Fortnite Hits The Wall

○ China wants kids playing fewer video games, which is bad news for the companies making them

- Zheping Huang, with Karoline Kan

Epic Games Inc. spent 2018 preparing Fortnite, the world’s hottest video game, for a blockbuster debut in China, the world’s biggest gaming market. When the company released the multiplayer shooter a year earlier, it had already brought in more than $1 billion worldwide. Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd., an Epic investor and Fortnite’s local publisher, sought to replicate the success in its home country. Things started off on an optimistic note, with 10 million Chinese gamers pre-registering that summer to get access to the game. But it never fully launched in China, and on Nov. 15, Epic shut down Fortnite’s servers in the country, concluding a three-year trial from which it never made a dime.

New video games need government approvals to premiere and sell copies or virtual items in China, and the licensing process is increasingly stringent and often unpredictable. This year has been particularly difficult—the government hasn’t authorized a new gaming release in more than 100 days.

The freeze comes at a time when Beijing has said it wants to more closely scrutinize the impact video games have on children. In September the government capped children’s playing time to three hours per week in most cases, encouraging them to instead spend more time outdoors and leaving enforcement largely to companies. In one article this summer, a state-owned media outlet decried the “spiritual opium” of gaming. Although it later distanced itself from such loaded language, the government has made clear it wants video games to be brought under control.