Blizzard To Shut Down Multiple Titles In China After Failed Licensing Deal With NetEase
Blizzard Entertainment will be suspending nearly all of their game services in China after failing to negotiate a new licensing deal with their Chinese publisher NetEase. The partnership between the two companies will officially be coming to an end in January 2023 and unless Blizzard can broker a new deal by that time or find a new publishing partner in the region, Chinese players will unfortunately have to say goodbye to several popular MMORPG and multiplayer titles, perhaps maybe even permanently.
Among the games that will be discontinued in China are World of Warcraft, Warcraft 3: Reforged, Overwatch, Hearthstone, the Starcraft series, and Diablo 3. Diablo Immortal is covered under a separate licensing agreement which means that it will be able to continue operating the game in the country for as long as the agreement stands.
“Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. announced today that it will be suspending most Blizzard game services in mainland China due to the expiration of the current licensing agreements with NetEase, Inc. on January 23, 2023,” Blizzard announced. “The two parties have not reached a deal to renew the agreements that is consistent with Blizzard’s operating principles and commitments to players and employees, and the agreements are set to expire in January 2023. We will suspend new sales in the coming days and Chinese players will be receiving details of how this will work soon.”
This isn’t the first time the first failed licensing negotiations between Blizzard and NetEase either. Disagreements between the two companies also resulted in the cancellation of the Warcraft mobile game codenamed Neptune earlier this year.
Blizzard’s partnership with NetEase accounted for roughly 3% of Activision Blizzard’s net revenues for 2021 and obviously made up a larger chunk of Blizzard’s revenues for the year. Blizzard Entertainment President Mike Ybarra, however, says that they’re “looking for alternatives” to bring the said titles back to Chinese players in the future.
