From today, the servers hosting Fortnite will no longer be accessible from China. Users of the popular online video game developed by Epic Games have confirmed the inaccessibility to the server. In short, Epic Games has pulled the plug. Fortnite, it should be remembered, had never been officially approved by the Chinese authorities that control the marketing of the games. It had a different name (Fortess Night), some skins were prohibited and microtransactions were not allowed, i.e. the ability to make purchases within the game because they were considered potentially dangerous for users. Some of the characters’ costumes, for example, have been retouched by the Chinese authorities. For example, the skulls have been erased and the Fortnite world formation narrative is also not the same as the western version of the game. In short, Fortnite in China was not the one designed by the game designers of Epic Games. However, that’s not why they left.
The crux is microtransactions.
Control over microtransactions for a free-to-play game like Fortnite is essential to making ends meet. Moreover, from the beginning the adventure of the most famous battle royale of the videogame industry had not started on the right foot. We recall introduced three years ago thanks to an agreement with between the Chinese company Tencent and Epic Games itself without therefore a full endorsement by the Government which recently, we recall, has also released new guidelines on the use of video games, which are a further obstacle for national and international video game producers. For those under the age of 18 it is now forbidden to play video games for more than three hours a week (and in any case only from 8 to 9 in the evening on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and on public holidays). The Communist Party of China this summer launched a crusade to contain the addiction of young people to video games by implementing not only a tightening on consumption but also stricter rules on the games that can be played.
But it’s not just a video game problem.
In recent weeks, not only Epic Games has shut down the servers. Yahoo Inc.
announced the decision to withdraw from China, citing an “increasingly challenging commercial and legal environment”. The company said its services will no longer be accessible from mainland China as of November 1: “Yahoo remains committed to the rights of our users and a free and open Internet. We thank our users for their support, ”reads a note. Yahoo is the second major US tech company in recent weeks to downsize its operations in China, after Microsoft’s LinkedIn.