China is licensing new games again, ending a nine-month freeze

China's media regulator has ended a nine-month freeze on new video game approvals by licensing 80 games for release in the country.

The list consists largely of mobile games by smaller, domestic developers, but industry analyst Daniel Ahmad told the Financial Times that he expected "to see a ramp up in the number of titles approved starting from next month for both domestic and foreign titles".

None of the approved games belong to Tencent, the world's largest games company, which has been hit hard by the freeze—its stock has fallen by around 25% since the start of the year.

The regulator will have to work through a backlog of around 5,000 games facing approval, and gaming executives in China told the FT that they expected censorship to be tightened as the backlog is cleared.

As well as freezing game approvals, the Chinese government has cracked down on gaming in other ways, such as blocking Twitch, in an apparent bid to curb a growing number of myopia cases in young children.

However, the appetite for gaming in the country has remained strong, including on PC. In October, Steam surpassed 30 million users in China, and Chinese language games such as Chinese Parents and The Scroll of Taiwu have found success on the platform.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.