China gaming ban: Fortnite is shutting down due to Tencent’s failure to get a license for the wildly popular shooting game

Global hit games Fortnite and the Dungeon & Fighter (DnF) Mobile have hit the pause button on China, the world’s largest gaming market, as it has become increasingly hard to get Beijing’s approval for their release in the country.

US games developer Epic Games said on Monday that it would end its three-year “testing” of Fortnite, its massively-popular shooting game, in China on November 15, as local partner Tencent Holdings has been unable to get a licence to officially launch the game in the country. In the current “testing” mode, Tencent is banned from charging players.

Meanwhile Nexon, a Japanese-Korean game studio, announced on the same day that it would launch DnF Mobile in South Korea. Tencent, also a key partner for Nexon, had planned to launch DnF Mobile in China in August 2020, but the plan appears to have been blown off course as Beijing has tightened its control over game licensing and content.

Epic’s decision to end testing in China and Nexon’s move to skip the market - for now - mean that Tencent, the world’s biggest gaming company by revenue, may have just lost two of its most anticipated – and likely profitable – titles as Beijing ups its regulatory pressure on the industry. China’s gaming regulator has not issued a single new game approval since the end of July, leaving many gaming companies in limbo.

“The news that Fortnite, at least for now, is pulling the plug on China and that DnF Mobile is launching in Korea without a China launch date, reflects the difficult state of game approvals right now in China,” said Matthew Kanterman, senior analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. “These were both among the high profile games that Tencent was set to bring into China.”

Tencent declined to comment on Tuesday.