Apple Has Been Letting Games Slide by Chinese App Store Restrictions for Years

It’s not a big secret that the Chinese government takes a relatively heavy-handed approach to what’s allowed on the App Store in China, and Apple has to walk a pretty fine line as a result, but it’s come to light lately that perhaps the iPhone maker hasn’t been vetting apps as strictly as Chinese authorities would have liked.

Generally, we hear news about apps being removed from the Chinese App Store on a case-by-case basis, ranging from the elimination of The New York Times app a couple of years ago to the more recent crackdown on HKmap Live, but it seems that Apple has actually let quite a few apps slip into the App Store that shouldn’t have been allowed in the first place under Chinese law.

This began to come to light last week after the popular game Plague, Inc. was removed from the Chinese App Store at the request of the Chinese government. The simulation game, which challenges players to create a virus that will end all life on the planet, obviously touches on some pretty sensitive issues right now, to the point where the developer, Ndemic Creations, had to remind people it’s just a game. On top of that, the in-game tutorial also has the first outbreak beginning in China, as it’s one of the most densely populated countries on the earth, making it unlikely the Chinese government would have ever been particularly happy about it even before it became a case of art imitating real life.

The game likely got the attention of Chinese authorities after it rose to become the most downloaded app in China over the past several weeks, however the reasons given by the Chinese government for the takedown were opaque at best, saying only that it “includes content that is illegal in China as determined by the Cyberspace Administration of China.”

As TechCrunch discovered, however, this wasn’t a case of Apple caving to Beijing’s capriciousness, or even authorities taking issue with new content added to the game (such as a December update that introduced “fake news” as a tool for helping to spread the virus), but the fact that the game never should have been allowed into the Chinese App Store in the first place.

Unlicensed Games

It turns out that China has had a law on the books since 2016 that requires all video games—both PC and mobile—to receive a license from the government before they can be distributed in China. Developers must apply for an ISBN number with Chinese authorities for each title they wish to release in the country, and games that don’t receive an approved ISBN number are not allowed to be sold.

Except Apple has been selling these games, and it seems that Plague, Inc. is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, according to The Information, Ndemic Creations actually applied for an ISBN sometime back in 2018 and was turned down due to its content being “socially inappropriate.”

As much as Apple often gets pilloried for acceding to the demands of the Chinese government when it comes to the App Store, the company clearly wants to avoid the need to block or ban apps as much as possible. Not only do games remain an important source of direct revenue from App Store sales, but they also help to promote the iPhone itself by offering a vibrant collection of game titles for Chinese consumers.

According to TechCrunch, when China introduced the new licensing requirements in 2016, Apple technically complied and began asking games for proof of their government license, but didn’t go so far as to actually check any of the ISBNs to ensure that they were valid. Many developers got away with “fabricated ISBN numbers,” or took advantage of another loophole by publishing their apps outside of China first, since it seems Apple’s vetting process was required only for new apps being published in the Chinese App Store and not those expanding into it from other markets.

Apple has been under fire in the Chinese media for this practice since at at least 2018, but has clearly been slow to actually crack down, announcing only last week that all developers with games on the Chinese App Store will need to provide proof of their license by June 30, and although Apple hasn’t specified what will happen to those titles that don’t comply by the deadline, it seems likely that they’ll suffer a fate similar to other apps that don’t meet with the approval of the Chinese authorities.