china
MY.GAMES says it will ‘exit the Russian market’ and offload Russian licenses
Back in October, Mail.ru sold its MMO subsidiary MY.GAMES to Aleksander Chachava of venture capital firm LETA Capital, for $642 million. The company's MMOs...
End-of-Year Eleven: The biggest MMO stories of 2022
I might be biased - by which I mean I am definitely biased - but 2022 was a year of big stories and big...
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...
End-of-year Eleven: The healthiest live MMOs at the end of 2022
When you're investing a whole lot of time and (potentially) money into MMORPGs, you want to make sure that your game isn't going belly-up...
End-of-Year Eleven: The Biggest MMO Surprises of 2022
All right, 2022, you are officially no longer allowed to surprise us any more because we're doing the end-of-year thing now and that means...
World of Warcraft devs discuss the Dracthyr, Blizzard adds new Chinese-favored payment options
Why should you have something like Empower spells in World of Warcraft? That's one of the questions that lead combat designer Brian Holinka and...
Massively OP Podcast Episode 397: What we have here is a failure to negotiate
Justin and Bree discussion WoW China's sunset, the Blizzard/Netease debacle, LOTRO's mini-expansion, EverQuest II, Frozen Flame, and ArcheAge 2, with adventures in WoW, LOTRO, New World, SWG Legends, and Marvel Snap, plus a mailbag topic on boss taunting in MMOs.
MMO veteran Scott Hartsman discusses why overseas game publishing is so messy
All right, so Blizzard and Netease are no longer working together for publishing the former studio's games in China. That's significant, but it should...
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...
Why I Play: World of Warcraft, 2022 edition
Have you ever watched The Good Place? If you haven't, I suggest you stop reading right now and go watch. Your life will be...
Riot’s lawsuit against League of Legends copycat is tossed, Legends of Runeterra previews 2023
We have a pair of headlines coming out of Riot Games in this story. We'll start off with the latest on a May lawsuit...
China celebrates the launch of WoW’s Wrath Classic with a dazzling drone light show
No matter how excited you may have been for the launch of World of Warcraft Classic's Wrath of the Lich King expansion (assuming you...
Choose My Adventure: The joy of hunting for new critters to add to the Temtem collection
I'm going to be honest, the initial worry when I saw what won last week's Choose My Adventure poll was that I had already...
Maplestory 2 announces a shutdown date for its Chinese server in November
Alas, poor Maplestory 2, you were cute and likable and then you got kicked to the curb after less than two years. We did...
The Chinese version of the Life is Feudal MMO will be shut down in October
Fans of the sandbox MMO version of Life is Feudal are unfortunately dying a second death in a manner of speaking. Tiancity, the publisher...
China’s restrictions on game time sees a drop in minors’ gaming engagement in the country
Last year, the Chinese government tightened the screws on minors' gaming access, limiting play time to only three hours a week at specific times...
The MOP Up: Survival sim Grounded tames gnats and preps for launch
Honey-I-shrunk-the-players survival sim Grounded's last big pre-launch patch arrived recently, adding gnat pets, a cookery building, and armor and weapon upgrade revamps. Grounded is...
Nexon Q2 2022: MapleStory’s dramatic turnaround is attributed to monetization transparency
While many tech companies are offering up weak quarters or even outright struggling, Nexon's financials are on the rebound. The company's Q2 investor report...
Tencent seeks larger stake in Ubisoft, Unity considers Chinese spinoff
China continues its wrangling of the western gaming industry with moves on both Ubisoft and Unity. Reuters reported yesterday that Tencent is attempting to increase...
