Supercell's Hay Day has returned to China’s Apple App Store four years after it was removed from the marketplace amid an ISBN crackdown by the country’s mobile gaming regulator.

A localised version of the farming simulator launched on May 15th, according to AppMagic, published by Supercell’s parent company Tencent.

The title was previously one of more than 2,500 mobile games removed from China’s App Store in July 2020. Games in the country are required to have a licence to ensure their content meets approval standards.

Approval required

In July 2020, the country’s regulator the National Press and Publication Administration began a crackdown on unlicensed titles. As a result, developers had until July 31st to comply and enter their approval number to their page in App Store Connect.

Sensor Tower data at the time showed that over 2,500 titles were removed in the first week of July 2020. That was over four times more than in the first week of June, and five times more removals than in the first seven days of May.

As well as Hay Day, games removed included Zynga’s Solitaire. Crazy Labs’ ASMR Slicing and Flaregames’ Nonstop Chuck Norris. Combined, the removed games had generated $34.7 million in lifetime revenue in China and 133.4m downloads.

According to AppMagic data, between January 2015 and July 2020, Hay Day picked up 7.8m installs on China’s App Store and $20.3 million. The game had been released prior to 2015.

Supercell analysis

We recently looked into the performance of Supercell’s portfolio ahead of its sixth global launch, Squad Busters, on May 29th.

Hay Day is Supercell’s first game, released back in 2012 just before Clash of Clans. Eight years after its launch, Supercell still gave the game a significant boost in revenue with the introduction of a Farm Pass in December 2020. However, during the past couple years, the title has seen a slow decline in sales.

Hay Day's China launch was part of our new release roundup for the week, which you can read here.