China's online gaming regulator on Monday granted licences to 27 foreign games in March, including titles to be published by Tencent Holdings, NetEase and Bilibili.
Among the imported online games approved by the National
Press and Publication Administration is at least one by Tencent, a game called
Merge Mansion, according to a list the regulator released on Monday. NetEase
secured approval for at least one mobile game named Audition: Everybody Party,
while Bilibili received a licence for a game called Shanyao! Youjunshaonu.
This marks the second batch of foreign online games to
receive publishing licences in China recently, just three months after the
regulator approved the first batch in December. The crackdown by China on
online gaming had halted the approval process for foreign video games for 18
months between 2021 and 2022.
The approval of imported games last December marked the end
of China's crackdown on the video game industry which began in August in 2021
when regulators suspended the game approval process. Regulators first resumed
issuing game licences to homegrown games in April 2022.
XD Inc received licences for two mobile games named Gorogoa
and Wizard of Legend respectively. Other notable titles approved by China via
this batch include a mobile game called Fairy Tale: Fighting and a console game
named Yo-kai Watch 4.
Last month, it was reported that Tencent was in talks with
Meta Platforms to distribute its Meta Quest line of virtual reality headsets in
China.
Tencent, the world's largest video game publisher, had
ambitious plans to build both virtual reality software and hardware at an
"extended reality" XR unit it launched in June last year amid
swelling global interest in the metaverse concept of a virtual world. © Reuters
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