Blizzard Entertainment Is Pulling Its Games Out of China

https://www.pcmag.com/news/blizzard-entertainment-is-pulling-its-games-out-of-china

So Blizzard is losing its biggest PTW market. I wonder what that means for Diablo 4.

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I wonder what that means for Diablo 4.

Not much

What is more interesting is NetEase stating the revenue generated from Blizzard's games were "low single digits as a percentage" of the company's total net revenues and income.

They didn't want to renew their license because Blizzard games are not profitable enough...

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zakalwe55 wrote:

So Blizzard is losing its biggest PTW market.

Not really...

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Diablo Immortal, which is a co-development with NetEase, will continue to be available as it's covered under a separate agreement.

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awesome999 wrote:

What is more interesting is NetEase stating the revenue generated from Blizzard's games were "low single digits as a percentage" of the company's total net revenues and income.

They didn't want to renew their license because Blizzard games are not profitable enough...

That's an interesting take?

NetEase is worth like 47 Billion dollars, so yeah they don't give a fuck about literally anyone, and likely negotiate like that.

Personally I wish more companies would take a stand against China and the unenviable position of having to also deal with the CCP in whatever you do.

I think the revenue in question was like 264 million dollars. Which yes, is a lot of money, but not like a crippling amount given Diablo Immortal already brought in over 300.

Edit: As a side note NetEase lost 11% market share after the announcement, so overall you could make a case this hurts them more than Blizzard. (who in theory could find another partner)

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DarthSki44 wrote:

Personally I wish more companies would take a stand against China and the unenviable position of having to also deal with the CCP in whatever you do.

Most countries and companies are more along the line of strengthening ties with China because they like money. LOL.

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Edit: As a side note NetEase lost 11% market share after the announcement, so overall you could make a case this hurts them more than Blizzard. (who in theory could find another partner)

A lot of the profit went to Blizzard rather than Netease. Netease getting ripped off for overpriced licenses, they don't live up to their costs. Better to dump them.

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DarthSki44 wrote:

That's an interesting take?

NetEase is worth like 47 Billion dollars, so yeah they don't give a fuck about literally anyone, and likely negotiate like that.

Personally I wish more companies would take a stand against China and the unenviable position of having to also deal with the CCP in whatever you do.

I think the revenue in question was like 264 million dollars. Which yes, is a lot of money, but not like a crippling amount given Diablo Immortal already brought in over 300.

Edit: As a side note NetEase lost 11% market share after the announcement, so overall you could make a case this hurts them more than Blizzard. (who in theory could find another partner)

Thats not a good call... Just because you are worth 47bi, that dosnt means any deal below 1b is automatically insignificant. Netease deals with some games that operate well below the 200 million mark, so thinking they called off blizzard because they found it insignificant is really not in line with their library. From what i get, blizzard is having a hard time as they are steadily losing active accounts. DI did gave some boost, but not enough to revert to 2020 numbers, and OW2 didnt seem to cause the impact it antecipated. Tons of analists are comparing with CoD mobile that blew blizzards games by a significant margin. The recent launches of DI and OW2 did gave a decent influx of players, but they seem to be struggling to keep those players

Also, that lost share netease had dates back to mid oct, if you browse the company recent history on the last months, it had a significant fall that dates well before the blizzard announce, also, it seems to be recovering since 14/11, so it seems shuting down blizzard didnt really hurt them a bit

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feike wrote:

Also, that lost share netease had dates back to mid oct, if you browse the company recent history on the last months, it had a significant fall that dates well before the blizzard announce, also, it seems to be recovering since 14/11, so it seems shuting down blizzard didnt really hurt them a bit

Losing presence in China would be a bigger problem for Blizzard. Like how Google or Facebook can be replaced by Chinese counterpart when they are not there.

There have been some interesting articles about this, with a high-up at NetEase blaming 'a jerk' at Blizzard, but later publications pointing out 'different values' between Activision and NetEase. Either way, NetEase get to keep DI and Actiblizz get to slowly wash their hands of the controversies of the past few years involving the letters K and H.

I wasn't surprised by this move at all though -- early footage of D4 seemed to commit entirely to the style of D1/D2 in terms of provocative imagery, and my initial thought was 'I don't think they're making this with Chinese standards in mind'. Lo and behold, they are not.

My heart goes out to Chinese gamers who will no longer be able to play their preferred and chosen long-term Blizzard games though. Really it does. That's gotta really suck.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

There have been some interesting articles about this, with a high-up at NetEase blaming 'a jerk' at Blizzard, but later publications pointing out 'different values' between Activision and NetEase. Either way, NetEase get to keep DI and Actiblizz get to slowly wash their hands of the controversies of the past few years involving the letters K and H.

The truth is Blizzard Activision ended the partnership not Netease. NetEase is trying to negotiate better term since their partnership don't earn as much as they hope, Blizzard Activision is increasing the price despite of that. Those terms aren't acceptable to Netease. Blizzard Activision apparently think Netease is trying to low ball them. Blizzard Activision then unilaterally release the news of termination of the partnership while they are still "negotiating" despite NetEase telling Blizzard Activision not to release anything since it will negatively affect them.

Netease is unwilling to negotiate any further with this sabotage. It is more of Blizzard Activision destroying or damaging the partnership deliberately since Netease isn't willing to pay their exorbitant prices.

Maybe that is the "different values" nonsense the articles is talking about.

Title is wrong.

"censored" is pulling "other word for gamingindustry" out of "CoC-violation".