Over 140,000 Gaming Firms Close As China Continues New License Freeze (appleinsider.com) 36
China is continuing to hold off from issuing new game licenses to app developers producing for the App Store and other platforms, in regulatory inaction that has reportedly led to the shuttering of around 140,000 small game studios and related companies in the country. By contrast, 180,000 video game firms shut down during all of 2020. Apple Insider reports: Under Chinese law, game developers must be licensed in order to sell games in the App Store and in other app marketplaces. While regulators stopped issuing new licenses in late 2021, it seems that the ban on new licenses is set to continue into 2022. The National press and Publication Administration (NPPA), which issues licenses for games in China, is continuing to abstain from publishing lists of new approved games. Following on from a suspension that started at the end of July, the South China Morning Post reports it has now become the longest suspension of new game licenses since a nine-month blackout in 2018.
Regulators decided to suspend game license approvals in July as approvals for new games were considered "a bit too aggressive" in the first half of 2021, reports indicated. At the time it wasn't advised how long the hiatus would last, except that one unnamed source said it would be for "a while." The lack of a license means a game cannot be submitted to the regional App Store, nor can it be updated. Apple has been suspending updates and pulling games from the China App Store that didn't have a license from the NPPA since July 2020, to comply with local laws. The report speculates that the freeze "may be connected to a government crackdown on gaming addiction."
Regulators decided to suspend game license approvals in July as approvals for new games were considered "a bit too aggressive" in the first half of 2021, reports indicated. At the time it wasn't advised how long the hiatus would last, except that one unnamed source said it would be for "a while." The lack of a license means a game cannot be submitted to the regional App Store, nor can it be updated. Apple has been suspending updates and pulling games from the China App Store that didn't have a license from the NPPA since July 2020, to comply with local laws. The report speculates that the freeze "may be connected to a government crackdown on gaming addiction."
TFA says 14,000, not 140,000 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:TFA says 14,000, not 140,000 (Score:4, Informative)
Yes it's 14k. The South China Morning Post article, which is the source of the other article in TFS, issued a correction today changing the numbers from 140k and 180k to 14k and 18k.
[10:17am, 3 Jan, 2022] A previous version of this story said 140,000 gaming-related firms shut down from July to December 2021 and 180,000 in 2020. The actual numbers were 14,000 and 18,000, respectively.
https://www.scmp.com/tech/poli... [scmp.com]
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One article says 140K, the other 14K. Anyhow, either way, that's a lot of "enterprises" that shut down, although I'd guess the vast majority of them are very small studios or independent developers. I guess this is what happens when your country is run by curmudgeonly old men with near absolute power who think videogames are the devil and are destroying their society's youth. "Spiritual opium" indeed.
Well, I kind of feel bad for Chinese who enjoy gaming. You think 2021 was a dry year for western gaming?
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The US doesn't need to defeat China (Score:5, Interesting)
What's great about China, is that it's wilfully crippling it's own economy in so many ways with various clampdowns. This is a good thing for the US, because the US has appeared impotent to counter Chinese growth and influence in the last two decades, and the bad things that come with that - i.e. Chinese support for dictatorships globally.
But the good news is, Xi's ego is sufficiently large that he's willing to undo the Chinese threat all by himself. Chinese tech had reached the pinnacle of being able to go toe to toe with US tech, Huawei was leading with 5G, TikTok has overtaken Google, gaming in China has grown massively, Alibaba was the only real global competitor to Amazon. Then along came Xi and flushed it all down the drain because he perceived it was becoming big enough to be a threat to his power as a dictator.
If the US can reign in big tech to be more aligned with Western goals of democracy, liberty, and the rule of law, and less a bunch of platforms for hostile foreign actors (scammers, propagandists, state sponsored hackers) to attack Western targets then the US can keep it's economic edge over China without much effort because China has opted to cripple itself.
Re: The US doesn't need to defeat China (Score:3)
Imagine if gaming studios were not chinese but western, the sheer carnage cutting off such a large market would create?! Oh, wait, they are...
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They want kids to spend more time on jingoistic activities, instead of playing games or imitating celebrities.
Surely if you take away their video games, and ban private tutoring, they'll have to spend all their fee time on Approved Cultural Activities, right??
It seems hard to believe.
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Other than making sure social media dissent is not posing a risk to CCP, the underreported issue in this whole tech clampdown is that the CCP does not consider profit to be the end goal of private enterprise. Even as we are doing our best to forget it, this is also supposed to be the case in the West. Even our totally fucked up ideology of "greed is good" acknowledges that private profit is only justified by societal good. And this is just the c
Re: The US doesn't need to defeat China (Score:2)
That was an interesting, well explained and well justified comment. Thank you.
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> Other than making sure social media dissent is not posing a risk to CCP, the underreported issue in this whole tech clampdown is that the CCP does not consider profit to be the end goal of private enterprise.
And yet, in China you can literally work people to death for profit. You can literally use slave labour, all sanctioned by the state. If China is so benevolent and willing to forego profit then why is it willing to go to the extreme of killing for profit?
