By Josh Ye

HONG KONG - China's online gaming regulator on Monday granted licences to 27 foreign games in March including titles to be published by Tencent Holdings and NetEase .

Among the imported online games approved by the National Press and Publication Administration is at least one to be published by Tencent, a game called Merge Mansion, according to a list the regulator released on Monday. NetEase has secured approval for at least one mobile game named Audition: Everybody Party.

This marks the second batch of foreign online games to receive publishing licences in China, just three months after the regulator approved the first batch in December. A crackdown by China on online gaming had halted the approval process for foreign video games for 18 months between 2021 and 2022.

The approval of imported games last December marked the end of China's crackdown on the video game industry which began in August in 2022 when regulators suspended the game approval process. Regulators first resumed issuing game licenses to homegrown games in April.

Other notable titles approved by China via this batch include a mobile game called Fairy Tale: Fighting and a console game named Yo-kai Watch 4.

(Reporting by Josh Ye, Editing by Louise Heavens and Bernadette Baum)