According to the report, game developers NetEase, Lilith Games and IGG, have limited game development or laid off staff.
According to a source from Lilith Games, the company has cut its 2D game project named Eden, and the project’s staff has been transferred to other departments. Eden is still in the R&D stage and has not been officially launched. The source said the reason for the outage could be due to a delay in the issuance of game registration numbers.
Many game developers, including XD Network, Kuaishou, Bilibili, Tencent, and NetEase have seen their share prices drop significantly.
As reported by Jiemian News, the incident may be related to rumors that no new game registration numbers will be issued in 2022, although China’s National Press and Publication Administration has pointed out that they are still accepting applications for game registration numbers as usual.
An employee from NetEase Games said that as of August 2021, after reports of tightening game registration numbers, a number of projects in Hangzhou and Guangzhou were suspended. Most of the employees were transferred to other teams, and a small number of employees chose to leave the company. “The company has assessed these projects as a whole and chose to stop their losses early,” the source said.
Internal staff of IGG also confirmed the news of the layoffs. “Departments in Shanghai and Fuzhou have laid off some employees, but overseas projects have not been affected,” the employee said. “Firing is normal in the current round.”
Moreover, people in NetEase, Lilith Games and IGG all believe that overseas business will be the main development direction of domestic game companies in the future. According to data published by SensorTower, a total of 34 Chinese manufacturers entered the list of Top 100 global mobile game publishers in January, with total revenue of about 2.1 billion USD, accounting for 35.6 % of total revenue of global mobile game publishers.