Technology
Apple closes the loophole in the Chinese App Store, removing thousands of games
As a result of a regulation that allows all paying games and games with in-app purchases to be approved by Chinese authorities, Apple will start withdrawing thousands of games from its chinese app store in July.
Bloomberg notes. The action marks the end of a gap that enabled developers to sell games on the platform while waiting for approval.
Chinese regulators could take months to authorize games, which would allow developers to benefit from titles which would otherwise be prohibited. Bloomberg says Rockstar Games depended on the breakthrough to, for instance, sell Grand Theft Auto series games throughout the world.
But Apple started telling developers in February that it would have to acquire licenses before 30 June or risk banning and withdrawing their software.
At least one third of the 60.000 games currently listed in the Chinese app store of Apple that are payable or feature on-the-line procurements and currently without a license, the measures are expected to effect. To certain game developers, this may mean this Apple's second biggest device market loses all sales.
Developers can switch their games to a model based exclusively on ads to meet their license needs or adjust their games in order to respond to censors' requirements when they have the resources to do so.
However, back in February, Apple started to remind developers that by June 30th they would have to get licenses or risk banning and deleting their games.
At least a third of the 60,000 currently online games listed in the Chinese App Store, which are paid for or feature in-app shopping, are anticipated to have impact on the actions and which currently lack a licence.
This might mean losing all revenues from Apples Second largest app market for some game developers. Developers can switch their games to an ad-based model so that they meet their license requirements or adapt their games to censor requirements, if they have the resources to do this.
Bloomberg notes that the requirements for a license before publishing in China have been enforced since 2016 for major Android app stores. The situation with Android app stores in China is however different from iOS because local players such as Tencent, Oppo and Huawei run these app stores. Google is not selling the Chinese Google Play Store.
In the same month, the news of the removals came that Apple, on request of the Chinese Government, pulled a range of podcast apps from its Chinese app store.
Such devices may be used for accessing information in the country that is deemed illegal. Bloomberg notes that China accounted for approximately 20 per cent of the 2019 sales of the Apple App Store.
Apple refused to comment on its story to Bloomberg, and The Verge did not immediately respond to its request for comments by a representative of the company.
