Fortnite “addiction” warning messages leak for players in China

Following the latest v12.10 update for Fortnite, dataminers have been trawling the new files for what’s potentially to come later in Chapter 2 Season 2.  

For Chinese players, an incentive to stop playing Fortnite after three hours could be on the cards – due to the country’s increased concerns over gaming addiction.  

In posts leaked by Fortnite dataminer @iFireMonkey, a message for players exceeding three hours of game-time reads: “You have been online for 3 hours accumulatively.  

“The in-game gainings will be lowered by 50% from now on and challenge progress has been disabled. For your own health, please log-off and get some rest. Appropriate physical exercise is good for your body.” 

A later message states progress wouldn’t return to normal the “accumulative offline time reaches 5 hours”.  

While many were concerned these could be parental controls implemented everywhere, it seems they’re only set to be enforced in China after “TencentPlayTimeLimit” was discovered in the files.  

Tencent is the company who published Fortnite in China alongside developer Epic Games, and handles distribution across many titles in the country.  

In November last year, China imposed strict gaming curfews to combat game addiction – which the governement described as “harming the physical and mental health of minors”. 

The regulations meant gamers under the age of 18 were banned from playing online games between 10pm and 8am, while minors in the week are only allowed to play for 90 minutes a day.  

It’s still unconfirmed whether this messages will actually be rolled out to Chinese players, although it wouldn’t be surprising considering their harsh stance on the matter.