US tech giant Epic Games Inc has said it would 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.
“Fortnite China’s Beta test has reached an end, and the servers will be closed soon,” Epic Games said in a statement. “On Nov. 15 at 11am, we will turn off game servers, and players will no longer be able to log in.”
Hong Kong-listed shares of Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), which has a large stake in Epic, were down yesterday.
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.
The Chinese test version was released in 2018, but Fortnite never received the government’s green light for a formal launch as approvals for new games slowed.
The action-packed shooter and world-building game is one of the most popular in the world, boasting more than 350 million users — more than the population of the US.
Epic is the second US-based company to pull a popular product from China in recent weeks, after Microsoft Corp announced last month that it would close its career-oriented social network LinkedIn Inc.
In September, hundreds of Chinese video game makers, including Tencent, vowed to better police their products for “politically harmful” content and enforce curbs on underage players, as they looked to fall in line with government demands.
The 213 gaming firms promised in a joint statement to ban content that was “politically harmful, historically nihilistic, dirty and pornographic, bloody and terrifying.”
Chinese gaming firms have also been ordered by regulators to stop focusing on profit and gaining fans, with enterprises that are seen as flouting rules threatened with punishment.
The announcement about Fortnite was met with sadness from fans in China, who took to social media to mourn the loss of the game.
“I’m genuinely crying so hard — I was just playing with my boyfriend and was really looking forward to what was coming next,” one Sina Weibo user wrote. “This is just so sudden.”
Many said they had poured hundreds of hours into building up their characters and social networks on the game.
Multiple Fortnite fan accounts on Sina Weibo shared a link to a petition where players urged Epic to transfer players’ data to servers outside China, writing that they would lose the gaming data with “our heart and mind” stored in it.
SEEKING CLARITY: Washington should not adopt measures that create uncertainties for ‘existing semiconductor investments,’ TSMC said referring to its US$165 billion in the US Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) told the US that any future tariffs on Taiwanese semiconductors could reduce demand for chips and derail its pledge to increase its investment in Arizona. “New import restrictions could jeopardize current US leadership in the competitive technology industry and create uncertainties for many committed semiconductor capital projects in the US, including TSMC Arizona’s significant investment plan in Phoenix,” the chipmaker wrote in a letter to the US Department of Commerce. TSMC issued the warning in response to a solicitation for comments by the department on a possible tariff on semiconductor imports by US President Donald Trump’s
‘FAILED EXPORT CONTROLS’: Jensen Huang said that Washington should maximize the speed of AI diffusion, because not doing so would give competitors an advantage Nvidia Corp cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) yesterday criticized the US government’s restrictions on exports of artificial intelligence (AI) chips to China, saying that the policy was a failure and would only spur China to accelerate AI development. The export controls gave China the spirit, motivation and government support to accelerate AI development, Huang told reporters at the Computex trade show in Taipei. The competition in China is already intense, given its strong software capabilities, extensive technology ecosystems and work efficiency, he said. “All in all, the export controls were a failure. The facts would suggest it,” he said. “The US
The government has launched a three-pronged strategy to attract local and international talent, aiming to position Taiwan as a new global hub following Nvidia Corp’s announcement that it has chosen Taipei as the site of its Taiwan headquarters. Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) on Monday last week announced during his keynote speech at the Computex trade show in Taipei that the Nvidia Constellation, the company’s planned Taiwan headquarters, would be located in the Beitou-Shilin Technology Park (北投士林科技園區) in Taipei. Huang’s decision to establish a base in Taiwan is “primarily due to Taiwan’s talent pool and its strength in the semiconductor
French President Emmanuel Macron has expressed gratitude to Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) for its plan to invest approximately 250 million euros (US$278 million) in a joint venture in France focused on the semiconductor and space industries. On his official X account on Tuesday, Macron thanked Hon Hai, also known globally as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), for its investment projects announced at Choose France, a flagship economic summit held on Monday to attract foreign investment. In the post, Macron included a GIF displaying the national flag of the Republic of China (Taiwan), as he did for other foreign investors, including China-based