Red Star Capital Bureau reported on December 26th that there have been rumors in the market recently that NetEase and Blizzard have resumed cooperation. Meanwhile, the World of Warcraft community in NetEase's gaming player forum "NetEase Gods" has recently resumed updates.
Red Star Capital consulted NetEase about whether they will restart cooperation and the reasons for resuming updates to the World of Warcraft community. As of the time of publication, the other party has not responded yet.
World of Warcraft Community Recovery Update
NetEase and Blizzard rumored to restart collaboration
NetEase and Blizzard may once again hold hands.
According to Caixin News Agency, Blizzard has been in talks with several domestic game manufacturers regarding the return of Chinese servers in the past period of time, and ultimately chose to re collaborate with NetEase. It is understood that after the cooperation is confirmed, NetEase and Blizzard need to rebuild the national server operation team and test the servers and related systems. Therefore, players may have to wait for half a year or more for the game to be re launched.
At the beginning of this year, after the collaboration between Blizzard and NetEase broke down, the last news in the Warcraft section of the "NetEase Gods" was a service suspension announcement.
The Red Star Capital Bureau has noticed that currently, there are no announcements related to server suspension in the World of Warcraft community, and the community's posts are also being updated.
Screenshot taken from the "NetEase God" World of Warcraft community
Previously collaborated for 14 years and negotiated several times
Breaking up due to failure to reach a consensus on key terms
Red Star Capital Bureau learned that since 2008, NetEase has been cooperating with Blizzard to exclusively operate multiple Blizzard games in the Chinese Mainland market.
On November 17, 2022, Blizzard Entertainment issued a statement stating that most Blizzard game services in the Chinese Mainland market will be suspended because the existing licensing agreement with NetEase expires on January 23, 2023.
NetEase CEO Ding Lei once stated that NetEase is very eager to continue representing Blizzard Games and has put in a lot of effort for this. But in the past period of time, the difficulty of the entire negotiation process far exceeded NetEase's expectations. Activision Blizzard's requirements are unacceptable for key cooperation terms that involve sustainable operations and core player interests.
An industry insider close to NetEase once analyzed the Red Star Capital Bureau, saying, "At the legal level, it is common for both parties to not renew their contracts when they expire. From the news released by Blizzard, NetEase also gave priority to the opportunity for contract renewal negotiations, but ultimately did not reach a renewal cooperation."
Red Star Capital Bureau noticed that Blizzard had held talks with NetEase before the agreement expired.
On the afternoon of January 17, 2023, Blizzard China's official Weibo account posted that it had contacted NetEase again last week and sought assistance to discuss extending the existing agreement based on the established terms agreed upon by NetEase in 2019 for a six-month extension. But NetEase did not accept its proposal to extend the existing game service agreement after last week's postponement negotiations.
NetEase issued a statement in response, stating, "For unknown reasons, Blizzard sought NetEase again last week, proposing a six-month extension of its gaming services and other conditions, and clearly stated that it will not stop negotiating with other potential partners during the contract extension period. However, as far as we know, all negotiations between Blizzard and other companies during the same period were based on a three-year contract period. Considering the inequality, unfairness, and other attached conditions of cooperation, the two parties ultimately failed to reach an agreement."
Starting from 0:00 on January 24, 2023, all domestic Blizzard games will officially cease operation, including games such as World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Watchman, Starcraft, Warcraft III: Reset, Diablo III, and Storm Hero.
After the service suspension, Blizzard continued to find new national service agents. The enterprises contacted by Blizzard include Tencent (00700. HK), Bilibili (09626. HK), ByteDance, Perfect World (002624. SZ), Oriental Pearl TV Tower (600637. SH), Century Huatong (002602. SZ) and other companies.
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