Epic Games to Shut Down Chinese Version of Fortnite

Fortress Night, the Chinese adaptation of Epic Games’ Fortnite, will close later in November, without any reason given so far by the company, BBC reported.

Epic Games has said in an announcement that the game will end on Nov. 15. And the game, a last-player-standing combat game, quit letting new players sign up on Nov. 1.

“Thank you to all the Fortnite China players who have ridden the Battle Bus with us by participating in the Beta,” Epic Games said.

China has been setting limits on the amount of time children are allowed to spend on online games. The changes came in August this year, and made it so that people under 18 could only spend an hour playing games online on Fridays, weekends and holidays. The government has been concerned about how much time young people spend on games.

Fortress Night was initially rolled out in 2018 in China. It was a cooperation with Tencent, the Chinese tech giant.

The BBC report notes how common it is for Western games to be significantly altered for the Chinese market, ranging from the regulatory to the cultural. Fortress Night reportedly had several changes. There were more measures put in to make sure players couldn’t spend too much time on the game.

And there were no ‘microtransactions’ letting players buy in-game items with real money.

Epic Games has also been involved in an ongoing lawsuit against Apple. The lawsuit centers around Epic Games’ use of an in-game payment mechanism which Apple said violated the rules of its App Store, being that Epic was circumventing the payments that would go to the tech giant.

Read more: Apple Objects to ‘Mechanism’ For Outside Payments in Apps in Its App Store

On Oct. 29, Apple said its strongest objection to a ruling from an antitrust court is that the ruling makes it, so the company has to allow mechanisms for outside payments. There was a trial earlier this year that ended with the court making Apple stop banning third-party payment systems.