In the first week of July 2020, Apple removed more than 2,500 games from the China mainland iOS App Store, including Supercell’s Hay Day. The action followed stricter enforcement of an existing Chinese game-approval requirement; it was not a worldwide shutdown of Hay Day. The removal count and its reported financial impact were Sensor Tower estimates, not official government totals.
What happened in July 2020?
Apple delisted games from its China mainland storefront during the first week of July 2020. GamesBeat reported on July 14 that Apple was acting at the Chinese government’s request. The report named Hay Day, along with Nonstop Chuck Norris, Contract Killer: Zombies 2, ASMR Slicing and Zynga’s Solitaire. The report was updated on June 18, 2025, but the removals it describes occurred in 2020.
The figure was an estimate by Sensor Tower, which counted games that had ranked in App Store game subcategories. It was not a complete government-published list or a confirmed count of every delisted title. The reporting does not establish the individual approval status of each named game or provide a full list of removals. GamesBeat’s report has the contemporary account and attributed estimates.
Why did Apple remove the games?
The central issue was missing Chinese government approval for distributing games in mainland China. The approval is issued through the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA). The July 2020 action was described as stricter enforcement of an existing requirement, not the introduction of a new rule.
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In industry coverage, the game approval is often called an “ISBN.” Here, that means a government game-publication approval number, not simply the book identifier many readers associate with the acronym. Apple’s current App Store Connect documentation says games need an NPPA approval number and supporting documents to be available in China mainland. It lists an ISBN issuing letter or approval reply, a current business license and, where relevant, authorization documentation among the materials developers may need to provide.
Apple’s app and submission status documentation identifies “Missing Game registration number” as a status that makes an app unavailable in China mainland. These current pages explain the compliance mechanism; they are not a title-by-title record of the 2020 removals.
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What was the deadline?
GamesBeat reported that Apple gave developers until July 31, 2020, to enter the approval number and submit supporting documents. Games lacking the required information were expected to remain unavailable until it was supplied. That was a historical deadline, not a current compliance notice.
How many games and downloads were involved?
Sensor Tower’s estimates, as reported by GamesBeat, indicate the scale of the purge and its concentration among smaller titles:
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- More than 2,500 games were removed during the first week of July 2020, by Sensor Tower’s ranking-based count.
- $34.7 million in combined lifetime gross revenue in China was attributed to the affected games. This is not a figure for Hay Day alone.
- More than 133 million downloads in China had accumulated across the affected games.
- Nearly 2,000 titles had fewer than 10,000 downloads each since 2012.
These are attributed estimates, not audited Apple accounts or official government statistics. Because Sensor Tower counted titles that had appeared in game subcategory rankings, obscure games outside that measurement threshold may not be represented.
Was Hay Day banned worldwide?
No. The reported action concerned the China mainland iOS App Store. A storefront delisting in mainland China does not establish that a game was removed from Apple’s other country storefronts, that its servers were shut down, or that it was prohibited everywhere. The available reporting does not establish Hay Day’s current China storefront status or whether and when it returned.
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A game already installed on a device may remain there after its listing disappears, but that does not guarantee future downloads, updates, purchases or online services will work. Those functions can be affected separately. Players should not treat a listing’s presence in another country’s App Store as proof that the game is legally distributed in mainland China.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Was this a ban on foreign games?
The stated basis was missing regulatory approval, not foreign ownership. The evidence does not show that every foreign game was targeted because it was foreign or that Hay Day was singled out for its content. In practice, foreign publishers may face additional hurdles in securing an approved local publishing or operating arrangement and preparing the required Chinese documentation.
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How significant was the commercial impact?
The purge could be severe for an individual publisher that lost access to China, while remaining limited in aggregate relative to the wider market. GamesBeat reported $12.6 billion in China App Store revenue for 2019, though the cited coverage does not clarify the figure’s precise measurement definition. It also quoted Niko Partners’ Lisa Cosmas Hanson saying that 97 of China’s top 100 games already had the required license.
Those figures suggest the removals were concentrated among titles with less reach, rather than a broad removal of China’s leading games. But lower aggregate revenue does not make delisting inconsequential: a small publisher can lose discoverability and China-specific revenue, and compliance work may be costly relative to a smaller game’s earnings. The reported combined $34.7 million cannot be assigned to Hay Day or any other individual title from the available breakdown.
What the purge did—and did not—show
The July 2020 removals showed that Apple’s China storefront would enforce the approval requirement more strictly, including against games that had previously been listed. A prior listing was not proof that a game had the required approval. The episode was a substantial enforcement signal, but it does not establish that China’s mobile-game market was crippled, that every removed game was a major release, or that Apple independently judged each title’s content.
For developers, the practical lesson is to match the approval number to the correct game and publisher or operator, and to ensure supporting corporate and authorization documents are in order. Apple’s process requires more than simply typing a number into a listing. For players, the key distinction is between availability in mainland China and availability elsewhere: this report describes a regional storefront compliance action, not a global end to Hay Day.
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