China Still Doesn’t Like Fortnite
China just approved the release of 80 online games that were banned for the last 6 months due to a freeze on approvals. The freeze took place in March 2018 and prevented tons of games from getting launched in the country. Some of the reasons cited were game addiction and “inappropriate contact.” And while reports are still mixed on whether games like Fortnite are officially banned in China, it definitely hasn’t been approved.
“The first batch of games have been reviewed,” Feng Shixin, deputy head of the State Administration of Press and Publications (SAPP), said last week. “We will hurry up to issue licences.”
“There is a big stockpile of games for review, so it takes a while,” he added. “We will continue to work hard. [We] hope everyone can be patient.”
The State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television of The People’s Republic of China just released their list of 80 approved games, which doesn’t include anything big or from industry leader Tencent Holdings Ltd.
Tencent is China’s biggest video games publisher and owner of Epic Games, the creator of Fortnite. The company has a market valuation of about $375.3 billion, but suffered its first drop in profits in a decade after China’s recent video game ban. However, the company saw its shares increase by 4.2 percent after Shixin’s statement last week.