Vietnam to block payment for unlicensed games

There are hundreds of thousands of unauthorized games, card games, and gambling games which cause insecurity and disorder as well as bad consequences for the society, the ministry’s Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information said at a meeting on Thursday.

The unauthorized games, mainly released on the App Store, Google Play, and online gaming platform Valse Stream, are estimated to generate an annual revenue of nearly VND5 trillion ($211.86 million), accounting for 30% of the total revenue of the game industry in Vietnam.

The ministry is requiring organizations and businesses that provide intermediary payment services not to allow payment for unauthorized games through their systems.

In the case of payments via IAP (in-app purchases), they should ask Apple and Google to provide sufficient information about the transaction to block the payment.

Every month, the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information will update the list of licensed and unlicensed games for payment intermediaries.

The ministry also said it will require Google and Apple not to cooperate with intermediaries to pay for unauthorized games on their app stores.

According to Le Quang Tu Do, the authority’s director, many games are being released across borders through the App Store and Play Store, while a number of Vietnamese e-wallets have been deployed on the two stores, making it easy for users to pay through intermediaries.

The Ministry of Information and Communications has so far licensed some 200 game companies, but the number of licensed businesses that are actually providing games to the market is less than 30.