Apple CEO Tim Cook said for some times that China represents Apple’s biggest market. But rules aren't meant to be broken, and Apple is known to be one of the most strict tech companies out there.
In response to demands from Chinese authorities, Apple reportedly purged thousands of games from the country's local version of the App Store in 2020.
This followed previous warnings Apple sent to China's iOS developers, and some suspending updates Apple imposed to those apps, and following China government's revised laws in 2016 that said game titles must be officially licensed by the authorities before they can be sold.
Premium games and apps with in-app purchases must submit their government license proof to Apple by the end of 2020.
It has been four years that developers were able to skirt the requirement in Apple’s app store. Apple hasn’t said why the loophole existed or why the company began closing it this 2020. Apple also does not detail which games have been removed, nor specifically why.
However, the company did issue a statement regarding the accusation that it was bending to political pressure.
“Apple studies these requests carefully whenever we receive them, and we contest and disagree with them often,” an Apple spokesperson said. “Though the final decisions sometimes run contrary to our wishes, we believe that our customers are best served when we remain in the country providing them access to products that promote self-expression with world-class privacy protections.”
According to reports, the game titles that were removed were mostly paid gaming apps.
While estimates of the number of games removed vary hugely, with some suggesting that Apple removed at least 3,000 titles, app business tracking company Sensor Tower believes that at least 94,000 apps have been removed from the China App Store in 2020.
Other reports even suggested that Apple removed nearly 100,000 games from its App Store in China in 2020, although that number could be as high as 140,000 according to separate reports.
The escalation comes as China works harder to clamp down on illegal content on mobile platforms.
And here, the large number of games that has been removed illustrates Apple’s “vulnerability to state pressure” on its business.
Read: In The First Week Of July, China Has Removed Thousands Of Games From Apple's App Store
What's more. trade tensions between the United States and China have had a big impact.
“Only a small fraction of these games are actually going to be able to get a license, as far as we can tell,” said Rich Bishop, chief executive of ChinaInApp, which works with Western companies to get their apps into China.
Trade tensions between China and the U.S. and other countries have made it harder to get those licenses, he said.
From January to November 2020, Apple's gaming revenue in China was $13 billion.
This is 14% higher than in the same period in 2019. But the 2019 revenues were 21% higher than the year before, caused by a wide shutdown of games.
Besides removing games, Apple has previously agreed to remove various VPN apps that may have been used to circumvent the so-called Great Firewall of China.
China that stepped up its efforts to police its internet, tightening content controls and censorship, also demanded that Tripadvisor and more than 100 other apps be removed from the Apple store in the country. The Cyberspace Administration of China called the apps illegal without detailing the offenses they made.
China has strict rules. And with its Great Firewall of China and other programs that are created to control its citizens' activities, many foreign tech companies simply couldn't comply with the rules. As a result, many companies have withdrawn their business operations from China after refusing to comply with the country' authoritarian rules.
But not Apple.
"Though the final decisions sometimes run contrary to our wishes, we believe that our customers are best served when we remain in the country providing them access to products that promote self- expression with world-class privacy protections," Apple said.
In its most recent disclosure reports, Apple said it received 103 requests from Chinese authorities in 2019 for the removal of 399 apps because of legal violations, the majority of which were related to pornography and illegal content.
Apple said it honored most of those requests by removing 381 apps.
Of the 96 countries included in Apple transparency reports, 10 other governments requested app removals-none to the extent of China.
On December 31, 2020, Apple removed 39,000 game apps on its China store, the biggest removal ever in a single day, as it set the year-end date as the deadline for all game publishers to obtain a license.
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Read: China's Regulations Prohibit Games With Blood, Gambling And Imperial History
