In the same way that if you want to publish games on Xbox/PS you need the approval of the platform holder (MS/Sony) for each game and get a (ESRB/PEGI/ZERO/USK etc) age rating/censorship content filter of other countries or regions (certain content isn't allowed) for each market, and to be a publisher or ask a certified publisher of these platforms to pubilsh your games, a similar thing happens in China.
China has their own gaming platform holders that dominate their market, they also have their age rating/censorship content filter for that country and there are publishers certified to publish there that in this case only can be Chinese companies.
Meaning, games have to consider that the banned content is different than in USA, EU or Japan, also have to get the approval from the platform holder as in the western/Japanese platforms and to ask a certified publisher from there to publish them their games. This is the reason of why companies like Activision Blizzard King had a deal with a Chinese company to publish their games there.
The main issues with gaming in China is that they want to have their kids/teenagers focusing on studying (school is very demanding and competitive, and it's key there to get good scores in the school to get in a good University and later a good job), so they control ultra strictly the amount of daily/weekly hours that a kid/teenagers play. And related to this they highly reduced the amount of games approved to be released commercially (not foreigners, it also affects Chinese companies and this is partly why big Chinese gaming companies invest in foreigner companies, because their internal market is very limited because of that).
And well, this is the official/formal way. That controls the main part of the Chinese market, but basically everybody there uses VPN with no issues to skip the national firewall that in theory isolates China for some things, and in the case of games the gamers use it to play in foreigner stores or platforms. So even gaming platforms that aren't officially in China, if properly localized they get a huge chunk of Chinese players.
The top 3 top grossing mobile gaming publishers worldwide according to the market leading Appannie (now data.ai, all main mobile publishers use it to track their own and competitors data) are 1) Tencent, 2) Netmarble, 3) Activision Blizzard King. Microsoft was top 37 (thanks to mostly Minecraft) in 2022. The ABK acquisition would greatly help MS in mobile because they would go up to top 3 and would fight to get the top 2.
As comparision, Sony this year went down to top 20, when normally the other years was between top 7-10. But not sure if they count there the different publishers that Sony owns like Aniplex or now recently Crunchyroll Games. I think Sony should merge all their gaming studios and publishers under SIE and to publish on mobile as a single publisher brand to get these things more clear.
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