The deadline has arrived: the video game phenomenon Fortnite, which has more than 350 million users online worldwide, is no longer accessible in China, players confirmed on Monday (November 15th).
Publisher Epic Games announced on October 31 that it was going to cease the specific version of its game in the country. “On November 15 at 11 am, we will shut down the game servers and players [en Chine] will no longer be able to connect “, was it written in a press release. The next day, it was impossible for new players to register from China.
This decision was taken as the tightening of the Beijing screws on digital uses and video games has accelerated for a year, and particularly since this summer. In August, authorities imposed a drastic limit of three hours of video games per week for those under 18.
Yahoo and LinkedIn are also withdrawing
The Chinese digital giant Tencent, the second shareholder of Epic Games (also majority owned by its founder, the American Tim Sweeney), is particularly proactive in this area, having imposed the use of facial recognition in July. to prohibit children and adolescents from playing on their smartphone or tablet in the evening.
Released in spring 2018, the Chinese version of Fortnite differed in many aspects from that distributed in the rest of the world, especially visually, to meet the requirements of the country. Likewise, the Chinese version of the game did not offer “microtransactions”, yet at the heart of Epic Games’ economic model, allowing the purchase of additional content.
The Yahoo portal also recently announced that it was ceasing operations in China, due to a “Increasingly difficult commercial and legal environment”. For the same reasons, Microsoft’s professional social network LinkedIn had also previously announced its upcoming withdrawal from China.