It was “game over” for the famous Chinese online video game retailer Old Hunter Games. Chinese Customs has arrested the legal representative for Old Hunter Games, Pan, for smuggling 348,542 USD worth of video game discs from Japan and Hong Kong. According to the Chinese Customs investigation, the suspect named Pan hired people to smuggle video game discs into China in their carry-on luggage to dodge import taxes. Pan then sold some 12,000 game discs in his online store with a case value of about 348,542 dollars.
In the past, the sale of game discs was a gray area in Chinese law. Strictly speaking, video games are electronic publications that require licenses before they can be sold, but since Play Station, XBOX, and other gaming platforms are not officially available in the Chinese market before 2014, the Chinese government does not impose many restrictions on game discs. Because of this, players can easily buy any game they want on the Chinese online shopping platform TaoBao including games that are banned from live streaming like Dark Souls III and Biohazard Village.
However, with the introduction of video game age restriction mandates in China in the last two years, the Chinese government has tightened its regulation of the video game market. Vendors of video game discs and stores selling consoles are also censored. Many video game stores on Tao Bao "sold out" their entire inventory in a single day. In fact, by October 2021, Old Hunter Games had already taken down all of its brand new stock discs and started developing its own used game disc trading market and rental service.