Why has Blizzard left China?

Blizzard Entertainment titles including Overwatch, Starcraft, Hearthstone and World of Warcraft have officially gone offline in China following a tumultuous end to the developer's distribution partnership with NetEase

NetEase

NetEase develops and operates online PC and mobile games, advertising services, email services, and e-commerce platforms in China. It is one of the largest Internet and video game companies in the world. NetEase has an on-demand music-streaming service (NetEase Music). The company also owns several pig farms.

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › NetEase

NetEase - Wikipedia

, which saw the two gaming giants fail to negotiate an extension to their 14 year-old licensing ...

Will Blizzard come back to China?

Blizzard games go dark in China, with no return in sight: 'This is so tragic,' says former Hearthstone director. Blizzard is still looking for a "new partner" to bring its games back to Chinese players, but for now, they're out of luck.

Why is WoW down in China?

In its January statement, NetEase said it never sought to control IP rights in its tie-up with Blizzard, whose gaming assets it only used upon mutual agreement. Servers hosting Blizzard's games shut down in China at midnight on Jan. 23.

Why is overwatch 2 no longer in China?

Overwatch 2 servers in mainland China have been shut down due to a disagreement between Blizzard and Netease. This shutdown does not come as a surprise. As previously reported, Blizzard was unable to reach an agreement with NetEase, the Chinese tech company in charge of publishing the games in mainland China.

Is Blizzard owned by China?

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc.

WHY Blizzard Is Leaving China

Who bought out Blizzard?

It said it had “reached the conclusion that the transaction is unlikely to result in substantially restraining competition in any particular fields of trade.” Here's a list of all the countries that have approved Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard so far: Japan.

Why can't China play Overwatch?

Overwatch 2 and Other Blizzard Games Shall Be Unavailable to China from Jan 2023. Blizzard is ending its licensing agreement with Chinese company NetEase after 15 years. This means Chinese gamers will no longer be able to access games like Overwatch, Hearthstone, and World of Warcraft.

What is Overwatch called in Chinese?

The version in traditional Chinese is called 'the Taiwan server' (taifu 台服), with Overwatch translated as “Douzhen tegong” 鬥陣特攻 (lit. Special Attack of the Fighting Battalion). Gamers can switch between the two versions via the language setting on Battle.net, the Blizzard desktop app.

Is Overwatch 2 declining?

Overwatch 2 has struggled with a slowly declining viewership base ever since the game's release back in October 2022, starting at around 630k viewers and declining to now 14k as shown in Remy's tweet.

Is World Wide Web banned in China?

Internet censorship and surveillance has tightly implemented in China that block social websites like Gmail, Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and others. The excessive censorship practices of the Great Firewall of China have now engulfed the VPN service providers as well.

How many players did WoW lose?

In a graphical version of Blizzard's Monthly Active Users (MAU) stats from the 2021 Q4 call, it appears that Blizzard lost 5 million users during 2021 despite the release of WoW Shadowlands in October, 2020, and Diablo 2 Resurrected and WoW Burning Crusade Classic in 2021.

What is the longest WoW outage?

Two answer the question in the title, it's around 26 hours of solid downtime. The longest time of 'oh god I can't play like this' was the first 3 or 4 days of launch (which everyone got play time credited for because it was so bad).

Can blizzards happen in the US?

In the United States, blizzards are common in the upper Midwest and the Great Plains but occur in most areas of the country except for the Gulf Coast and the California coast. Blizzards can occur all over the world, even in the tropics where it is cold on high altitude mountaintops.

Which country is most affected by blizzards?

Blizzards occur all over the world. But because they're closer to the Arctic, places like Russia, central and northeastern Asia, northern Europe, Canada, and the northern United States experience more blizzards than other parts of the globe.

Why doesn't China get much snow?

Blame it on the monsoon

These domes of frigid, sinking air typically block Pacific moisture from reaching northeast China during the winter. As a result, 2 percent of Beijing's annual average precipitation — a mere 0.40 inches — falls between December and February.

Is Mei Overwatch autistic?

In Overwatch lore, Symmetra is a character with Autism, but it was rarely reflected in-game despite comics and other story pieces indicating that she is on the spectrum. The sequel is hoping to remedy this by making it far more apparent and celebrating her Autism in-game through quite a few voice lines.

Why did China get banned from Fortnite?

One of the financial victims of the crackdown has been Tencent, which owns 40 percent of Fortnite. In addition, China has not given Tencent Holdings a license to officially launch the game in the country, leaving the game to operate in beta mode, where Fortnite is banned from charging players.

Why is China limiting gaming?

The National Press and Publication Administration claims the video game ban intends to protect children's mental and physical health. The Chinese government have been concerned about eye problems among young gamers for a while now.

Is China banned for Xbox?

The Chinese government this year lifted a ban on gaming consoles that was imposed back in 2000. The Xbox One will be the first gaming console to be released in mainland China since the government banned console sales in 2000.

Is Blizzard making money?

According to Activision Blizzard's most recent financial report, the developer/publisher generated £535m from its PC and console sales in Q2 2022 - £275m ($332m) on PC and £310m ($376m) consoles - while £688m ($831m) came from its "mobile and ancillary" business, which the company says "primarily include[s] revenues ...