There’s no question that when it comes to video games, China has a large market. However, it’s not that easy to enter this market and it looks like Epic Games is learning that lesson the hard way. Fortress Night, which is the Chinese version of Fortnite, is shutting down its servers this month.
Fortress Night was launched back in 2018 through a partnership between Epic Games and Tencent. In a post, Tencent announced that they are shutting down the game in China. As of November 1, registration for the game has ended and it won’t be available to download. The actual shutdown of the server is on November 15. Once that happens, users can no longer log into the game.
That Epic Games is giving up on a large market is not surprising for those familiar with how China operates. In a tweet by Niko Partners senior analyst Daniel Ahmad, the battle royale genre has long been regulated in China. He added that domestic games that get approval usually experience rather heavy content changes. For example, there should be no blood or even dead bodies. In addition, it has to be called “military” training and not “last man standing.”
Another example of just how difficult the regulations are in China happened early this year. Reports revealed that anyone under 18 years old can only play online for a maximum of three hours each week. That alone actually cuts the possible player base.
Video games aren’t the only ones having problems with China. Even tech companies are pulling the plug on their presence. LinkedIn made the decision to leave back in October, just like Yahoo did. In fact, there are even companies that didn’t bother to have a presence in China like Google and Facebook.
So what do you think? Is this a good move by Epic Games?
Fortnite was released in 2017, which offers players three unique game modes. One of these is Fortnite Battle Royale, where a maximum of 100 players get to fight and see who could be the last person standing. The game is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS.
