With 11% growth, the overseas market for Chinese games has made a full recovery.

At the recent 2025 China Digital Entertainment Congress (CDEC) Summit, Zhang Yijun, First Vice Chairman of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association and Chairman of its Game Publishing Committee, released the China Game Industry Report for January-June 2025. Driven chiefly by continuing returns from long-running titles and revenue from games launched in 2024, actual overseas sales revenue from games developed in China reached USD 9.501 billion, approximately RMB 68.341 billion, up 11.07% year on year. This was the highest figure in nearly five years, while growth returned to double digits.

Photo: Time Finance

The global mobile-games market has continued to recover in recent years. Gamma Data's 2024 Global Mobile Games Market Competitiveness Report shows that the market expanded by 4.8% year on year to RMB 635.57 billion. Overseas markets remain a major focus for China's games industry.

Match/puzzle and casual games have traditionally been strongholds of overseas companies, most of which also enjoy first-mover advantages. Since the beginning of this year, a growing number of Chinese game companies have entered international markets by combining gameplay mechanics and innovating themes, with encouraging results. Tencent (00700.HK), NetEase (NTES; 09999.HK), 37 Interactive Entertainment (002555.SZ), Century Huatong's Century Games (002602.SZ), Camel Games under Ultrapower (300002.SZ), Yoozoo Games (002174.SZ), and others have all increased their overseas investment. This has raised the potential ceiling of the market and created fertile ground for new blockbuster titles.

1. AI Opens a New Era for Chinese Games Overseas

The rapid development of AI is creating new opportunities for game companies expanding overseas.

Sun Shoushan, Chairman of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, told the summit that overseas game companies are already highly mature in their use of AI. They have integrated it throughout the development process and established benchmarks for intelligent production. Although some leading Chinese companies have moved early, gaps remain in deep application, while smaller teams lag behind and improvements in efficiency are uneven.

Wang Chuanpeng, Vice President of Data at the Technology Center of 37 Interactive Entertainment, said the company has developed more than 40 AI capabilities around its proprietary industry model, Xiao Qi. Its AI translation technology makes multilingual localization faster and more accurate, helping games reach global markets. More than 60% of the company's overseas games now use AI translation, with accuracy reaching 95%.

Yoozoo Games told Time Finance that it is actively exploring frontier technologies to strengthen its diversified publishing capabilities. The company is turning big data, AI, and other advanced technologies into productivity across the entire global development, publishing, and operations value chain.

Through its AI Innovation Institute, Yoozoo Games focuses on AIGC and AI-enabled globalization of games. It has established an AI system spanning research and development through publishing, using large-model technology to overcome language and cultural barriers, create more immersive experiences for players worldwide, and help high-quality games reach international audiences more quickly.

In publishing, Yoozoo Games is improving device compatibility and multi-channel distribution. By applying big data and AI, it has productized AI tools across the publishing process, covering version releases, platform integration, marketing, and other stages. This has substantially improved the efficiency of its one-build, global-release model.

AI can also use big-data analysis and audience profiles to help game companies reach target users more precisely, improve marketing efficiency, and reduce paid user-acquisition costs.

A representative of Unity Grow told Time Finance that Unity's new AI model, Vector, incorporates self-learning mechanisms to develop deeper insights into user behavior. It responds in real time to changes in player behavior and game content, improves ad precision, and optimizes return on ad spend. Compared with the previous model, Vector delivered increases of approximately 15%-20% in both install volume and in-app purchase value.

A Snapchat representative added that, during ChinaJoy, the company launched a range of upgraded advertising products and solutions to improve the efficiency of overseas marketing for games and broader entertainment content. One example is an automatically produced AR-lens ad powered by generative AI. It can create AR advertising concepts within minutes, overcome production bottlenecks, and optimize cost per install for app and game advertisers.

The industry must fully unlock the important role of games in AI development and make gaming a major driver of innovation. It should also seize the trend of AI expanding from production into the player experience to open greater room for growth, said Yu Ruichao, Vice President and Editor-in-Chief of Tencent Interactive Entertainment, when discussing AI applications.

2. Cultural Globalization Enters Deeper Waters

Cultural globalization is moving beyond simple cultural communication and product exports toward deeper cultural integration, market adaptation, and localized operations, creating a two-way exchange between cultures.

Last year, Black Myth: Wukong, a Chinese AAA game rich in traditional cultural heritage, became a worldwide hit. The single-player action-adventure title inspired by Journey to the West won high praise for its exceptional visual quality, distinctive Eastern aesthetics, and deeply immersive combat.

Beyond the powerful innovation enabled by AI, the game also broke through internationally and triggered a wave of interest in Chinese-style Journey to the West culture. It greatly increased overseas players' curiosity about Chinese culture and opened a distinctive window onto China for players around the world.

Ao Ran, Executive Vice Chairman and Secretary-General of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, said games are more than entertainment products. They are an important cultural ecosystem closely integrated with technology; a major setting for the application of innovation; a vehicle for traditional Chinese culture; a pathway for Chinese culture to reach the world; and an important component of the digital economy. Games will connect culture with a wide range of industries and release spillover value beyond the cultural sector.

Photo: Tuchong

At the same time, we must progress from basic product exports to deeper cultural globalization, making games a medium for cultural dialogue across borders and building a global industry ecosystem based on technological connectivity and mutual cultural learning, Sun Shoushan said.

The wave of cultural globalization has grown even stronger this year.

Yoozoo Games told Time Finance that titles including the Junior Three Kingdoms series, the Junior Journey to the West series, and Shanhai Jinghua draw on classical Chinese culture and combine it with innovative gameplay to share the appeal of China's traditions.

Yoozoo Games also promotes cultural heritage through cross-sector collaborations. In June, Junior Three Kingdoms 2 partnered with Ma Weiheng, a nationally recognized inheritor of the Guangling school of qin music. Inspired by Ji Kang's celebrated piece Drunken Ecstasy, the collaboration introduced the historical figures Ruan Ji and Ji Kang as new playable generals and offered an immersive experience of Chinese aesthetics. Yoozoo has also collaborated across several titles with the Dunhuang Museum and intangible-cultural-heritage IP involving blue-and-white porcelain, opera masks, and Shu embroidery. These initiatives use games to tell Chinese stories and connect Chinese culture with players worldwide.

At the summit, Yao Zhe, Vice President of Seasun Games, shared the company's understanding of overseas markets. In his view, the essence of taking games global is taking culture global, and success depends on conveying the spirit of Chinese culture through an internationally accessible form of expression.

On July 2, Seasun Games launched the global open beta of Mecha BREAK, its highly anticipated near-future science-fiction title centered on mechs. Yao said Seasun had chosen mechs plus science fiction - cultural symbols with broad global recognition - as its point of entry. By using a visual language familiar to younger generations, the game communicates Chinese cultural values across regions. The strategy both carries forward the spirit of traditional Chinese culture and presents it in an innovative form that aligns with the aesthetic preferences of contemporary players worldwide.

Zhu Ying, Chief Operating Officer of Shanghai Baijiahe Information Technology Development Co., Ltd., said during a panel titled Building a Game the World Loves that a strong product should embody universal values that resonate with players worldwide. It should be beautifully produced, respectful of history, innovative in its gameplay, and capable of evoking shared experiences of justice, courage, and friendship across cultural differences.

The evolution of games from something people play into something that creates economic value is, at heart, a transformation of economic forms, Ao Ran said. Looking ahead, as Generation Z matures, the games economy will develop from a new economic form into an important engine of growth. Alongside technological advances, cultural vitality, and consumption upgrades, it will unlock enormous potential and reshape both the economic and cultural landscape.