Netease has been the Chinese publisher for Activision Blizzard’s games for 14 years, but when the agreement now expires on January 23rd, it looks like it will cause a lot of problems for players in China. After a dispute between the parties, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch will be removed.
According to, among others Reuters then there is a conflict and friction, where Activision Blizzard last year sent a proposal for a contract extension that Netease immediately rejected, with the justification that the content was rude, unreasonable and commercially illogical. And when the cat was already out of the bag, they continued to accuse Activision Blizzard of skimping on the hard work of others, grabbing all the benefits and all the credit, without taking any responsibility whatsoever.
The reason for the sudden public airing of dirty laundry seems to be that Activision Blizzard has been in discussions with other parties about writing long contracts, while also having the guts to ask Netease for an extension of just six months, suggesting that they already decided to break the collaboration but do not want to saw off the branch you are sitting on before something new is ready. This has thus not landed very well and the atmosphere is now extremely bad between the actors. Something that in the end, as so many times before, mainly affects the players.
Activision Blizzard will of course eventually sign an agreement with another publisher, no one doubts that, but as of Wednesday next week, the existing agreement will expire and the games will thus become unavailable in China.
