WILL: A Wonderful World is a visual novel where players become a god and help change the fate of people. It has been reviewed as Very Positive on Steam with 4167 reviews. Normally it will take 14.99 dollars to buy on Steam. While on Taptap, Chinese players can download the full Android version for free.
This is not the only game Chinese players can freely download from Taptap instead of purchasing on Steam. In fact, there are several lists on Taptap about Steam-ported indie games that are completely free on Taptap. Not just free to play, they have no in-game purchase or pop-up advertisements either.
Tales of the Neon Sea
People who love detective adventure games may enjoy Tales of the Neon Sea, the retro-style pixel-art adventure game about a hard-boiled detective in a cyberpunk world. And for those seeking Japanese Demons with great art style will have a good time in The Fifth Belongs. And Strike Buster Prototype is prepared for those who want pure excitement in a fast-paced pixel-art barrage shooting game.
Strike Buster Prototype
As we mentioned in the beginning, these games are all completely free with no in-game purchase or advertising and are exclusive on Taptap China. Don’t get jealous yet, many Chinese players are not fond of this privilege. The truth is, they feel more bitter than joy because they know it means the developer team behind the game has made a tough call.
People comment under the list believing publishing license is the reason behind the free-to-download cases.
In China, publishing a video game requires a government-issued publishing license after July 1st, 2016. However, the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), the distributor of the license, has not issued any new license since August 2021. And the situation has not changed yet today. It crippled many game companies, especially small and medium-sized companies since they cannot make a profit from their games.
Many larger companies already have plenty of existing licenses in hand and have better chances to acquire new licenses, but they are not having a good time either. In the second half of 2021, there were waves of news breaking out about big-scale layoffs in gaming departments of ByteDance, Baidu, Tanwan, etc.
In the so-called “license winter”, some chose to wait and endure. The Master of Pottery is a simulator type of pottery-creation game. The game was released on Steam in 2019 as early access and got overwhelmingly positive (97% positive) reviews. AZGames, the developer and publisher of the game, decided to release a mobile version in China and started the application for the license in September 2020. To abide the Chinese regulation, they removed their game from the Steam store for the China region. On December 24th, 2021, they posted a video on Bilibli.com sharing their difficult situation of still desperately waiting for approval to publish their game 477 days after the game was already finished.
Some other games, like the ones we mentioned in the beginning, choose to get around the regulation by the only loophole. Video games can be published in China without a license in name of open public testing. However, the testing is not allowed to be monetized in any way, including in-game microtransaction and pop-up advertisements.
In this case, many developers choose to keep their games selling on Steam and released their game’s test version on Taptap for free. It is a tough call for developers to give up all the potential “mainstream” revenue on the Chinese domestic market, but releasing the game for free is still a way to gain some reputation and attraction, and better than having the game die in complete darkness. The hope is, eventually, some players of the free version may find a way to buy the game on the Steam store or other platforms to support the developers.
In 2022, China’s gaming industry is still uncertain when will NPPA resume distributing licenses, if at all.