product in China needs a license to do so.
It started in December 2019, when the Chinese government ended its nine-month freeze on approving new video games after a major government re-organization shifted the approval process to the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television.
Since that time, China stopped taking applications for such licenses in order to work through those they already had.
China has a population of over 1.4 billion people, with more than $30 billion in annual video game sales. This makes the country an alluring market from game developers.
But acknowledging the influence of games to its citizens, China wants to ban three genres in games that include gambling titles such as Mahjong and Poker, games that deal with the country’s imperial history, and games featuring corpses and blood.
These rules come into play alongside existing regulations that ban pornography.
On April 10th, the country’s State Administration of Press and Publication held a gaming conference and introduced a new set of guidelines for game publications.
On April 22, China resumed the approval process to license new games for monetization.
Mahjong and Poker games are taken off the approval list following earlier government crackdowns over concerns that such titles may channel illegal gambling. And as for games inspired by imperial past, China wants to ban games that include gongdou, which means "harem scheming", as well as guandou, the word for palace official competition.
While the lives inside palaces has inspired many local TV series, but plots that worry officials are “obscene contents and the risk of political metaphors."
And as for games with gore, like those that have blood and corpses, the rules are set to disallow developers in modifying blood color from red to other colors to circumvent restrictions. With the renewed guidelines, China is effectively banning blood of any color in video games.
These rules potentially wipe out hundreds of small developers focused on the three genres.
But for larger gaming company, like Tencent and NetEase, which operate games like PUBG, Monster Hunter: World, World of Warcraft and Overwatch locally, won't have big issues in meeting the renewed guidelines.
They can, for example, create alternate versions of certain games to meet approval guidelines, or tone down titles altogether so that they comply.
In one example, Tencent on Mei 2019, tested a game it calls Game for Peace. With similar gameplay to the original PUBG, characters don't bleed when shot, and wave goodbye before disappearing when killed. This kind of approach can be used for PUBG to pass the rules in Iraq, Nepal and the Indian state of Gujarat.
Gaming has long been an issue in China, especially for young generations being addicted to games.
This is why China has issued regulations for games starting 2007.
In order to help curb gameplay addiction and over-spending by the country’s younger population, the regulations also require developers and publishers to detail more information about a given title including scripts, screenshots, as well as what features are being included to the game.
