In December, we discussed the ending of Blizzard’s 14-year contract with NetEase to provide content for World of Warcraft. Consequently, all new sales of Blizzard games stopped in the country at the end of 2019. Blizzard clarified that they would be looking into ways to make saved progress transferable. At a minimum, Blizzard will need to form some kind of partnership with another publisher in China to continue providing their games in the region.

It is practically certain that Blizzard’s games in China will no longer work on the 23rd of January since NetEase declined a six month prolongation of the present agreement. Blizzard China posted on Weibo, a Chinese social media site, that they tried to negotiate a six month prolongment with NetEase last week but were told no.

The statement expressed regret that NetEase would not prolong the services of our game for an additional six months while searching for a fresh partner under the current terms.

NetEase, whose early successes came from the games it licensed from Blizzard, have yet to make a statement. Their head honcho William Ding declared in 2020 that the two firms had various irreconcilable differences on crucial conditions.

This extends beyond Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase: All applications for running video games in China must receive permission from the Chinese government, and the Chinese Communist Party has been monitoring the content of foreign games more and more. To complicate matters even further, the CCP imposed rules in 2021 limiting children’s playtime on game titles to one hour a day on Fridays, weekends, and holidays. Clearly, this environment is far from favorable for raiding parties.

It is yet to be determined if Blizzard can set up another partnership with a distributor in China, and no evidence has been found of the proposed way to save the players' data (although it is debatable if that is even relevant if the games are gone for good). Their titles have usually been highly successful in the country, so money could be a factor, but there is a lingering doubt if the downfall with NetEase happened independently of a bigger movement which seeks to exclude Blizzard from the Chinese market.

I have reached out to Blizzard for information on the matter, to find out about the ability to carry saves to different systems, and to determine if the company anticipates its games to be back up and running in China. I will update with whatever answer I get.