Epic Pulls Plug on Fortnite in China (techcrunch.com) 22
Epic Games announced today that its work to bring video game mega-title Fortnite to the Chinese market is shutting down. From a report: The company said in an official announcement that the long-running test of the popular shooter title in China will conclude on November 15th. New users won't be accepted starting today. Tencent, a Chinese Internet giant, owns a stake in Epic Games, along with complete ownership of Riot Games, another American gaming company with an international gaming hit in its portfolio. China's gaming industry has been undergoing refreshed regulatory scrutiny in recent months, with the domestic government working to limit gaming time amongst youths. The impact of the Chinese Communist Party's move to lower hours-played amongst its younger population is not yet clear, but the decision could have made the economics of building Fortnite for China.
From my perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
I believe this would actually improve gaming in China. Fortnite is incredibly popular and equally stupid.
YMMV, of course. It's merely my own opinion. I like slow-ish paced games that both require and allow you to think. Fortnite is the exact opposite.
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I like slow-ish paced games that both require and allow you to think.
From the perspective of someone who only thinks slowly, only slow-paced games give you time to think.
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I think quickly enough, thank you, but I also prefer thinking in-depth, strategy over chaos and tactics over twitch reactions.
It doesn't help that my hand-eye coordination is subpar.
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https://www.reddit.com/r/fucke... [reddit.com]
Aren't all online FPS games (Score:1)
infested with Chinese hackers anyway ?
PUBG, BF, COD etc.
I wonder if the new CCP gaming curfew is slowing them down at all ?
What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why not? Epic is already owned by the CCP in the end, so what's the difference?
Sweeney is just in it for the money. He hopes to get Epic to be the
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Every Western company that looks at China's cheap labour pool and vast consumer market is aware that the Chinese Government does not play by the rules, but they try to do business there anyway.
None of them have any right to complain when the scorpion acts according to its nature.
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Why even bother to try?
1.402 billion.
That's the number of why to try. It's a sizable chunk of the world's population, even even the companies in China which have been curb-stomped into oblivion by the CCP have made a net win over the years of doing business there. That's why you try.
Also worth noting for this particular instance Epic Games is 40% owned by Tencent.
Targeting teens? Good riddance! (Score:3)
Since the gaming hours restriction only applies to those under 18, so Epic is basically admitting that the main target audience and customers of Fortnite are teens under 18?
Good riddance! They are no different from cigarette brands that targets teens or vaps that targets children.
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It's a video game, of couse the kids play it.
Interesting info from China about Fortnite (Score:3)
So take this with a grain of salt but there was a discussion about this which had recently been weighed in on from Chinese Redditors, but there were a few interesting anecdotes.
- Fortnite isn't popular in China. Apparently PUBG has a much stronger foothold and the Chinese don't go for 3D cartoonish graphics.
- Epic wasn't able to monetise it in China. Even with the backing of Tencent (Epic is 40% Chinese owned) their income source was limited due to rules on how to monetise free to play games.
- In China Fortnite is fundamentally broken, you could win by hiding. Apparently the match length of Fortnite was longer than the maximum gaming length allowed by China's gaming rules and you're not allowed to punish players for leaving a game early. The effect of this is that after 20 min all players remaining a live automatically win. There's no final battle. There's no end game massacre. What should be an exciting end to a battle royal culminating in a 1v1 fight, ends up being boring as batshit as a good chunk of the players automatically win without ever firing on each other.
I don't play Fortnite. It sounds like a crap game in the USA, but from the sounds of things anything which would make it remotely appealing in China either to players or to Epic themselves is completely missing.
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- Fortnite isn't popular in China. Apparently PUBG has a much stronger foothold and the Chinese don't go for 3D cartoonish graphics.
Bollocks [pcgamer.com]. Although Genshin is actually beautiful, it's definitely got a cel-shaded style.
- Epic wasn't able to monetise it in China. Even with the backing of Tencent (Epic is 40% Chinese owned) their income source was limited due to rules on how to monetise free to play games.
True.
- In China Fortnite is fundamentally broken, you could win by hiding.
That sounds easy to fix. Make it so you have to do some stuff to win.
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Bollocks [pcgamer.com]. Although Genshin is actually beautiful, it's definitely got a cel-shaded style.
There's nothing bollocks about it. Genshin looks more like anime, right up the Chinese (and general Asian audience) alley. The lack of cell shading doesn't make it any more comparable to Fortnite, something which looks far more like a western Sunday morning 3d kids cartoon than anything popular in Asia. Comparing the two completely misses the very real differences which make each very much the target for opposing audiences. But don't worry Epic know this, that's why the Chinese version includes a lot more l