After effectively being blocked from Chinese consumers, social gaming company Zynga ^[1] finally released its first game in the country on Tuesday, an adaptation of the popular game CityVille called Zynga City. Since games through Facebook cannot be played because the social network is banned in the country, Zynga City is played through the leading Chinese Internet service company Tencent.

Instead of depicting a small homey American town, Zynga City has “decorations and architecture the Chinese audience can identify and connect with,” the company says in its press release. The game also features new items and in-game events linked to key Chinese holidays and celebrations, and allows players to send street peddlers to their friends’ cities to scrape up more money.

Zynga hopes to replicate its success in America in China—in just four years of operations, the company has earned a valuation of close to $20 billion and is preparing to go public. If the Chinese market can get behind Zynga’s take on social gaming, the company might actually be worth all those billions.

Read more from The New York Times ^[2].