On November 16 last year, the 14-year cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard officially broke down, and announced that the two sides would end on January 23, 2023. Since then, there have been many opinions about Blizzard's follow-up partners in the domestic market, but the only thing that is certain is that it is indeed trying to find new agents. But as this journey came to an end, a ridiculous scene happened.
On January 17, Blizzard China said in a social media post that it had contacted NetEase last week and sought assistance to explore extending the existing agreement based on the established terms agreed by the latter in 2019 for six months, so that players can continue to play without interruption, but this proposal was not accepted by NetEase, so it will follow the relevant suspension announcement issued by NetEase. At such a point in time a week before Blizzard Games was launched, Blizzard suddenly released such content, and the meaning of the words was obviously obvious.
Although the domestic Blizzard gamers are conservatively estimated to be in the millions, from the relevant information that has been exposed so far, the process of finding new agents on the Blizzard side does not seem to be smooth, which means that after January 23, these players will become homeless "wanderers".
And Blizzard's sudden post a few days ago is also considered to be throwing the responsibility of players not being able to play the game in the future to NetEase, so players are to blame NetEase for not accepting the olive branch it handed over.
But as the party that was "dumped", NetEase did not tie its hands and responded, late at night on January 17. NetEase said that for unknown reasons, Blizzard re-approached the company last week and sought assistance, putting forward a proposal for a six-month extension of the so-called game service and other conditions, and made it clear that it would not stop continuing negotiations with other potential partners during the contract extension. It is worth mentioning that NetEase also contributed golden sentences such as "give and take, ride a donkey to find a horse, divorce without leaving the body" in this note.
Not only that, but then on January 18, it is reported that the self-operated café in the NetEase Park launched a new drink "Blizzard Green Tea", which seems to be alluding to Blizzard's "green tea" behavior. At the same time, NetEase's popular game "Eternal Calamity" livestreamed the demolition of the sculpture of the Blizzard element in the park.
In fact, in essence, Blizzard's request in this incident is extremely excessive and indeed not in line with commercial logic, so it is natural for NetEase to express a hostile attitude with various measures.
If Blizzard released "Blizzard's update to the national server player community" in December last year, it really represents its efforts to bring the game back to the domestic market. But the reality now is that the date of Blizzard's post is January 17, 2023, and the six-month extension proposed to NetEase is also after January 10. So there is a view that this means that Blizzard's proposal is intended to "prostitute" NetEase.
Since the cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase expires on January 23, once the latter accepts the extension proposal, it is equivalent to saying that it will run the game for half a year for free. At the same time, sources revealed that the negotiations of Blizzard Games' national service agent have entered the "one of the two" stage, proving that it really intends to find another home.
Moreover, under the premise that the cooperation between the two has broken down, NetEase has begun to dissolve its NetEase company, which was established in order to realize the landing of Blizzard games in the Chinese market. According to previous revelations, NetEase's layoff plan is nearing the end, employees are either transferred or laid off, and judging from the pictures that have been exposed, NetEase's office space has entered the demolition stage. In other words, even if NetEase really accepts Blizzard's proposal to extend the six-month extension, it may already be powerless.
You must know that operating the game itself is actually a man-intensive work, requiring a lot of customer service, GM, planning to solve players' problems, maintain order in the game, and plan related activities. Under the premise that NetEase has been substantially dissolved, Blizzard's request is equivalent to requiring NetEase to provide at least hundreds of temporary jobs, which is undoubtedly an expense that cannot be ignored, and how can players spend the game that is destined to be closed in six months.
Therefore, in the eyes of the outside world, Blizzard's release is equivalent to treating NetEase as a "big wrong", so it is impossible for NetEase to agree to such a proposal. In fact, Blizzard's play can be described as "Li Ling Zhi faint", in order to take advantage of a little advantage, it has added huge resistance to finding new agents out of thin air. After all, no matter how demanding players are, they have to admit that NetEase has done everything in their hearts to Blizzard, but even if they are so sincere, they will be backstabbed by it, so no matter which manufacturer becomes the new agent of Blizzard Games, they may have a stake.
What's more deadly is that Blizzard also mentioned in the statement the local saving progress function of player data, which is commonly known as the "electronic urn", which is a big thunder for future partners. It is reported that the local save progress function only generates a WAF format file in the player's local file, according to the relevant unpacking data, Blizzard's programmers have indicated in the comments that the function is only a temporary measure, and also found that Blizzard did not use any anti-cheat and anti-deciphering methods in the code, but directly listed the data in the player's account.
Players who experienced the transfer of the agency of "World of Warcraft" from Nine Cities to NetEase may remember that there were a lot of turmoil about the account during the original agent change. Therefore, Blizzard's current irresponsible treatment of player data is very likely to cause problems in data security and permission verification in the future.
Not to mention the difficult game version approval process, such harsh treatment of former partners, and willful behavior on player data, is Blizzard planning to completely abandon the domestic market?