Starting in July, Apple will begin to exclude games from the Chinese App Store that have not previously been officially licensed in China.
This is reported by Bloomberg. He also, with reference to “people familiar with the situation,” notes: in China, developers and publishers were told that now they need to license projects if they want to continue operating them in the country.
In fact, this has been known for a long time. We have repeatedly written that since July, the App Store will not allow games (paid and those with IAP) that have not received an ISBN ratification number to be placed in the Chinese App Store.
The last time we covered this topic was on June 18, when new details became known about what the iOS game publishing process would look like after June 30. For example, we told you that Apple will carefully check the ISBN during apruva. If the name of the one who licensed the project does not match the name of the actual publisher, Apple will “wrap” the game.
The main issue that bothered most foreign publishers: what will happen to games that are already in the Chinese App Store, but have not yet received permission to publish (and most likely, most of them will not receive). There was no concrete answer to this question for a long time.
Now Bloomberg seems to be giving it. But he immediately notes that it is unknown how much time Apple will take to remove games from the Chinese App Store. Now there are about 60 thousand games in it, distributed as paid or containing micropayments. At least a third of them, according to the company AppInChina, which helps in publishing in China, do not have an ISBN.
“They will lose all revenue from the market at one point, which for most of them is the second most profitable after the American one,” says Rich Bishop, CEO of AppInChina.
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