PUBG pulled in China after being denied monetisation approval from Chinese government

Following on a lengthy process of waiting for government approval for battle royal shooter PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds in China, publisher Tencent has decided to shut down the 'test' version of the game, effectively rendering the title no longer available in the country.

Tencent were originally announced as the game's Chinese publisher all the way back in 2017, and spent the time since releasing and iterating on a 'test' version of the game making modifications in order to allow the game to meet the very strict regulations and requirements imposed on games by the Chinese government, including toning down the game's violence. 

As reported by Rueters, despite the two years of work and averaging around 70 million daily active users in China, the game was still awaiting approval for monetisation for in-game purchases for the past year to little avail.

On a post translated by Rueters from the game's official Weibo account – the Chinese equivalent of Twitter – Tencent announced it would end testing and has launched a new title called 'Game for Peace' which has been described as a game which 'pays tribute to the blue sky warriors that guard our country’s airspace' and is apparently very similar to PUBG according to business website Bloomberg. Game for Peace has already recieved monetisation approval from the Chinese government back in April.

Back over on this side of the world, the western version of PUBG recently added weapon mastery.