The West isn't perfect, I absolutely agree,
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Not to contest you on the issue of Xi's ego or anything, but...
Other than making sure social media dissent is not posing a risk to CCP, the underreported issue in this whole tech clampdown is that the CCP does not consider profit to be the end goal of private enterprise.
Profit IS the goal of private enterprise. That's the whole point.
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Until you realize that protecting kids from addictive gaming and social media is going to result in a lot of highly educated, well adjusted people entering their labour market.
It's as if people learned nothing from Huawei getting so far head on 5G, or China's leadership on automotive battery technology. "Don't worry, the commies will destroy themselves sooner or later" isn't really working out for us, is it?
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> Until you realize that protecting kids from addictive gaming and social media is going to result in a lot of highly educated, well adjusted people entering their labour market.
Yes, because of course when you take entertainment away from children the first thing they do is go and pick up a textbook and study. They don't remotely consider rebelling, or pursuing some other avenue like crime or drugs.
That's not how people, especially kids, work. Taking away something they enjoy doesn't make them great at s
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What's great about China, is that it's wilfully crippling it's own economy in so many ways with various clampdowns. This is a good thing for the US, because the US has appeared impotent to counter Chinese growth and influence in the last two decades, and the bad things that come with that - i.e. Chinese support for dictatorships globally.
But the good news is, Xi's ego is sufficiently large that he's willing to undo the Chinese threat all by himself. Chinese tech had reached the pinnacle of being able to go toe to toe with US tech, Huawei was leading with 5G, TikTok has overtaken Google, gaming in China has grown massively, Alibaba was the only real global competitor to Amazon. Then along came Xi and flushed it all down the drain because he perceived it was becoming big enough to be a threat to his power as a dictator.
This is the most accurate assessment of what's going on and Xi is one of the worst leaders in the ancient and modern history of China. At least in the free world we can limit the damage by voting out our Trumps or their term limits limit the damage. People don't realize how much innovation in technology comes from video games and how network effects affect other industries. GPU development was and still is driven in large part by video games which are useful in other fields such as medicine or computer vis
Wonder If It's a Problem With Free Thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
To make games or any software that is successful you have to be innovative in your thinking and come up with ideas on your own. To win at many types of game you have to have a bit of that, too. I wonder if China is afraid of people exercising their brains in ways that are not amenable to the CCP. They want followers not leaders. That the real danger to the CCP. If too many start thinking for themselves, it's hold on power will disappear. I really think that is why they cracked down on Hong Kong so fast. They don't want that in their system. Innovative thinking is a bit of a problem in the west right now, too. Where it is corporations who don't want the competition. But it is still not as bad as in China.
also don't want funds & IP to go out side of c (Score:2)
also don't want funds & IP to go out side of chain to much. They don't want to be an Paper tiger
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BINGO.
The CCP needs a cheap labor force to keep the foreign dollars rolling in. 'Laying Flat' doesn't make the party wealthy.
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That doesn't fit. They banned most private tutoring at the same time, which puts pressure on parents to spend more time in the home.
The official reason makes more sense; they want people to spend more time on Patriotic Activities, like shitposting about Americans on social media.
china ban private tutoring helps all get good scho (Score:2)
china ban private tutoring helps all get good schooling vs only the rich.
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china ban private tutoring helps all get mediocre schooling vs only the poor.
FTFY. You don't improve everyone by dragging down the highest performers, you just drag everyone down to the lowest level.
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There are other hobbies than just working and sleeping. I wonder if the CCP is using this as a way to get kids separated from foreign cultures, because once they are not exposed to Western stuff, it is easier to view non Chinese as aliens, and eventually... enemies.
Of course, with the time freed up from gaming, I wonder what is coming down the pipe for school age children to take up the time between school and sleep.
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The CCP wants highly educated thinkers to power its economy. Previously they were approving large numbers of games, but the numbers grew very large and difficult to manage, and companies would do things like change the content of the game after release and not submit the update for certification.
They have essentially done what Newspeak in 1984 was supposed to do, except not with language but by framing everything in state run news publications and on state run TV/radio. For example, people in China don't wo
That'll make about 100k less "Flappy" clones. (Score:2)
Or 10k, using the corrected number.
Allot will have extra time on their hands (Score:1)
What will the Chinese government socially engineer them to believe and direct them to do with all that extra time on their hands?
Certainly not good if you combine that with all the war talk.
Isn't this a huge chance for FOSS Gaming? (Score:2)
How is FOSS (W)LAN Gaming doing in China? With that epic army of teenagers prohibited from regular internet gaming it can't be long before they meet and group locally and start developing and playing their own games, no? This might just be the actual secret plan behind this regulation - force Chinas youth to become expert coders all on their own ... maybe?
Imagine we'd have some bizarre law prohibiting online games in Europe and the US. We'd be all pulling the Xonotic Codebase tomorrow and pimping it out to
Oh No! (Score:2)
Where am I going to get the latest copies of Grand Theft Car, Mad Birds, and Fort Knight?