Arknights: Endfield headed for launch in the next 12 months after government approval

Hypergryph got the green light

Hypergryph / Gryphline

2024 was already a big year for high-budget gacha games with the likes of Wuthering Waves and Zenless Zone Zero being launched, and 2025 is shaping up to be another one: The NPPA (that’s short for National Press and Publication Administration) has approved another wave of video games for release in China, granting them a time window of one year to be published under this license – and among the newly approved titles is Hypergryph’s highly anticipated Arknights: Endfield.

This strongly indicates that Endfield will be launched in the coming twelve months. Generally, developers don’t let the time window granted to them by the NPPA go by without releasing the approved game, because applying for approval a second time could always go wrong due to changes in the political landscape or the bureaucracy simply milling away too slowly.

I played a bit of Endfield at Gamescom 2024, where the title made a positive impression on me for the most part – it’s very good-looking and seems to have plenty of interesting systems, such as a little base-building feature with some factory and automation aspects. All characters in your party are represented in the open world at all times, giving you a nice feeling of camaraderie and not being alone on your journey. However, that comes with some downsides: When I snuck by some enemies doing some improvised platforming, my party members simply took the normal way around, walking right by the guards. Though they didn’t trigger a battle, respecting my effort to be stealthy, it didn’t exactly feel immersive.

During a boss battle I played at Gamescom, I had to jump in order to avoid an AoE attack that spread on a ground level – fairly typical stuff. However, my team members didn’t jump with me, simply tanking the damage every time that attack came up. That didn’t feel very good at all, so here’s hoping Hypergryph will find a solution for the issue at hand.

Arknights: Endfield is one of the 117 games approved for launch by the NPPA in August 2024 – the largest batch to be given the green light so far this year, according to the South China Morning Post. A small number of foreign games received their approval in August as well, such as Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six: Siege, Marvel Snap, and Marvel Rivals – which is being developed by an American studio belonging to Chinese company NetEase Games, hence is being counted as a foreign title.

In July 2024, the NPPA approved HoYoverse’s Astaweave Haven for launch in the next twelve months.