Apple removed 39,000 gaming apps from its Store in China on Thursday, marking the biggest one-day removal, setting the end of the year as a deadline for all game publishers to obtain a license.
The removals come amid Chinese authorities' crackdown on unlicensed games, and the Chinese government has long sought stricter regulations on its gaming industry to remove sensitive content.
In addition to removing 39,000 games, Apple also removed more than 46,000 apps in total from its store on Thursday.
Games affected by ubisoft Assassin's Creed Identity and NBA 2K20 included, according to research firm Qimai.
Qimai said that only 74 of the top 1,500 games driven through the Apple Store survived the removal.
Apple initially gave gaming publishers a deadline at the end of June to submit the government license number to enable users to make in-app purchases in the world's largest gaming market.
Apple extended the deadline later to December 31.
Android app stores in China have long adhered to licensing regulations, and it's unclear why Apple is implementing them more strictly this year.
Analysts said the move was not surprising as Apple continues to close loopholes to align with content regulators in China, and will not directly affect the company's profits as much as previous removals.
Todd Kuhns, marketing manager at AppInChina, a company that helps companies abroad distribute their applications, said this removal, in addition to the very low number of foreign gaming licenses in China approved this year, is likely to cause more game developers to move to the ad-supported model for Chinese versions.
In August 29800, the company removed an app from its Chinese app store, including more than 26,000 toys.
Apple removed more than 2,500 games from its Chinese app store during the first week of July, and research firm SensorTower said at the time that the games affected by the removal included games from Zynga and Supercell.
Industry insiders say the process of approving games that look to enable in-app purchases is long and complex, to the detriment of everyone except the big game developers.
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