New details about working with the Chinese App Store after June

June 30th is approaching. After this date, Western games running in the Chinese App Store without local ratification will be outlawed. How Apple will deal with them is still unclear. But there are other details about the current situation.

In particular, yesterday, June 17, in a big post on the pages of WeChat, they were shared by the Chinese edition of GameLook. With reference to numerous insiders , it reported the following:

• By June 30, all previously released paid games or games with micropayments on the mainland must provide Apple with a ratification number (ISBN). This was known before, but GameLook puts special emphasis on the fact that this should be taken very seriously now.
• If a Western game that does not have a local partner does not have an ISBN, then it will not be able to get it on its own in the future. The only way out will be to work with a local company.
• Apple will carefully compare the game itself with the ISBN data. The latter also specifies the product operator. If the operator’s name does not match the name of the actual publisher, Apple will require proof that it was the specific publisher who approved the project.
• One company/operator will have to be responsible for the game. It is assumed that this will lead to the destruction of the common practice when a Chinese company receives approval for publication, and then allows a Western publisher to independently manage a product in China.
• So far, the situation does not concern those games that earn exclusively from advertising. But in the future, perhaps, they will be subject to the same restrictions that apply to all gaming products for WeChat games.
• It is clear that since July, new games will not be able to appear in the Chinese App Store without an ISBN. However, the question is still open whether the store will actively remove all games that do not have it. GameLook is confident that everything will be softer. Sooner or later, projects will face the need to release an update. And it just can’t be done without getting a ratification number.
• But, perhaps, companies themselves will be forced to remove games from the store. According to Chinese law, for operating a game without an ISBN, you can get a very large fine, the calculation of which is based on the size of the game’s income (for example, at the end of 2019, one of the Chinese companies was ordered to pay almost $ 100 thousand for work without ratification).

Russian Russian Disclaimer: The text above is the result of an analysis of three machine translations (Google-translation from Chinese to Russian, Google-translation from Chinese to English and Yandex-translation from Chinese to Russian). Therefore, some of the details of the original could be interpreted with slight distortion.

Also on the topic:

• To launch the game in the Chinese App Store, you will now need to obtain a licenseMore than 20 thousand iOS games can be removed from the Chinese App Store
• In China, the publisher of the game without a license was awarded a fine of $ 99 thousand
• Is there any news?