The mess that has been the Chinese game industry shutdown is affecting every corner of the world, but it’s not really a shock that Lost Ark would have some pretty sharp reactions to it. The title is still in testing in South Korea, after all, and it had some testing problems with influxes of Chinese players. But there are rumors flying now that the game is getting ready for beta testing to begin in China, which coincides with Tencent bringing down the game’s Chinese website to transition to an HTTPS server.
Of course, it’s all just rumors at the moment; it could be that none of this is going as planned, or it could be that Lost Ark had already been approved ages ago and its extensive delays have not altered that approval. Whatever the case, we can only hope for the sake of Chinese players starved for new imports that this is indeed happening. It’d certainly be a feather in the cap of everyone involved – and maybe one more step toward global release.
