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China approved 1,771 games in 2025, the most since 2018, and imports came back ​

China's game regulator, the NPPA, issued licenses for 1,771 games in 2025: 1,676 domestic titles and 95 imported ones. That's up roughly a quarter from 2024's 1,416 and the highest annual total since 2018, the year a months-long approval freeze rattled the entire industry and wiped out billions in market value. The single-month peak in 2025 reached 184 titles, with August alone clearing 173.

Why the count is the story ​

In China, a game legally cannot monetize without a license number, the banhao. When approvals slow or stop, as they did in 2018 and again during a 2021-2022 tightening, the whole domestic industry seizes up regardless of how good anyone's games are. The license pipeline is the master valve, and for years its uncertainty was the single biggest risk factor hanging over the sector.

2025 is the clearest signal in a long time that the valve is open and steady. Approvals didn't just rise in volume, they normalized in rhythm: a predictable monthly cadence instead of unpredictable droughts. Imports matter here too. Foreign titles had slowed to a trickle, and monthly issuance settling back to roughly nine or ten imported approvals a month means the door that had been mostly shut is open again. January 2025 alone cleared high-profile titles like Honor of Kings World and Star Resonance.

What it means for builders ​

A predictable regulator changes what studios can plan. When you can reasonably expect a license on a normal timeline, you can greenlight, budget, and staff a project without betting the company on a bureaucratic coin flip. Stability at the top of the funnel is what lets everything below it run. The record approval count and, more importantly, the steady cadence behind it, tell you the Chinese domestic market is planning aggressively again after years of defensive crouch.

For the rest of the world, this is the supply side of everything else in this timeline. Black Myth: Wukong, Marvel Rivals, the AI-tooling arms race between Tencent, NetEase, and miHoYo, all of it runs on a domestic market that's confident enough to invest. A healthy approval pipeline is the quiet precondition for the loud releases.

For Cinevva, the regulatory specifics are China's to navigate, but the pattern is universal: creation flourishes where the path to publish is predictable and open. Our version of that valve is a browser link. There's no gatekeeper deciding whether a creator's game gets to exist, no queue, no number to wait on. Different mechanism, same principle. The health of any creative ecosystem tracks how reliably a finished thing can reach an audience, and 2025 was the year China's answer to that question finally stabilized.

References ​