According to a report from Bloomberg, Activision Blizzard and NetEase have canceled the mobile MMO game World of Warcraft after three years of development. The project, which was developed by a team of more than 100 people, is now suspended and the studio has been dissolved. The game was designed to follow in the footsteps of Diablo Immortal by bringing one of Blizzard’s major intellectual property projects to mobile platforms with Blizzard’s Arclight Rumble.
Bloomberg reports that the game, codenamed Neptune, was planned as an MMORPG set in the World of Warcraft universe, but was canceled due to disagreements between the two studios. The game was supposed to be set in a different time period than Blizzard’s current hit MMO, which is getting its latest expansion, WoW Dragonflight, in late 2022.
While Diablo Immortal received a lot of backlash from enthusiastic fans upset with the microtransaction model, the mobile and PC game co-developed by NetEase and Blizzard proved quite successful. Recent reports show that the RPG has been installed 30 million times since its launch in China and has grossed over $100 million from mobile players alone.
This latest news challenges the relationship between the two big companies. NetEase, the second largest game company in China, also publishes other Blizzard games (including World of Warcraft) in the Chinese market. Representatives for Activision Blizzard and NetEase declined to comment on Project Neptune.
Blizzard already has another mobile project based on the Warcraft universe with Warcraft Arclight Rumble, a tower-raiding RTS mobile game very similar to Supercell’s popular Clash Royale game. However, another recent report from Bloomberg revealed that a second Pokémon GO-style mobile project was also shut down around the same time Arclight Rumble was released.
The news comes during an ongoing $70 billion deal that will see Activision Blizzard acquired by Microsoft. Rival Sony recently said that no publisher can match Call of Duty in terms of popularity in the gaming industry.
Source : PC Gamesn
