China’s games market just cleared the $50 billion mark for the first time, hitting $51.8 billion in 2025 according to Niko Partners — a 5.4% bump from the previous year and more than five times the UK’s haul. Mini-games pulling in nearly 20% of mobile spend with 80% player engagement, short video apps serving as the top discovery channel for almost half the player base, and devs cranking out generative AI tools like it’s their new best whale-hunting weapon. The projection to $59.8 billion by 2030 looks solid if evergreen titles and out-of-app monetization keep carrying the weight.

Player numbers are climbing toward 769 million by the end of the decade, with weekly playtime already ticking up from 14.1 to 15.8 hours. Niko’s latest update is more bullish than their November forecast, crediting stronger-than-expected performance from both fresh launches and legacy live-service giants. Regulatory nods in the new Five-Year Plan plus better license flows are easing the path, though 66% of players still route around the Great Firewall with VPNs, accelerators, or global servers just to access what they want.

Western publishers still dreaming of easy China cash should study the mini-game and short-video pipelines instead of crying about censorship — that’s where the real growth engine is humming. ARPU crossed $70 for the first time in 2025, and the report flags rising premium PC/console spending alongside niche genres as the next levers. The market isn’t just big; it’s learning to print money in new ways while the rest of the industry begs for scraps.