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Blizzard said to be returning to China soon with resumption of NetEase partnership. Photo: Shutterstock
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World of Warcraft developer Blizzard to return to China soon after resuming partnership with NetEase, report says

  • Hangzhou-based game publisher NetEase will announce the official return of Blizzard to China by the end of March or in early April
  • The revival of Blizzard’s partnership with NetEase will let the US developer back into the world’s largest video gaming market by revenue
Video gaming
Iris Deng
Iris Dengin Shenzhen
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Blizzard Entertainment is returning to China in the coming weeks after the US video gaming giant resumed a partnership with NetEase following a high-profile bust up last year, according to a local media report.

Hangzhou-based game publisher NetEase will announce the official return of Blizzard to China by the end of March or in early April, and NetEase’s Guangzhou unit and its studio ThunderFire will respectively handle the operations and marketing of Blizzard’s games in the country, according to a report by media outlet CoreEsports.

NetEase and Blizzard did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.

The revival of Blizzard’s partnership with NetEase would let the US developer back into the world’s largest video gaming market by revenue, after an absence of over a year.

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The World of Warcraft developer suspended its services in the Chinese market last January after its 14-year partnership with NetEase expired due to a failure to agree terms on extending the deal.

Blizzard said a week before the expiration that NetEase had rejected its proposal for a six-month extension, but NetEase, which started to run World of Warcraft in China in 2009, described the offer as unfair.

The latest update followed earlier reports that Blizzard had been talking to other Chinese publishers to bring World of Warcraft – a very popular game in China – back to the country, but ultimately chose to renew its partnership with NetEase, according to a 36Kr report in January.

If NetEase and Blizzard agree to a new deal, it could take at least half a year for the game to return to China, as the companies need to rebuild the operations team and test servers, according to the 36Kr report.

In addition to the withdrawal of World of Warcraft last year, Blizzard also had to discontinue support for other popular titles in China, such as Overwatch, Hearthstone, StarCraft and Diablo III.

After the fallout, NetEase filed multiple lawsuits against Blizzard, including one in April demanding US$45 million as compensation for refunds it had to pay to affected gamers. Blizzard responded with two lawsuits in June against NetEase, alleging intellectual property infringement and unfair competition, after the Chinese firm’s game Justice launched an initiative to woo World of Warcraft fans, according to a report by Chinese media Yicai.

However, both NetEase and Blizzard subsequently dropped these lawsuits.

While World of Warcraft has a huge fan base in China, its popularity has been on the wane. It had 5 million active players in the country in 2009, but that had dropped to 350,000 by January this year, when Blizzard suspended service, according to state media agency Xinhua News and gaming information provider Wowdata.top.
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