There is no more Fortnite in China, servers have been shut down

It had been hanging in the air for some time now, and now what Fortnite Chinese players were dreading had happened: they shut down the servers of a popular game within the country. 

The hugely popular title has been available in China since 2018 but has never actually exited the beta phase in this region due to strict government regulations.

The developers have officially announced that the game’s servers are no longer available in China. The statement does not provide any specific justification or explanation for why they had to do so.

Still, there is good reason to believe that the Chinese government will further tighten the video game sector restrictions, which may be the reason behind this. If anyone were to miss it, some measures would reduce the online playtime of people under 18 to three hours a week.

The pros and cons of such a decision could be discussed over long pages. Presumably, there would be many arguments for and against it, but we would not go into that now.

What is certain, however, is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain a license to sell virtual objects in China, and Fortnite’s “freemium” business model doesn’t make much sense in that market.

That’s why Fortnite servers have been unavailable since November 15 for Chinese phone gamers, who will have to look for some other online entertainment that way.