Behind 1,362 “birth permits,” the industry is undergoing a blood replacement.
August 31 was a surreal day for the game industry. In the morning, the National Press and Publication Administration released the August 2026 game approval information: 215 games received licenses, 209 domestic and 6 imported (source: Cailian Press). On the same day, Qutang Network announced the shutdown of Mimumimuha — the product that once topped two charts on day one will close its servers on November 30 (source: GameLook). A torrent of licenses and a product's death in the same frame, absurd as a script.
First, the numbers. Of the 215 in a single month, 209 were domestic, about 97.2% (source: Cailian Press, Caixun Express). From January to August this year, a cumulative 1,362 licenses were issued — 1,319 domestic and 43 imported (source: Cailian Press), averaging about 170 per month, with August clearly ramping up. On the list: 37 Interactive Entertainment's A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality: The Great Dao, Changyou's Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils: Eternal Classic, and Sunborn's Fingertip Breakout, among others, passed review; 12 more completed information changes, with Tencent's Teamfight Tactics approved for a client version and NetEase Leihuo's The Legend of the Condor Heroes renamed A Thousand-Mile Journey (source: National Business Daily, Cailian Press).
How to read the surge in licenses? National Business Daily's commentary is blunt: breaking 200 in a single month sends a signal of persistently loosening supply, which is a medium-to-long-term positive for the pipeline of new titles; but rising totals also mean fiercer competition, and the market is now weighing industrialized quality and overseas performance more heavily, so the difficulty of breaking through for small and mid-tier teams keeps rising (source: National Business Daily). In plain words: the birth permit is getting less and less valuable, because what you have, everyone else has too.
The demand side is even less optimistic. The 2026 mobile game industry half-year report shows 672 million monthly active users of mobile games, with an eight-character headline: the fight for existing users has quietly begun (source: TMTPost). Xinhua News Agency, citing the first-half game industry report, says the industry is growing steadily, with PC games and overseas expansion standing out (source: Xinhua). The total number of players hasn't grown much, but product supply has hit a new high — in this game, someone is bound to be pushed off the table.
Those pushed off the table have already appeared. Mimumimuha topped two charts on day one, but peaked at only #93 on the iOS top-grossing chart, shut down after 16 months of operation, and its parent company Qutang Network was ordered into compulsory liquidation by the court, case number (2026) Hu 03 Qiang Qing 129; its founder joined NetEase this February to work on Eggy Party side modes (source: GameLook, National Business Daily). This isn't an isolated case; it's structural: money and people are both concentrating in teams that can operate long-term.
Overseas, the same play is unfolding. On September 2, news came that Supercell's acquisition of Metacore had advanced to the closing stage (source: Tencent News). Metacore's Merge Mansion has surpassed 60 million global downloads and about $700 million in cumulative revenue, making it the creator of the “merge-2” genre — now overtaken by later rivals like Travel Town. Supercell has invested more than $200 million in it over the past eight years (source: InvestGame), yet one of the giant's first moves upon taking over is a restructuring with layoffs of up to 160 people in Finland (source: InvestGame). Buy a star team and immediately start cutting — that's how little patience capital has for “growth that hasn't proven out.”
Now look at how the big players fight for people and traffic: NetEase directly absorbed Qutang's founder to work on Eggy Party; overseas companies are playing new tricks — on September 1, Crimson Desert launched a web-based cloud trial, playable right in the browser, 20 minutes per session, with a 20% discount across all platforms through September 9 (source: National Business Daily). Why a cloud trial? The cost of pulling users into a game keeps climbing, and letting you play for free for 20 minutes may work better than running 100 ads.
My verdict: normalizing license issuance is a good thing — it makes “make a good game and you can start the project” possible, and in the first half of the year the industry scale did keep growing steadily (source: Xinhua). But a license is a ticket to enter, not a get-out-of-death-free card. Of the 1,362 permits handed out, very few will run into long-term hits; most will turn into a Mimumimuha-style 16 months. In the industry's second half, the contest isn't about who gets more permits, but who generates stronger cash flow: industrialization, overseas expansion, and long-term operation — miss two of the three, and you'll just become a cost in this wave of blood replacement.
Approvals will become less and less valuable; what decides life and death was never the birth permit. This industry is teaching its lesson in the cruelest way: only companies that can generate their own blood are entitled to talk about dreams.
One last poll: is the surge in licenses spring for small and mid-tier teams, or an accelerator of cutthroat competition? If you held a license, what kind of game would you make? See you in the Gghubs comments.