World of Warcraft Closes Today in China

Blizzard couldn’t extend their licensing agreement with NetEase, and now many of their IPs will be unavailable in China, for who knows how long. Including WoW, Hearthstone, and Overwatch 2, their biggest titles pull off a vast market, causing headaches for gamers, developers, and investors. But not Diablo Immortal, because it falls under another long-term agreement between the two companies.

The Backstory

You’re an American game developer. Let’s say you want to release your game in China. There’s a law there that you can only do it through a Chinese publishing company. In 2008 Blizzard made a deal with the Chinese tech giant NetEase, which was founded in 1997, and is currently the second biggest videogame publisher, (79% of their revenue comes from gaming, but they’re branching out to other forms of entertainment) to publish many of their games such as WoW, Diablo III, Starcraft, etc.

Chaos Emerges

For 14 years things were OK, but in 2022 something happened. Blizzard wanted to extend their agreement by six months, but NetEase didn’t accept the terms. NetEase is very – very disappointed, their employees tore down a WoW-themed statue at their office, and one of the company’s cafes renamed their green tea to “Blizzard Green Tea”, which relates to the Chinese slang “Green Tea B*tch”.

The Aftermath

WoW has had around 3 million Chinese players, who no longer can play their favorite MMORPG due to some business decisions. They’re offered to download their character’s data, so they can play again when Blizzard finds another Chinese publisher. This sounds good, but several players reported that the function is not working for them, and this also gives the opportunity to hackers to crank up the characters, and when WoW comes back… You know. CEO of NetEase, Simon Zhu published an article today on his LinkedIn profile, looking back at his childhood memories, how much Blizzard’s games meant to him, and how painful this situation is to him.