US companies says good bye China
Fortnite and Yahoo are among the latest to leave China. Following LinkedIn's departure from the country last month
Why are they leaving?
Reason for these companies to pull out of China, is the PIPL law that went into affect last August. The PIPL is a privacy law, similar to GDPR found in EuropePIPL requires companies to only store necassary information of end users, require user approval before collecting sensitive information and limits what data can be transferred accros boarders
It also requires there to be a way for end users to disallow algorithm based advertisment and personalizations
For foreign companies, there's also an requirement to have their own Chinese delegate that reports to the Chinese government
PIPL impact on gaming
When it comes to gaming, Chinese government only allow 3 hours gaming a week and it's the gaming companies responsibility to ensure kids follow these limitationsFortnite have announced on their Chinese website [↗] that servers will shutdown 15th November, registration for new users shutdown November 1st
User privacy
Another aspect, is user privacy and is part of the reason why Yahoo have already pulled out of China on November 1stYahoo says to Reuters [↗], continuing