Fortnite officially shuts down in China amid tighter gaming controls

“Spiritual opium“ is how the Chinese brand video games. After a tightening of the noose around the industry and rules at the start of the school year that limit screen time for teens to three hours a week, Fortnite has announced that it is folding. Three years on and one billion dollars spent, and without having made a cent the popular survival game never got regulatory approval, despite the financial backing of Chinese tech giant Tencent. So what is the matter with Fortnite?

Although the official statement of the developers doesn’t point at a specific reason why, it’s probably safe to assume that it’s because the Chinese government continues to tighten the restrictions on the gaming sector. The recently imposed limitation of children playing games is just one example. Anyone below the age of 18 can’t play more than 3 hours per week.

As reported by Bloomberg, Epic Games shut down Fortnite’s serves in the country yesterday (November 15) following a three-year trial of the game which seemingly didn’t earn the company any money despite what must be significant investment.

As per Bloomberg, the game started off quite positively in its attempts to tap into the Chinese market, with 10 million players pre-registering to play the game in the Summer of 2018. However, due to laws in the country, which require new video games to gain approval in order to sell copies of virtual items in the region, the game was never properly launched.

While a trial version of Fortnite has been running in China over the last three years, it has seen a number of differences from its global counterpart. Due to government constraints, those playing the game wouldn’t be able to purchase digital items and cosmetics to customize their avatars with.

As reported by GameRant, the version played in the region also allowed for multiple winners during a match, tweaks seemingly made to better suit Chinese values. This meant that players who survived longer than twenty minutes would automatically be crowned victorious regardless of how many players were left standing.

In other Fortnite news, the game recently announced that Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett would be joining the game in December. The announcement via a poster tweeted out during last week’s Disney+ Day, and also hinted at the possible arrival of Fennec Shand.