Gaming giant Epic pulls back on Fortnite China over crackdown

Epic said it will pull its massively popular survival game Fortnite from China, the world's biggest gaming market, later this month

US tech giant Epic Games said it will shut down its popular survival game Fortnite in China, months after authorities imposed a series of strict curbs on the world's biggest gaming market as part of a sweeping crackdown on the technology sector.

Beijing has embarked on a wide-ranging regulatory clampdown on a number of industries as part of a drive to tighten its control of the economy, with tech firms taking the brunt of the pain.

The moves dealt a severe blow to companies' ability to make profits in the country and sent the share prices of gaming firms tumbling.

"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."

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.

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.

The 213 gaming firms promised in a joint statement to ban content that was "politically harmful, historically nihilistic, dirty and pornographic, bloody and terrifying".

...