In the middle of November, Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, will shut down the battle royale app in China. According to a translated message on Fortnite’s website, this is the end of the game.
Starting two weeks from now, gamers will no longer be able to join up for Fortnite or install it, according to the message. Epic Games will totally shut down Fortnite’s servers and prevent users from logging in on November 15th. The note expresses gratitude to players for “boarding the bus” and taking part in the game. Epic did not disclose any other details on why the game was shut down.
It could, however, be related to China’s new gaming limitation for youngsters, which began in August and limits kids under the age of 18 to three hours of video gameplay each week. Online games were also described to as “spiritual opium” by state-controlled media, reflecting China’s distrust of gaming.
China prohibited kids from gaming between the hours of 10 p.m. and 8 a.m. in 2019 and restricted children’s screen usage to 90 minutes during the week. Tencent, a Chinese internet company, has even built a face recognition technology that detects children gaming after curfew. China’s new three-hour regulation implies the country’s limitations are tightening even more.
Epic Games worked with Tencent to offer Fortnite in China in 2018, but it had to be heavily modified before it could be widely distributed. A wiki page for Fortnite China demonstrates how unusual the game is from what American gamers are used to. Chinese law, for instance, prohibits the representation of skulls, altering the look of a variety of skull-related cosmetics. On weekdays, gamers were prompted to study if they played for more than 90 minutes.
The move to discontinue Fortnite China might be interpreted as a reaction to the country’s rapidly shifting gaming sector. The math simply does not add up with even more limitations on game time and lesser monetization opportunities owing to limitations on microtransactions.
