Fortnite owner Epic Games banned in Indonesia

Fortnite Battle Royale is no longer available in Indonesia. The video game has been banned since its creator, Epic Games, failed to comply with new regulations.

Indonesia is the second country to lose access to the popular video game as the title was first shut down in China. The server was shut down in late 2021 and Chinese players lost access to all of their progress and accounts.

Now, a similar situation is happening in Indonesia. On the brighter side, however, there is still a chance that Fortnite will return to the country. It hasn't been permanently banned, but Epic Games will have to make some major changes first.

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Fortnite is no longer available in Indonesia due to new requirements

Earlier this year, Indonesia urged tech companies to register under new licensing rules. These rules allow authorities to have full control over content moderation and remove anything they deem unlawful or disturbing.

While these are local rules, they apply to domestic and foreign companies alike. Unfortunately, Epic Games failed to comply, which is why Fortnite is no longer available in the country.

Many companies were skeptical and didn't think that the Indonesian authorities would block their services. However, that is exactly what happened and Epic will now have to find a way to get their popular video game back up and running.

With a population of around 275 million, Indonesia is the fourth-largest country in the world and one of the biggest electronics consumers. While the exact number of Fortnite players is unknown, it is most likely more than 10 million, which is quite impressive.

According to reports, Indonesia's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has already reached out to several companies who have failed to comply with the new regulations. It will be interesting to see how Epic Games will react to this, but considering that the Asian country is a big market, we can expect the game's developer to comply with the new rules.

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Other high-tier services have been banned as well

Fortnite players are not the only ones who are suffering from the new law. Many other popular games have been banned, including Fall Guys, Dota 2, and Counter-Strike.

Steam has been taken down as well, and considering that this platform alone has more than 50,000 video games, it's a huge loss. Epic Games Store, Steam's competitor, has also been shut down.

Besides video games, the government has also banned Yahoo's search engine, and even PayPal. Many companies, including Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon, rushed to register in the last few days and successfully avoided having their platforms taken down by Indonesia's government.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation called this regulation possibly "the most repressive regulation yet," saying it's "invasive of human rights."

Unfortunately, every tech company that wants to operate in the country will have to comply with these regulations and it is very unlikely that Epic Games, or any other tech giant, will be able to bypass these rules.