Tencent Loses Billions As New Games Approval Put On Hold By China

China has stopped approving games for the past four months and game developers are badly impacted.

In Tencent’s quarterly earnings report confirms that there has been a temporary suspension that caused the game giant to suffer a profit loss due to its inability to monetize their new games, such as PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, which is currently pending approval for monetization.

Tencent’s President Martin Lau previously issued a statement to their investors:

At this point in time, we don’t have visibility on when exactly the official approval will start yet. We do believe it’s not a matter of whether these games will be approved for monetization, but a matter of when.

Bloomberg reported that their source informed them that the Chinese government officials are undergoing internal restructuring and transitioning of task between divisions that caused the games approval to be put on hold. Video games on mobile and online are a huge market in China and the Chinese government are making things impossible for game developers to release new games at the moment.