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Image Source : China Visual

BEIJING, September 14 (TMTPOST) – A total of 73 new games received licenses in September, according to the official website of the National Press and Publication Administration.

After more than a year without a new game being approved, NetEase, China"s second-largest gaming company behind Tencent, finally received its first video game license in 14 months for a sports game titled "All-star Street Ball Party". As a result of the news, shares of NetEase rose more than 5% in pre-market trading.

Last time NetEase got a new version number was in July 2021, and the approved product was a casual competitive hand game.

Nanjing Wangdian Technology，a subsidiary of Tencent Holdings, has also received a license for an educational game called Health Protection War.

Chinese regulators did not approve any commercial game for China"s biggest game developer Tencent, which last received a license number in May 2021. It is facing the problem of old products losing popularity in both local and international markets, while new games cannot take over as the mainstay.

In the second quarter, Tencent"s local game revenue dropped 1% to 31.8 billion yuan ($4.45 billion) , and game revenue in the international game market dropped 1% year-on-year to 10.7 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) under the influence of factors such as anti-addiction regulation for minors.

Most of the game companies that got the licenses this time are small and medium-sized developers. Large manufacturers still have stock projects to contribute to the revenue, while small and medium-sized manufacturers rely on a few new products for their operation and are relatively more affected.

Previously, some industry sources pointed out that Tencent and NetEase have not obtained the license number for a long time, indicating the policy tendency of regulation.