Mobile Legends: Bang Bang finally gets approved by the regulator to be released in China, along with 85 other titles.
In April, the Chinese regulator approved 86 new game licenses for release in the country. These include titles from major internet companies such as ByteDance, Alibaba Group, and Bilibili.
The National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), which oversees video game licenses in China, also approved a similar number of games in each of the first three months of 2023. This could be a positive sign for the future of the gaming industry in China, which has been recovering from a prolonged period of regulatory crackdown.
One of the newly approved games is Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB), developed and published by Moonton Technology, which was acquired by ByteDance in 2021. MLBB is highly popular in Southeast Asia and became the top-grossing MOBA game in Asia in January 2020, with 61% of its revenue coming from Southeast Asia.
It remains to be seen whether MLBB can replicate its success in China, where it faces stiff competition from Tencent’s Honour of Kings, which has been the most popular and top-grossing game in the country for years. However, MLBB has dominated the Southeast Asia market, where Honour of Kings has struggled to gain traction.
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Other approved titles include Earth: Revival, a survival game developed by ByteDance’s gaming subsidiary Nuverse; Re: Aethalis, a MOBA game that will be operated by Shanghai-based video streaming platform Bilibili; and Sen Zhi Guo Du, a game produced by Lingxi Games, Alibaba’s mobile gaming subsidiary.
According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), Nuverse has been focusing on developing “hardcore” games that can generate consistent revenue for ByteDance. However, the company reportedly laid off hundreds of employees from two studios in Shanghai and Hangzhou last year due to regulatory pressure.
Meanwhile, Bilibili has recently shifted its focus back to gaming, which previously accounted for more than 80% of its total revenue before being surpassed by video streaming.
