Nov. 15th is the Final Day for China’s Fortnite Platform
It’s no secret that China makes up a huge portion of the gaming market. The country has ab absolutely massive population, and that means it’s got a lot of wallets. But China’s also had a rocky relationship with video games in the past, setting up a variety of restrictions and regulations for businesses to follow – on top of having heavier restrictions on media in general.
Whether this move is related to the Chinese version of Fortnite (called “Fortress Night” over there) shutting down its servers is unclear, but regardless of the reason, the results remain: starting on November 1st, players will be unable to make new accounts. And 15 days later, the game as a whole will go offline.
Fortnite China is shutting down November 15th @ 11 AM CT
Spotted by @itsarkheops pic.twitter.com/exAfO7BnrL
— iFireMonkey (@iFireMonkey) October 31, 2021
This version of the game was apparently quite different from its international counterparts: all skull-imagery was cut, the game lacked micro-transactions, and after a while, would prompt players to put down the game and “go study”. That’s just scratching the surface of all the tweaks this version of Fortnite went through, but it should be enough to clue you in that Fortress Night was a very different experience – one that won’t be available anymore in the near future.
The game also had a wide array of exclusive items that, after the game’s shutdown, won’t be available regardless of your version of choice. Many players have been requesting that these items be moved onto the traditional Fortnite platform, and considering the quality of them (that winking penguin backpack looks especially cool), it’s hard to blame them. One user (in that twitter thread linked above) commented that doing this would be like looting a corpse, which… yeah, kinda. Hard to tell if it’s on-theme for Fortnite or in poor taste, but it’s funny regardless.