US tech giant Epic Games says it will shut down its popular survival game Fortnite in China in mid-November. The move comes months after authorities imposed strict restrictions on gaming, which has been condemned as “spiritual opium.”
Beijing has launched a sweeping crackdown on technology companies this year, partly to tighten its control of the economy. The gaming sector is one of a range of industries hit hard by the wide-ranging regulatory clampdown on tech firms.
Officials said in September that they wanted to curb addiction in the gaming-mad nation by announcing drastic cuts to the amount of time children spend playing online and ordering players to use ID cards when registering.
The moves dealt a severe blow to companies’ ability to make profits in the country and caused the share prices of gaming firms to plunge.
Now, Epic has pulled the plug, saying it will shut down the massively popular game on November 15.
“Fortnite China’s Beta test has reached an end, and the servers will be closed soon,” it said in a statement. “On November 15 at 11am, we will turn off game servers, and players will no longer be able to log in.”
Tencent Shares Down
Hong Kong-listed shares of Tencent, which has a large stake in Epic, were down 1.75% in Hong Kong near the close of trading on Tuesday.
The move brings an end to a long-running test of Epic’s version of Fortnite specifically created for the Chinese market, where content is policed for excessive violence.
The action-packed shooter and world-building game is one of the most popular in the world, boasting more than 350 million users – more than the population of the United States.
Epic is the second US-based company to pull a popular product from China in recent weeks, after Microsoft announced in October that it will close its career-oriented social network LinkedIn.
In September, hundreds of Chinese video game makers including Tencent vowed to better police their products for “politically harmful” content and enforce curbs on underage players, as they looked to fall into line with government demands.
Some 213 gaming firms promised in a joint statement to ban content that was “politically harmful, historically nihilistic, dirty and pornographic, bloody and terrifying.”
• AFP with additional editing by Jim Pollard
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