Epic Games has officially given up in its pursuit to fully bring Fortnite to audiences in China as the studio calls time on its servers in the country without having made a cent.
As reported by Bloomberg, Epic Games shut down Fortnite's serves in the country yesterday (November 15) following a three-year trial of the game which seemingly didn't earn the company any money despite what must be significant investment.
As per Bloomberg, the game started off quite positively in its attempts to tap into the Chinese market, with 10 million players pre-registering to play the game in the Summer of 2018. However, due to laws in the country, which require new video games to gain approval in order to sell copies of virtual items in the region, the game was never properly launched.
Epic's decision to close the servers comes at a time when those in Beijing are more closely monitoring the impact that video games have on children. In September, the government sought to limit children's playing time to as little as three hours a week in many cases, while instead, encouraging them to partake in alternate outdoor recreational activities.
While a trial version of Fortnite has been running in China over the last three years, it has seen a number of differences from its global counterpart. Due to government constraints, those playing the game wouldn't be able to purchase digital items and cosmetics to customize their avatars with.
As reported by GameRant, the version played in the region also allowed for multiple winners during a match, tweaks seemingly made to better suit Chinese values. This meant that players who survived longer than twenty minutes would automatically be crowned victorious regardless of how many players were left standing.
In other Fortnite news, the game recently announced that Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett would be joining the game in December. The announcement via a poster tweeted out during last week's Disney+ Day, and also hinted at the possible arrival of Fennec Shand.
Jared Moore is a freelance writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter.
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