Launch support for games in China
We will work out which approval route your rights allow, write the requirements your local partners must meet, register the rights contract, and prepare the filing that puts the game in front of the administration.
Decision window
Срок рассмотрения
80 working days
80 рабочих дней
Minors may play
Окно для подростков
Fri–Sun, holidays 20–21
пт–вс и праздники, 20–21
Minor means
Несовершеннолетний
under 18
до 18 лет
When you need help launching a game in China
The game has no approval yet
Publishing a game to players here needs a decision from the press and publication administration. Until it is issued, there is no lawful way to put the game on sale.
You have no publisher in the country
The filing is made by a licensed publishing unit, and the game is run by an operator holding a telecoms and information services licence. A studio abroad is neither of those.
Real-name checks are not built
Every game has to connect to the state verification system, and no account may play without it. There is no trial mode exception, and the system is checked before approval.
The game has no Chinese script
The filing asks for every Chinese character the game can display, plus the list of words the game blocks. That is a build task, and it is on the critical path.
Minors can play at any hour
Play by minors is confined to named hours on named days. If the client cannot enforce that, the game is not ready to be filed, let alone released.
Your title may already be taken
A name that repeats an already approved game is not accepted, and the rules expect simplified characters. Renaming after the art is finished costs more than checking first.
How a game gets approved in China
Approval here is not a formality attached to a release date: it is the release. The administration decides, a licensed publishing unit files, and the stated period is eighty working days from the day the application is accepted. Approvals are also granted within planning requirements for total volume, structure and distribution — the requirement is published, a number is not. Everything a studio can control sits before that decision, and that is where this work is done.
What you get
- A route chosen and dated
- Rights registered before filing
- The build requirements filing needs
- Partner requirements in writing
- One owner for the whole file
What we prepare
- The choice of route, which follows who holds the rights and nothing else.
- Registration of the rights contract with the copyright authority, which the filing will not proceed without.
- The requirements list for your publishing and operating partners, written so you can check a candidate against it.
- The filing pack: the request document, the application, the screenshots, the script, the blocked-word list and the review accounts.
- The description of your protection system for minors, in the form the filing reads it.
- The check of your title against the games already approved, before the name reaches the store art.
What stays on your side
- The build work: the Chinese text, the hour limits and the real-name flow are engineering; the paperwork comes after.
- The commercial deal with the publisher and the operator, after we set out what each of them must hold.
- The decision on the title, after we have checked it against the approved list.
Two routes to approval
The imported-game route
This is the route for a game whose rights sit with a holder abroad. It requires a publishing unit licensed for online game publishing, a rights contract registered with the copyright authority, and an operator holding the telecoms and information services licence.
The domestic route
This one is open only where the game’s copyright holder is a citizen or a domestically funded company. A studio abroad cannot use it, which is why the choice of route is settled before anything else.
Sources: conditions, the eighty-working-day period and the list of filing materials for the imported-game route and the domestic route; hours for minors, the real-name system and the under-eighteen definition — notice in force since 1 September 2021.
Stages of work
Settling the route — about a week.
We will establish who actually holds the rights to every part of the game, because that single answer decides which of the two routes is open to you and what has to be registered first.
Requirements for the two partners.
You get a written list of what a publishing unit and an operator must hold, so a candidate can be checked before a commercial conversation starts.
Registering the rights contract.
The contract with the rights holder goes to the copyright authority, and the confirmation is part of the filing. Without it the application does not move.
The build the filing reads.
The Chinese text of the game, the blocked-word list, the screenshots, the demonstration video and the review accounts. We will specify each item so your team builds it once.
The protection system for minors.
Real-name registration, the hour limits and the payment controls are described in the filing and tested with the accounts you supply. We will write that description against what the build does.
Filing, and the answer.
The pack goes to the provincial administration first and reaches the national one on its approval. We will hold the file, answer the questions that come back and tell you what changes if the answer is no.
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