During a recent conference, a spokesperson for Chinese video game publisher, Tencent, announced that Fortnite will officially be making it’s way to China due to a partnership between Fortnite‘s creator, Epic Games, and the Chinese publisher. In addition to the game’s arrival overseas, the company will also be investing $15 million into esports for China as well as investing internationally.
The publisher will also be making a heavy investment in order to battle the plagues of piracy and illegal copies. Tencent has reportedly already designed a user-friendly app dedicated to teaching people about the game and allow them to watch Fortnite broadcasts. In addition, the app will ask them to visit the game’s Chinese website as well as pre-order the new Chinese version. As an incentive for fans to pre-order the game, there will be unique in-game items that will be unlocked if the Chinese version is pre-purchased. As an additional incentive, players will have the option of transferring their character progress, skins, weapons, emotes and all, over to the Chinese version for a limited time after release.
Fortnite has stolen the attention of players in the United States with it’s closest rival currently being PlayerUnknowns Battlegrounds. Both games currently hold a large following over on Twitch, with popular streamers such as shroud and Ninja constantly boosting the popularity of both.
Surprisingly Tencent is also the publisher of the mobile version of PUBG which launched in China this past Fall. In addition, the U.S. version of mobile PUBG launched here just last month. Despite this, it is unclear on if Fortnite will gain the same popularity in China that it has in the west. No direct window for the game’s release has been given at this time, but fans can only hope that the wait for it is not long.