Tencent has been waiting a long time to release PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in China. For more than a year, the game has been in “testing” whilst waiting on approval for its monetization from the Chinese government, which involved waiting out the long approval freeze from the government and then waiting through further delays. Now the company has officially given up, announcing that the test period is ending and that the company is shifting to another title altogether, Game for Peace.
There is an account migration feature for former PUBG players to Game for Peace, which shares similar features and perhaps most crucially has already been approved for its monetization by the government. So that’s the end of the battle royale title’s path to China, it seems. It also proves that while Nixon could go to China, PUBG could not in a timeframe that satisfied Tencent. That sounds like it ought to have some sort of larger meaning.
