In his biggest cleanup in one day, Apple removed 39,000 games from its Chinese store as part of a crackdown games without a government license in the country.
According to Reuters, the news is not a great surprise. Apple deleted about 30,000 apps from the Chinese App Store during the summer, and warned that more would be removed if they dinot received official approval at the end of June. That deadline was then extended to December 31. After yesterday’s purge, only 74 of the top 1,500 paid games are left, and among the affected games are from Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed Identity and NBA 2K20, according to research firm of Qimai.
Getting approval for a game in China is a long, painstaking task for many Western publishers. Essentially, they need to get a Chinese government ISBN number– a process that is almost impossible unless foreign developers collaborate with a Chinese publisher for the launch, according to Engadget. It was before Financial times reports that app developers were allowed to list their games for sale in the App Store pending an official license. Not anymore.
The great thing here is that while games cleaned up the vast majority of apps, they weren’t the nothing but the ones. In total 46,000 apps were deleted. This follows a long trend of Apple bowing to pressure from the Chinese government regarding apps allowed in the App Store. Last year, Apple removed an app used by protesters from Hong Kong to follow the police after China said Apple was a party to “illegal acts”. Around the same time, it too removed the Quartz News app from the Chinese store because of the publication coverage of the Hong Kong protests. In 2015 even Apple are blocked own news app of loading in China.
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Apple has always had to be careful with China. It’s not just the second largest market, but Apples supply chain is also heavily dependent on Chinese factories. (This eventually led to some delays in Apple’s 2020 product launches, in particular the iPhone 12, because of the pandemic.) The US-China trade war also prompted the company to consider moving somewhere other than 15-30% of its production capacity outside of China.
That said, iIt is not clear why Apple suddenly demands strict compliance with a Chinese licensing law that has existed since 2016. Android app stores, such as those from Tencent and Huawei, have obeyed the law in the past. The Financial times suggests it could have something to do with mounting tensions with the US and China, causing the latter to tighten control at Apple. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem to be Apple ‘s bottom line. The FT reports that Apple will likely only lose about $ 340 million in sales, as most of the biggest games are already licensed.