Apple has frozen the updates of thousands of games available in the App Store, because these have not presented the corresponding license from the country's regulators. Last February, Apple sent an email to the community of developers in this country advising them of the deadline to present this license, on 30st June.
We are on July 2 and just as Apple had notified the developers, all the updates of the games that are pending approval they have been completely paralyzed until Apple receives the corresponding license.
The government of China established this new restriction in 2016, but it was only a few months ago that it began to apply, in order to have greater control (as if that were not enough) over the games available in your territory.
According to Tood Kuhns, marketing manager of the App consulting group in China, this move by the Chinese government could mean losing about 1.000 million dollars.
No one is clear on how Apple managed to avoid enforcing the 2016 licensing rule for so long. But considering that the US-China trade war began to heat up earlier this year, this decision is no surprise.
The App Store is estimated to host around 60.000 game apps in China, free games that include in-app purchases plus other titles that have a set price. It is estimated that the Chinese authorities have issued just over 43.000 licenses in recent years since 2016, of which 1.570 were awarded last year.
China has placed great emphasis in recent years on control the type of games available in the country. In fact, until PUBG Mobile did not launch a specific version for this country where the dead of the enemies are shown differently, this title was not available in the application stores.