China ends gaming approval freeze, grants first licenses since July last year (updated)

XD

11/04/2022 13:39

(Recasts with China publishing list of approved games, adds
pre-trade share prices of NetEase, Bilibili)
    By Josh Ye
    HONG KONG, April 11 (Reuters) - China's gaming regulator on
Monday granted publishing licenses to 45 games belonging to the
likes of Baidu  BIDU.O  and XD Inc's  2400.HK  "Party Star",
ending a nine-month long freeze that has dealt a blow to many of
the country's tech giants. 
    The National Press and Public Administration published the
list on its website. Reuters reported that China had granted a
license to XD "Party Star" earlier in the day. 
    Other companies whose games received licenses included
iDreamSky  1119.HK , 37Games  002555.SZ , a subsidiary of G-bits
Network Technology Xiamen  603444.SS , Shenzhen Zqgame
 300052.SZ  and Yoozoo Games  002174.SZ , the list showed. 
    U.S.-listed shares of Chinese gaming firms NetEase Inc
 NTES.O  and Bilibili Inc  BILI.O  jumped 8% and 8.6%,
respectively, in premarket trading.
    Chinese regulators stopped approving game monetisation
licences in July last year, impacting heavily the likes of
industry giant Tencent Holdings  0700.HK  and NetEase and
putting thousands of firms in the industry out of business. 
    The pause coincided with a move by China in August to impose
new gaming time limits on under-18s, a stringent social
intervention that it said was needed to pull the plug on a
growing addiction to what it once described as "spiritual
opium".  urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nL1N2Q10KB
    The freeze was almost as long as an earlier suspension in
2018 when China stopped approving new video game titles over a
nine-month period as part of an overhaul of the regulatory
bodies that oversee the sector.

 (Reporting by Josh Ye
Writing by Brenda Goh
Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Chizu Nomiyama)
 ((brenda.goh@thomsonreuters.com; +86 (0) 21 2083 0088; Reuters
Messaging: brenda.goh.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))