Blizzard Reached Agreement With NetEase. Diablo, Warcraft, and Studio’s Other Games Return to China
More than a year after a violent breakup, Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase are collaborating again. The Chinese giant also signed a separate deal with Microsoft, under which the former company's new games will come to Xbox consoles, among others.
Blizzard Entertainment's games will return to China. To achieve this goal, Microsoft has collaborated with NetEase. The same one that seemed to have a permanent disagreement with the devs of the Warcraft and Diablo series.
Blizzard itself noted the success, as did Phil Spencer (via X). Not only because the studio has been owned by Microsoft for a long time. According to the announcement, Microsoft Gaming and NetEase have also entered into a "separate agreement" for the latter company's new games to be available on "Xbox consoles and other company platforms."
The decision is completely understandable, even though Blizzard's reconciliation with NetEase may come as a surprise to some, especially given the Chinese company's actions following the sudden split of both developers. Despite the recent changes in the Chinese gaming market (those permitted by the industry), it remains a country with a massive player base who were certainly not pleased with the launch of WoW, Diablo (excluding Immortal), Hearthstone, and other Blizzard franchises.
It is worth noting that rumors about the possibility of resuming cooperation appeared at the end of last year. The leak at the time (via Xfire) suggested that Blizzard would return to China within about 6 months. This didn't work out completely, as Blizzard games are set to come back to Chinese players in the summer. No exact date was given.
The only question is whether NetEase will "fix" the orc statue as a sign of approval (which was destroyed during a big stream)? And will the company confirm who Simon Zhu ( Director of Cooperation) had in mind when he talked about the "damage" caused by a certain "jerk"?
