Blizzard Entertainment exits the Chinese market. The company ended its partnership with NetEase Games after 14 years and will not renew the Chinese company’s license to operate its games.
Chinese players will lose World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft III: Reforged, Overwatch, the StarCraft series, Diablo 3 or Heroes of the Storm. The current contract expires on January 23, 2023.
Blizzard said in a statement that they have not reached an agreement on a contract extension that is in line with Blizzard’s operating principles and its commitment to players and employees..
The president of NetEase reacted strongly to Blizzard’s decision and criticized the actions of an unidentified fool who ruined relations between the two companies. He also hopes to one day be able to talk about what happened behind the scenes. By idiot, he probably meant Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.
NetEase’s official statement is more diplomatic. It states that they have made every effort to ensure that the license agreement with Blizzard was renewed. Significant differences must have arisen in key conditions.
An anonymous source told Bloomberg that the problems were not only in the financial terms of the deal, it was also supposed that the dispute would be about who owns the intellectual property and data of the players.
The term of the contract does not apply Diablo the Immortal. This game is under a special contract as it was created in cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase. Therefore, it should remain available for Chinese players.
It is alleged that Blizzard demanded much more money from NetEase for the sale and operation of games in China. This country has strict rules, and it was NetEase who took care of it.
Blizzard does not expect problems after leaving the Chinese market. Sales in China account for only 3% of Activision Blizzard’s total revenue.. In NetEase, they are worse off. There are reports that the value of the Chinese company has fallen by 14%, although revenue from Blizzard games was expected to be a small single-digit percentage of NetEase’s total revenue.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Blizzard and NetEase had canceled an unannounced World of Warcraft mobile game due to a financial dispute..
The unannounced mobile game was supposed to be a spin-off of the popular WoWk, with the only difference being that it was supposed to introduce Android and iOS players on smartphones and tablets to the same world, but in a different era.
The project had to be very large-scale, and a large team had to work on it. This is indicated by information that about 100 employees were fired from NetEase as a result of its cancellation. Everything should have been preceded by disagreements with Activision Blizzard, the companies could not agree on financial terms.
Source :Indian TV
