New gaming rules in China will ban poker and other games

[The Buzz]

In its latest attempt to stop online gambling, China will no longer allow poker and mahjong video games to be sold in its country.

According to an article by Techcrunch, China’s State Administration of Press and Publication resumed the approval process for new video game licenses on Monday and announced that any video games centered around gambling activities would no longer be granted licenses. The agency cited concerns that these video games could help facilitate illegal gambling rings.

From the article:

On April 22, China finally resumed the approval process to license new games for monetization. Licensing got back on track in December, but Reuters reported in February that the government stopped accepting new submissions due to a mounting pile of applications.

The bad news: The number of games allowed onto the market annually will be capped, and some genres of games will no longer be eligible, according to information communicated at the gaming conference. Mahjong and poker games are taken off the approval list following a wave of earlier government crackdowns over concerns that such titles may channel illegal gambling. These digital forms of traditional leisure activities are immensely popular for studios because they are relatively cheap to make and bear lucrative fruit. According to video game researcher Niko Partners, 37 percent of the 8,561 games approved in 2017 were poker and mahjong titles.

While the new rule is set to wipe out hundreds of small developers focused on the genre, it may only have a limited impact on the entrenched players as the restriction applies only to new applicants.

“It won’t affect us much because we are early to the market and have accumulated a big collection of licenses,” a marketing manager at one of China’s biggest online poker and mahjong games publishers told TechCrunch.

Read the entire article here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/21/ch...erial-schemes/

[ocreditor]

It was only a matter of time

[Former Member 14]

While there at it, clamping down on Chinese hackers, spammers etc., etc., etc... Now that would be a great move forward!

[Moonlight Cat]

If i understand right they mean social gaming? As i know Chinese gamblers and gambler from all other the world use Chinese social gaming app for real money gambling.