Niko News is a filter of the most important news items and bits of information concerning the games markets of China and Southeast Asia uncovered by Niko each week. Our multilingual analysts review dozens of news sources from several countries, and as a team Niko reduces the long list of articles to 3-4 "must read" items for you. We then provide our Niko analysis to these items, making them relevant and highlighting the importance for the market. This service is one of the many ways we help distill the confusing, conflicting information about the games markets of Asia for our clients and readers. 

The National Copyright Administration is adding music videos to the list of items it tries to protect from online piracy - sort of unbelievable that they were not previously included - and has also put Apple, Taobao and Amazon on the list of companies required to report procedures on how they protect IP rights of content owners on their sites. There are 24 sites in all on the list. There will be a 4-month campaign against online piracy commencing this month - also unbelievable that it has a timeline on it, but it has been an annual campaign since 2005. Between 2005 and 2012, authorities across the country investigated 4,051 cases of online copyright infringement and piracy. Of the total, 299 cases were transferred to judicial authorities for handling. It is unclear how many for actually prosecuted. 

Tencent announced its new mobile game platform for WeChat, Mobile QQ, QQ Game, Qzone, and My App, focusing primarily on WeChat. There are more than 300 million users of WeChat in mainland China and more than 30 million outside of China. Tencent's new mobile platform positions the company well to take advantage of all of its channels for distribution and monetization of mobile games, which comprise the fastest growing games segment in China for usage and revenue. 

Webgames are hardcore browser based games (many are MMORPGs) and they have taken market share from client-based games. We recently relayed a statistic that said at least 2/3 of online games exported from China in 2012 were self-developed webgames. This fast growth games segment generated about $1 billion in revenue in 2012, growing from scratch in just two years. Now these games are being ported and adapted for the mobile platform. Three of the most popular were recently listed in Gamelook: Troubled World (Renren), Shen Xian Dao (Xd.com), and Meng Jiang Hu (Youzu.com).