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Apple purges 39,000 titles from its Chinese App Store

As a result of apps not having a license

Apple purges 39,000 titles from its Chinese App Store

Apple removed 39,000 games from its Chinese App Store on December 31st.

As reported by Reuters, it marks the biggest removal performed by Apple in a single day. The tech giant had given mobile publishers until the end of 2020 to obtain the appropriate license.

The Tech giant confirmed its plans to remove unlicensed games last month. A continuation from the ISBN issues that it had tackled in June.

Following a warning from Apple, mobile game developers and publishers had until August 1st 2020 to obtain a license, or they were to be removed.

Change up

Moreover, some top players were affected by the purge as Ubisoft, and 2K saw the removal of Assassin's Creed Identity and NBA 2K20, respectively.

Furthermore, only 74 of the top-grossing games on China's App Store managed to survive.

"This major pivot to only accepting paid games that have a game license, coupled with China's extremely low number of foreign game licenses approved this year, will probably lead more game developers to switch to an ad-supported model for their Chinese versions," said AppInChina marketing manager Todd Kuhns.


Staff Writer

Kayleigh is the Staff Writer for PocketGamer.biz. Besides PGbiz and PCGI she has written as a list writer for Game Rant, rambling about any and all things games related. You can also find her on Twitter talking utter nonsense.