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Role Playing (Games) China Games

Blizzard Will Suspend World of Warcraft In China Because of Licensing Dispute (theverge.com) 27

Posted by BeauHD from the cease-and-desist dept.
Blizzard will suspend games in China because it can't reach an agreement with its licensing and publishing partner NetEase, it said in a press release. World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Overwatch 2, Starcraft, Heroes of the Storm, Diablo III, and Warcraft III: Reforged won't be available in China after January 23, 2023. The Verge reports: Blizzard will suspend the sale of games and offer guidance to Chinese players "in the coming days," according to the press release, which did not offer a specific timeline. Development of Diablo Immortal is in a separate agreement and will continue, NetEase said in a statement. Upcoming releases, including the latest World of Warcraft expansion, Dragonflight, and the second season of Overwatch 2, "will proceed later this year," according to Blizzard. "We're immensely grateful for the passion our Chinese community has shown throughout the nearly 20 years we've been bringing our games to China," said Blizzard Entertainment president Mike Ybarra in the press release. "We are looking for alternatives to bring our games back to players in the future."
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Blizzard Will Suspend World of Warcraft In China Because of Licensing Dispute More

Blizzard Will Suspend World of Warcraft In China Because of Licensing Dispute

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  • This is a tremendous opportunity for some other country to enable lazy WoW players to trade cash for levels.

    • they will just play over VPN's, I seriously doubt it would have any affect on the level and gold farmers.
      • The big name VPNs have become less reliable over the last years. Many gamers use unbranded VPNs which they receive with a router purchase. I don’t know how they work or where they are hosted, nor how these services bring in revenue. It’s the sketchiest thing ever but expat gamers I know don’t care.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          the gold farmers and levelers aren't gamers, they don't give a shit about poor connections or lag etc. half of them are scripted bots running exactly the same patterns over and over again

    • It is 2021, oops 2023, not 2004.
      You can pay Blizzard cash for levels. Ooops.

  • What a great way... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rea1l1 ( 903073 ) on Monday January 23, 2023 @06:59PM (#63233814) Journal

    What a great way to blossom the private server/emulation community. Soon China will have the best free to play servers for all Blizzard games.

    • It's not just about money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Xenographic ( 557057 ) on Tuesday January 24, 2023 @12:12AM (#63234350) Journal

      For once, it's not just about money. The Chinese publisher wants the source code and Blizzard is worried that they'll just run away with it if they give that out and cut them out of the loop entirely. I don't think they're even wrong about this one.

      They've done some stuff to let people save their user data locally, because of Chinese laws that prevent you from taking user data outside of China their publisher has this but not them, and are looking for a new publisher in case they can't come to some agreement here.

      • The Chinese publisher wants the source code
        Lol.

        We are talking about a multi player online game.

        There are no "publishers". You simply buy the game and play. Or not in the case of China.

        • We are talking about a multi player online game.

          There are no "publishers".

          Welcome to the Chinese market, where a Chinese "publisher" (i.e. a middleman) is required to sell your game there.

        • What? Of course there's a publisher! There's always a publisher, and it usually isn't the developer. Check any game. Hell, check any game listing on Steam.

          The difference with Chinese publishers is that they only exist to take a cut, enforce the CCP's preferences, and eventually rob their foreign "partners".

        • We are talking about a multi player online game. There are no "publishers". You simply buy the game and play. Or not in the case of China.

          Who do you think NetEase is, again? I mean, this is in the first line of the summary:

          > licensing and publishing partner NetEase

          Yes, China has special rules. For a game to let Chinese people play directly (i.e. not with some VPN to bypass the Great Firewall & such), they need a local Chinese company that keeps all the Chinese data in China, imposes Chinese censor

      • You must be reading a different article than I am. They already collaborate (ie, subcontract, ie, write parts of) on WoW and other games. Blizzard is making onerous demands - hence, no one else want to take on that job despite them searching for months. Even Microsoft gave China the source code. How the hell is this insightful?!

    • Well, best... I don't exactly would consider servers where 99 instead of 90 percent of the population are bots "the best" or at least "better" option.

  • The gamers will remember this and will be angry at the Chinese Government.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Why would gamers remember a game from 1999 being banned in 2023? Does anyone actually still play?!

    • It will be as if millions of bots suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

  • Tencent launches Tarisland, a very WoW-esque game, the day after NetEase pulls the plug on ActiBlizzard game. Unsurprisingly, both Chinese companies were working together on it for the past months.

    In the meantime, Bobby K has not been able to materialize the company sell/merge with Microsoft, so this is now his biggest hurdle while still at the realm: his company does not have the same value any longer, so one should not be surprised if Microsoft decides to back pedal on the merge. Not that anybody else is

  • Heroes of the Storm

    I'm still a player of the game. But I can say that if all of China is removed from playing anymore, like twenty out of the seventy players that still play the game will be offline. Fun game though, hate that they dropped it like a hot potato when they realized they could not keep up with games like DOTA 2 and League. It's an actually fun to play MOBA.

  • Wherever will we get our gold without Chinese gold farmers?

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