After being gone for more than a year, it looks like Blizzard’s biggest games are on the cusp of returning to China. Researcher and analyst CN Wire and the South China Morning Post have both reported that a new deal between Blizzard and NetEase, its former publishing partner in the country, is expected to be announced as soon as tomorrow.
NetEase began publishing Blizzard games in mainland China in 2008, but that deal expired in January 2023, and was not renewed. Each company naturally pointed the finger at the other: NetEase said it “put in a great deal of effort and tried with our utmost sincerity to negotiate with Activision Blizzard,” but that “material differences on key terms” prevented a new deal from being reached; Blizzard said NetEase was to blame for the shutdown because it wasn’t willing to extend the existing deal by another six months while Blizzard looked for someone else to take the reins.
The split was visibly acrimonious at times—recall NetEase employees destroying a giant World of Warcraft statue shortly after the deal ended—but that may all be water under the bridge now. A leaked photo posted to Twitter by CN Wire (via Kotaku) purports to show NetEase CEO Ding Lei in a meeting with new Blizzard president Johanna Faries, who took over the role in January 2024; the account also said NetEase was expected to announce the return of Blizzard games to the Chinese market on April 10.
A short time later, the South China Morning Post reported the same thing, citing “a person familiar with the matter” and “local media reports.” The SCMP report echoes CN Wire in saying that the new deal will be announced on April 10, but claims that Blizzard’s games won’t actually return to China for at least another month.
All’s well that ends well (although this hasn’t officially ended yet) and it’s not an entirely unexpected outcome: Activision Blizzard has said multiple times since the expiration of the NetEase deal that it remains “committed” to the Chinese market. But it may have been the company’s acquisition by Microsoft that helped finally get a deal done.
The Chinese government approved that merger in May 2023, ahead of both the UK’s Competitions and Markets Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission (which is still fighting it), and the SCMP report said Microsoft “has been playing a positive and active role in the negotiation process with NetEase since talks started late last year.” It’s just a shame that it took a year and a half of dicking around to get everything right back to where it started.
I’ve reached out to Blizzard and NetEase for comment and will update if I receive a reply.
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