"Dear player, welcome home!" On the morning of April 10th, Ms. Jiang, a veteran game enthusiast, received this message from Blizzard Game Service Center. Subsequently, she posted on her social media that for players, the return of Blizzard games to the Chinese server is undoubtedly long-awaited good news.
Respondents share messages from Blizzard Game Service Center
However, after more than a year of breaking up, can former Blizzard game players return as they wish? Will these players pay for the return of games to the Chinese server? This series of issues remains questionable.
NetEase Blizzard continues to lead the way
On the morning of April 10th, NetEase Games posted on social media, saying, "We are honored to work together with Blizzard Entertainment again to bring Blizzard Games back to the Chinese server." At the same time, Blizzard China publicly stated, "Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase are pleased to announce today that they have reached an updated game distribution agreement based on their over 15 year cooperation, in order to bring Blizzard Games back to our Chinese server players."
Blizzard China further said that Blizzard games will return to the Chinese Mainland market in the summer of 2024. Meanwhile, Microsoft Games will deepen cooperation with NetEase and form a strategic partnership. At that time, the highly anticipated Chinese servers of games such as World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft, Watchman, Diablo, and StarCraft may all return.
In addition, Microsoft Games and NetEase have reached an agreement to try bringing new NetEase games to Xbox and other platforms.
According to Blizzard China's official Weibo account
Subsequently, the official Weibo account of World of Warcraft released a letter to Blizzard players on the national server, stating that they still need some time to prepare for the opening of the server, but the first returning game will reunite with everyone in the summer. At the same time, it reminds players: "When the server is turned on, we will ensure that your account data is fully preserved. Do not listen to rumors to participate in unprotected account or account data transactions."
At this point, Blizzard and NetEase once again held hands, declaring the dust settled.
The capital market has also shown some performance. Since the news of the "merger" of the two on April 9th, the stock price of NetEase (09999. HK) in Hong Kong has been on the rise. As of the close on April 10th, it closed at HKD 158.8 per share, up 6% in the past three trading days.
"Hand in hand" meets market expectations
According to public information, in November 2022, Blizzard released a statement saying that since the existing license agreement with NetEase will expire on January 23, 2023, most Blizzard game services in Chinese Mainland will be suspended, including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone Legend, Watch Vanguard, Starcraft, Warcraft III: Reset, Diablo III and Storm Hero.
Subsequently, NetEase responded that it has been making every effort to negotiate with Activision Blizzard and hopes to advance the renewal of the contract. After a long period of negotiations, both sides are still unable to reach an agreement with Activision Blizzard on some key terms of cooperation. Later, NetEase and Blizzard ended their years of cooperation. Starting from January 24, 2023, Blizzard National Service officially ceased operations, and the above-mentioned games can no longer be downloaded and logged in for play.
In fact, there have been rumors that Blizzard has "joined hands" with other domestic game manufacturers many times since then, and Tencent, ByteDance, Mihayou, Perfect World, Century Huatong, Giant Network, etc. were the other side of the "scandal".
Nowadays, Blizzard is once again openly embracing its old partners, which many industry insiders see as a win-win two-way journey. Blizzard's desire to return to the Chinese server and seize the domestic mobile gaming market, or if only NetEase can do so in a short period of time, its huge platform size and mature operational experience will be the "booster" for Blizzard's successful return.
"After the return of Blizzard's national server, the large number of loyal players who paid for their emotions are likely to return, but it is not an easy task to recover the long lost reputation." Senior gamer Ms. Jiang said that in the future, player data recovery, cooperation mode optimization, and building new IPs are all development directions that need to be jointly planned by the two in the increasingly competitive Chinese gaming market, such as maintaining stock and seeking growth.
Microsoft's power cannot be underestimated
In some views, this incident is not so much a reunion between Blizzard and NetEase, but rather a brand new dialogue between Microsoft and NetEase.
Looking back at October 2023, Microsoft announced the completion of its acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion, marking the end of a two-year acquisition that has attracted industry attention. At this point, Microsoft stands behind Blizzard and becomes the most powerful support.
According to financial report data, Activision Blizzard's net revenue for the first quarter of the 2023 fiscal year was $2.383 billion, compared to $1.768 billion in the same period last year; The net profit was 740 million US dollars, compared to 395 million US dollars in the same period last year, a year-on-year increase of 87%. By business division, the revenue from product sales in the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 was $695 million, while the revenue from subscription, licensing, and other businesses was $1.688 billion.
On the other hand, NetEase, whose gaming business still plays an important role in the investment landscape, reported a net income of 103.5 billion yuan in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 7.2%; The revenue of the gaming business reached 81.6 billion yuan, accounting for 78.8% of the total revenue. NetEase stated in its financial report that the proportion of net revenue from mobile games such as "Egg Boy Party" and "Against Water Cold" has increased, ranking first in the revenue contribution of NetEase's game products.
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