World of Warcraft, Overwatch and other Blizzard titles to be pulled from China

The NetEase games that were once available for players in China have now been taken down following a dispute with Activision Blizzard. One of their executives blamed “a jerk” on LinkedIn, who said it was responsible for ending things prematurely before they could be resolved amicably. There’s no chance of peace between these two companies after this latest development.

The dissolution of NetEase and Activision’s relationship was mentioned in last week’s financial results from the company, but it has since been confirmed by a statement issued on Wednesday afternoon. President Dohyung Lee said he is “heartbroken as I will no longer have access to my World Of Warcraft account next year.”

NetEase chief executive William Ding’s statement speaks about financial differences on critical terms, which declined the reach of the agreement. “We have put in a great deal of effort and tried with our utmost sincerity to negotiate with Activision Blizzard so that we could continue our collaboration and serve the many dedicated players in China. However, there were material differences on key terms, and we could not reach an agreement.”

Mike Ybarra, the president of Blizzard Entertainment, announced that they will end the services for games like World Of Warcraft, Diablo 3, Hearthstone, and StarCraft, on Jan 23rd, 2020.  In his words, the company is “immensely grateful for the passion our Chinese community has shown throughout the nearly 20 years we’ve been bringing our games to China through NetEase and other partners”.

China’s leading internet and online game services providers, today announced that it anticipates that its licenses covering the publication of several titles of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. in Chinese mainland will expire in accordance with their terms on January 23, 2023, and will not be renewed.  The affected games are World of Warcraft, the StarCraft series, Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm.