Fortnite China will be closing its servers this November, according to a recent update from the official website. 堡垒之夜 (Bǎolěi zhī yè), humorously literally translating to "Fortress Night," closed its registration earlier today. After three years of service, the servers will follow on November 15.
The test of "Fortress Night" has come to an end. We will shut down the server in the near future. The details of the suspension of the test are arranged as follows: At 11 o'clock in the morning on November 1, 2021, stop the registration of new game users and close the download entrance; At 11 o'clock in the morning on November 15, 2021, the game server will be shut down, and users will not be able to log in to the game.
The announcement came as quite a shock to the Chinese Fortnite community. FNCN, as abbreviated by Fortnite players in China, only allows minors and players without real-name identification to play from 8pm to 9pm on weekends to comply with Chinese regulations. Registered adults can bypass the restrictions, but this has resulted in a much smaller regular potential userbase.
Fortnite hasn't been banned in the country, but players without an account are no longer able to register new accounts. In the meantime, those with accounts can play until the server finally closes at 11 in the morning of November 15, local time.
According to one prominent FNCN player and creator, the motivations were primarily financial on Tencent's part. As an imported title, Fortnite China had no commercial license, making the server operation a costly endeavor:
The main reason is that FNCN is not commercially licensed and it takes money to run the server, so Tencent, the agent of FNCN, decided to shut down the server.
The same player, going by @Joker_BaiYi, has begun a petition with Epic to preserve the character data and various exclusive skins.
The closure of a game's server is sad, both for the players and the employees involved. Given Fortnite's popularity, especially, this seems to be quite a surprise. When has a game closure affected you? Sound off and reminisce below or on our social media.
