China
They said only Nixon could go to China, but these days China comes to you. In 2024, Game Science's Black Myth: Wukong became the second most played game in Steam's history: a big budget action game inspired by Journey to the West, a novel every Chinese schoolchild knows. Genshin Impact and Honor of Kings had already gone global, and Chinese developed games earned 20.5 billion dollars overseas in 2025. At home sit 683 million players spending 350.8 billion yuan in 2025, twice as many players as the United States has people. The traffic runs both ways: League of Legends and Clash of Clans belong to Tencent, a position the US government is reported to be reviewing. Unsurprisingly, China manages protects its game industry. Nothing releases in the market without a publication licence, the 版号 (banhao). Play time for under 18s is officially restricted to an hour a day, on Fridays, weekends and holidays.
Photograph GamesSci
Market size
~350.8 billion yuan2025
Domestic games market actual sales revenue is 350.789 billion yuan in 2025, up 7.68 percent, with a user base of 683 million, both record highs, per the 2025 China Game Industry Report.
Source CGIGC annual report via Xinhua, state news agency
Each market states its size in its own currency, for its own year, and on its own definition of what counts, which is consumer spending in some and industry revenue in others. These ten figures cannot be compared with one another.
Player population
683 million2025
- Not recorded
Each figure comes from a different source, a different year, and a different definition of a player. The bars show rough scale only. No free source measures every market on one method.
Trends here
Trends tagged to this market come first. Most trends in games are global, and those apply here too.
- Regulation, safety & ageChild safety enforcement in game platformsThe defining child safety story in games right now, and the wedge that will push age verification from platform policy into binding law, hardware, and parental trust for years.Dominant
- Geography & powerChina's original-IP franchise build-outPremium games are no longer a JP/US/EU default. It resets competitive analysis, soft-power framing, and talent flows — while rising AAA costs, publicly acknowledged by studios, become the first real constraint.Dominant
- Money & business modelIndustry layoff eraNearly every business, labor, and creative-risk story of 2023 to 2026 traces back to this contraction. Indispensable for context, as it informs almost everything else.Dominant
Research yourself
10 of 10 sources
These rows
| Name | What it lets you find out | Type | Cost | Markets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Niko Partners (Niko IQ) | The specialist source for China, SEA, and MENA games markets, with informative free summaries. Paid reports are expensive and the free layer is summary-level. Also tracks Chinese publishing licence approvals and explains regulation for outside readers, which pairs with the NPPA primary source. Enterprise pricing is custom. Free blog summaries. | Market research firm | Paid | CN, MENA, Asia |
| Newrank (新榜, Xīnbǎng) | Longest-standing CN new-media data platform offering the proprietary NRI index across WeChat, Douyin, Xiaohongshu, Kuaishou, Bilibili and Weibo, with daily/weekly/monthly rankings including MCN influence charts. +86 phone registration typically required. Not accessible in full from outside CN without workarounds | Creator tracking | Freemium | CN |
| Feigua (飞瓜数据, Fēiguā Shùjù) | Douyin/Kuaishou/Bilibili streamer and live-commerce rankings (the standard tool for who is big on Douyin gaming). Commerce-metric weighted, +86 registration, access constraints from outside CN Limited free content. | Creator tracking | Paid | CN |
| Chanmama (蝉妈妈, Chánmāmā) | Douyin + Xiaohongshu creator/live rankings, a good complement to Feigua. Similar access restrictions as other Chinese sources Limited free content. | Creator tracking | Paid | CN |
| TopKlout (克劳锐, Kèláoruì) | Downloadable reports without login, including creator value rankings and collaboration charts. Annual MCN industry reports are the standard reference on CN's MCN ecosystem. Report cadence uneven, no site search | Creator tracking | Free | CN |
| DoHuya | Viewership metrics for DouYu and Huya from the Streams Charts family (a rare English-language window into CN game live streaming). Two platforms only. Misses Douyin/Bilibili live, which now dominate | Creator tracking | Freemium | CN |
| Gamma Data | The GPC report's official data partner. Monthly/quarterly market reports, segment studies (女性向, mini-games, AI). Distribution is WeChat-public-account-first, the single biggest access friction for outside researchers. | Market research firm | Free | CN |
| TapTap (CN) | China's leading game discovery store and community, and the most legible public surface for CN genre and tag vocabulary, the source for the CN terms on the Genres tab. Category and tag labels appear on award pages, collections and game pages. The CN edition is taptap.cn and the global edition taptap.io. A swarm of lookalike mirror domains exists, use the two official domains only. Reviews and ratings are community sentiment, not evidence of fact. | Genre taxonomy | Free | CN, Global |
| Tencent IR | The single best free window into Chinese gaming and its global ownership web (Riot, Supercell, stakes everywhere) | Corporate IR | Not recorded | CN, Global |
| NetEase IR | Second biggest CN major with notable JP studio investments | Corporate IR | Not recorded | CN, JP |