Millions of gamers in China lost access to the “World of Warcraft” franchise, one of the most popular in the country and the world, and other popular video games, as Blizzard Entertainment’s servers in the country went offline after two decades of operation.
The company’s services in China were suspended at midnight local time on Tuesday, marking the end of an era for fans after a licensing agreement with longtime local partner NetEase expired.
“World of Warcraft”, also known as “WoW”, is an extremely popular multiplayer online game that allows users to fight monsters and travel through expeditions in the medieval world of Azeroth. Many players around the world have grown to great success, including in China. This has been underscored in recent days as Chinese fans have expressed their disbelief at the loss of their long-time hobby in social media posts.
“When I woke up, I still didn’t want to accept [isso],” said a user on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, on Tuesday. “I cried all night in my sleep because the game went off the air. I dreamed that I was crying in the middle of class.”
The suspension follows a heated dispute between Blizzard, a unit of Activision Blizzard, and NetEase.
Overseas publishers must work with local partners to deliver video games in China. Last November, however, Blizzard and NetEase announced that they would not be renewing the licensing agreements, which were due to expire this month.
In a statement last Tuesday, Blizzard said it reached out to NetEase to seek “their help in exploring a six-month extension of the current contract”. The US company said it appealed to NetEase to allow fans to continue playing uninterruptedly, “based on our personal feelings as players and the frustration expressed to us by Chinese players”.
NetEase reacted with its own statement last week. In remarkably terse comments, the Chinese tech and gaming giant accused Blizzard of catching it by surprise with its “sudden declaration” and called the US company’s proposal “outrageous, inappropriate and not in line with business logic”.
The public spat marked an unexpected turn in the companies’ 14-year partnership.
This article is a translation of the writing by Michelle Toh to the website CNN Business.
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