China’s gaming regulator on Monday licensed the release of 45 games of choice for Baidu and XD’s Party Star, ending a nine-month stagnation that has hit many of the country’s technology giants.
The National Press and Public Administration has published the list on their website. Reuters reports that China had earlier in the day licensed XD Party Star.
Other companies licensed for the game include iDreamSky, 37Games, a subsidiary of G-bits Network Technology Xiamen, Shenzhen Zqgame and Yoozoo Games.
Chinese gaming companies NetEase and Billibili jumped 8 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively, in US-listed shares of Premarket Trading.
Chinese regulators stopped approving game monetization licenses in July last year, which greatly affected the likes of industry giants Tencent Holdings and Netiz, and put thousands of industry companies out of business.
The break coincides with a move by China to impose new gaming deadlines on under-18s in August, a harsh social intervention that said it would have to plug on the growing addiction once described as “spiritual opium”.
The suspension was almost as long as the previous suspension order of 2018 when China stopped approving new video game titles for a period of nine months as part of a revision by the regulatory body overseeing the sector.
Thomson Reuters 2022