blizzard-china-drama
NetEase and Blizzard ink deal to revive World of Warcraft, Overwatch 2, and Diablo IV in China
(As of late tonight, Blizzard has officially confirmed the rumors. Our original post follows, and we've updated with the official news at the end.)
It's...
Rumor: With Kotick gone, Blizzard and NetEase might repair year-long rift over China publishing
Readers likely remember that 2023 started off with a tire fire as Blizzard and NetEase had a particularly nasty dissolution of a licensing deal...
That NetEase lawsuit against Blizzard turns out to have been a… bizarre clerical error?
Yesterday, we - and just about everyone else in the industry - picked up a Wowhead story about a lawsuit being lodged by NetEase...
NetEase is suing Blizzard for 300M CN¥ over licensing agreements [Updated]
We've updated this story at the end as NetEase's name has been removed from the lawsuit. The original article follows.
If you thought the NetEase...
Activision-Blizzard and NetEase’s breakup was caused by long-brewing disputes and alleged threats
One of the biggest MMO and gaming stories capping off the end of 2022 and spilling over into the start of 2023 was the...
NetEase slams Blizzard China’s last-minute WoW proposal as ‘brash, unseemly and commercially illogical’
Earlier this week, Blizzard China took to social media to suggest to Chinese World of Warcraft players that NetEase is to blame for the...
Blizzard claims NetEase rejected a license extension to keep Chinese games (including WoW) up another six months
When Blizzard and NetEase announced the dissolution of their long-running publishing partnership in China - and the sunset of almost all of Blizzard's games...
NetEase lays off staffers who were working on Blizzard games in China
Lest we forget, the falling out between NetEase and Blizzard has a toll greater than either company's bottom line; it also saw a human...
Blizzard says it’s still working on finding a new Chinese publisher for World of Warcraft
Blizzard General Manager John Hight has posted a video and now a written message to Chinese players in the wake of last month's announcement...
MMO Week in Review: Corporate greed was China’s WoW killer
The second Dragonflight prepatch wave in World of Warcraft was rather overshadowed this week by the not unexpected but still disturbing news that Blizzard...
WoW Factor: So Blizzard just lost China
Sometimes it's not fun to work in this particular industry. Not in the sense that it's horrible, but in the sense that you've written...
WoW, Overwatch, Diablo, and more to sunset in China following failed Blizzard-Netease licensing deal
Last week, as part of its Q3 2022 investor report, Activision-Blizzard included what we described as an ominous note about its apparent difficulties negotiating...
Activision-Blizzard Q3 2022: Blizzard MAUs and revenues are up as NetEase dispute looms on the horizon
Welcome back to our trimonthly coverage of Activision-Blizzard's quarterly financials. As of this afternoon, we have Q3's results, comprising July, August, and September 2022....
Blizzard-NetEase financing dispute leads to canceled Warcraft mobile MMO ‘Neptune’
Blizzard has apparently canceled an in-development MMORPG. Bloomberg, which first broke the news, says the game was code-named Neptune and was a "massively multiplayer...
Diablo Immortal set to launch July 25 in China after bizarre delay
Back in June when Diablo Immortal launched here in the west, Chinese publisher NetEase surprised everyone by delaying the game's release in China itself,...
Diablo Immortal delays its launch in China, sending NetEase stock into freefall
It would appear that investors of the Chinese games giant NetEase were pinning a lot of hopes on Diablo Immortal's launch to China. The...
BlizzCon 2019: Here’s Blizzard’s apology for its Hearthstone esports disaster
Blizzard's Hearthstone Hong Kong fiasco was very much on our minds this morning as the Massively OP team prepared for BlizzCon, and we were...
Lawful Neutral: What’s China really worth to the Western gaming industry?
You know what we never talk about these days? China and video games! We should do that more. For example, did you know that...
US politicians chastise Activision-Blizzard for its handling of the Hong Kong fiasco
If Blizzard thought its Hong Kong liberation fiasco couldn't possibly get worse than international headlines, a wide-ranging boycott, Riot Games' public pity, and a...
Blizzard finally addresses Hong Kong esports fiasco, reducing bans and reinstating prize money
All week, we've been covering the absolute chaos surrounding the punishment of pro Hearthstone esports player Ng “blitzchung” Wai Chung, whom Blizzard banned along...
