China’s NetEase cleared to launch another battle royale clone for mobile, while Tencent waits for Fortnite

NetEase’s FortCraft gets the go-ahead for monetisation before Fortnite in China

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A screenshot from the game FortCraft. Photo: Screenshot

Published: 1:35pm, 11 Mar 2019Updated: 8:14pm, 11 Mar 2019

China’s No. 2 gaming company NetEase has been cleared for the full launch of a new battle royale game for mobile in the country, while its bigger rival Tencent Holdings is still waiting for permission to monetise the genre’s biggest hits, PlayerUnknown’s BattleGround and Fortnite.

What makes things worse for the Fortnite publisher in China is that the NetEase game is almost identical to Fortnite.

China’s top content regulator on Friday approved a new batch of 95 video games for domestic launch, and among them were NetEase’s FortCraft. As with any other battle royale title, in FortCraft up to 100 players are parachuted onto an island where they have to scavenge for weapons and armour, fighting until the last one stands.

But FortCraft also features a cartoonish art style, a coloured grading system for weapons, and a building mode where players can collect resources to build walls and floors and cover up themselves – pretty much everything you will see in Fortnite.

In March last year NetEase released FortCraft for beta testing but it has been waiting since then for regulators to give it the green light for commercial launch. The approvals process was suspended for most of 2018, as China’s top media regulator – the State Administration of Press and Publications – underwent a restructuring and as Beijing launched a crackdown on content deemed unsuitable and sought to tackle gaming addiction among the nation’s youth.

A promotional scene from Epic Games, for its Fortnite series of games. Photo: Epic Games

China’s gaming market, the world’s largest, suffered its slowest growth in at least a decade last year amid the approvals hiatus. About 700 new games have now been approved for distribution in China since the SAPP resumed work at the end of December, including offerings from both Tencent and NetEase.