Perennial
China's banhao throttles games
Batch cadence is the cleanest public read on Chinese market access and regulatory mood — but approvals rose while H1 gacha revenue fell 8.97%, so permission and commercial outcome have decoupled.
What is a banhao?
A banhao (版号) is the license a game needs before it can make money in China. It’s issued by the NPPA, China’s publishing regulator. Only a Chinese publisher can hold one, so a foreign studio has two choices: team up with a local partner or skip China entirely.
Live in
Where it stands
Every game monetized in China needs an NPPA publication license (版号, banhao), and only a licensed Chinese publisher can hold one — foreign studios apply through a partner or not at all. Supply is a dial the regulator turns: total freeze in 2021-22, then 1,771 approvals in 2025, and 2026 running ~19% ahead of that pace at 1,110 domestic and 37 imported licenses by the July batch. Imports now clear on a roughly two-month cadence. The binding constraint has quietly moved downstream — real-name verification SDKs and server-side minor-cutoff enforcement are now the harder half.
Further reading
The timeline, consequences and objections for this trend are not written yet. What it is and its reading list are above.