Fortnite star SypherPK explains why the game failed in China

On November 15, 2021, Fortnite China servers were permanently shut down. After three years and millions of dollars in investments, Epic Games decided that things were not going to pan out and pulled the plug on the game. This was an incredibly heartbreaking moment as thousands of Chinese players were left high and dry. To add insult to injury, all data related to their accounts were deleted as well.

While this was a sad incident, not many are aware as to why it happened to begin with. Many believe that the game's servers were shut down due to arbitrary reasons, but there's actually a few genuine and rational causes behind this decision.

In his latest video, SypherPK (Ali Hassan), took out the time to breakdown why Fortnite China failed to take off. Given that the game had so much to offer, there must be valid reasons for its failure after three years.

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Lack of profitability and three other reasons why Fortnite failed to succeed in China

1) Limited playtime

Players would receive a warning for playing more than three hours (Image via YouTube/SypherPK)

One of the reasons why Fortnite China didn't perform well was due to a strict policy of the government. It mandated that children spend only a certain amount of time online. According to SypherPK, players would receive a warning in-game after playing for more than three hours. Their experience rate would be slashed by half, and challenges would be disabled.

Given that most players tend to play in long sessions, especially when playing the Save The World mode, this would have been a major blow to morale. After a few times of running into this message, players would likely give up on the game altogether.

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2) Lack of profitability

Fortnite China could not be monetized. Despite Epic Games trying for years, as per government mandate, players could not spend real money on anything that was present in- game. This led to the developers giving away V-Bucks for free. Unlike the many V-Bucks scams that occur, this was 100% authentic.

Players in China would receive V-Bucks by completing in-game challenges/quests. They could then use it to buy cosmetics from the Item Shop, and in essence, purchase everything that was available or on sale. Since everything was free-of-cost, the entire revenue system that was in place failed to generate any profit.

Given that Fortnite is a free-to-play game, the developers depend on the sale of cosmetics and V-Bucks among other things to generate revenue. Since this end-goal was not met, sustainability was not reached, and eventually, due to lack of profits, Fortnite China's servers were shut down.

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3) Severe reactions on creative freedom

In addition to lack of profitability, Fortnite China had several creative limitations. For starters, the developers had to remove skulls from the game. Any piece of cosmetic that had a skull, had to be either reworked or removed from the game entirely.

While this wasn't an issue in most scenarios, it did hamper the creativity of the game. As SypherPK points out, Skull Trooper, one of the most iconic Outfits to be present in game, had to be removed from Fortnite China. Others such as Taskmaster were reworked to abide by the guidelines and rules.

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4) Lack of competitiveness

Unlike the standard version of the game, the one that was featured in China had very different ideations when it came to what it meant to earn a Victory Royale. The essence of the words roughly means to come first or to place first in a match. This can either be achieved by outlasting the competition by camping or playing aggressive and eliminating everyone else. Whichever be the case, the end justifies the means.

However, in Fornite China, after a playtime of 20 minutes, everyone left alive in the match would be granted a Victory Royale. This made no sense as the entire point of earning a Victory Royale is to be the last one left alive. Due to this strange mechanic, the ability to implement competitive gameplay modes such as Arena, made no sense.

Furthermore, those who dominated the match would be given an option to leave before the game even ended. This was supposedly done to make the match more player-friendly. Those who opted to leave early would retain all the experience points earned as well. This made the need to stay until the end of the match rather useless.