The afterglow of the Spring Festival holiday has not yet dissipated, and the sharing of netizens "Unemployed Shark Thr" has quietly become a small hit among game lovers, and an adult suddenly finds himself losing the game he loves to play.
The customer asked the Internet café management, why can't I play the game "World of Warcraft"? Replied that "the Blizzard series of national uniforms are gone". After the network administrator could not explain further, the man sat there and did nothing, just read the news of Blizzard's game outage in China, and then kept saying "I can't play the game, so what am I playing?" The netizens who shared the incident also sighed, "It's too uncomfortable to listen to." ”
(Source: Weibo @Wuye You Shark Thr)
On January 24, 2023, due to the failure of game developer Blizzard and domestic operator NetEase to reach an agreement, the former failed to find an additional way to continue operation, and the "World of Warcraft" game that NetEase began to cooperate in operation since 2009 terminated its operation in China, and a number of other Blizzard's games also pressed the pause button for operation in China at the same time. However, the day of return may be far away.
One stone stirs up a thousand waves. Blizzard China launched the World of Warcraft game character save function for players to download data before the server was suspended, and NetEase opened a balance refund channel after the server was suspended. Players may seek ways to play on a foreign server, or choose another game to continue their journey. Some people also criticized Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, believing that he buried the future of Blizzard games.
In any case, an era is long gone. We hope to use a set of numbers to record this important event in the game industry and cross-border business cooperation.
The last 68 days of Blizzard players
On November 17, 2022, Blizzard unilaterally issued an announcement that Blizzard games other than Diablo: Immortal will be suspended after January 23, 2013 due to the expiration of the license agreement. Since then, NetEase issued an announcement confirming that the two sides could not reach an agreement on the renewal of the contract, and would start shutting down Blizzard Games National Server and arranging refunds, and the cooperation between Blizzard and NetEase came to an end.
(Source: Blizzard China)
At first, the outside world thought that there was still room for mediation in this matter, and Blizzard took the lead in just hoping to take more initiative in the negotiations. Since then, players have realized that the possibility of a successful renewal is becoming less and less, and gradually began to speculate that Tencent, ByteDance or other Internet companies will win the agency. However, without any tangible results, the player group will say goodbye to Blizzard Games in 68 days.
On November 23, the Blizzard Games national server recharge channel was closed, which means that once the time-billed World of Warcraft account expires, players will have no normal way to continue playing. Therefore, the price of props that can redeem game time soared, and the transaction price of second-hand channels increased from the original price of 360 yuan to more than 500 yuan, until the operation team provided a temporary recharge method, which temporarily curbed this situation.
For players, the deposit dilemma is just an episode of the end of the game's suspension of the server, and the real question of what will happen after the suspension on January 24 is the real question. Some people began to try more games of the same type, "World of Warcraft" players poured into various large-scale MMORPG games, NetEase's martial arts theme game "Against the Water and Cold" even set up a "veteran uniform" with an adjusted operation model.
A considerable number of people choose to switch to Blizzard game servers, familiar games can maximize the continuation of the entertainment experience, Blizzard's games operated in the international market have provided perfect Chinese, and "StarCraft 2" and "Overwatch 2" have shifted from prepaid to free play, and the threshold for player transfer is actually not high. Although World of Warcraft needs to be recharged time, it already has a mature system for playing outside.
1 million people lined up for refunds
After the online game is stopped, what will happen to the recharge balance that players have not yet consumed has always been a controversial part of the industry. Blizzard's suspension has attracted the attention of consumer associations, and some netizens have also mentioned how players can win their due rights in various judicial cases involving game suspension. The ownership of virtual items corresponding to game consumption has attracted a lot of attention, so it is not very different from ordinary services.
NetEase Blizzard Game customer service team announced that it will open a refund application channel for virtual currency or game services that players have recharged but not consumed in "Blizzard Game Products", and the deadline for submitting refund requests is June 30, 2023. In view of the fact that the time for Blizzard Games to relaunch and officially operate in China is far away, a large number of players choose to apply for refunds to protect their rights and interests.
On February 1, the refund channel was officially opened, players have shared their refund interface on social media, even with time billing and relatively low in-game props as the main profit model, there are still a considerable number of players to charge hundreds or even thousands of yuan for their game accounts, in just one day, showing that more than 1 million people are waiting in line for refunds.
Buyout games do not refund by default, sparking discussion. "StarCraft 2", "Diablo 3" and "Overwatch" are all paid by Blizzard Games' earliest buyout system in stand-alone mode, but they actually operate in the form of fully networked online games. Many players believe that buyout payment should provide an offline long-term playable experience, but they are affected by this suspension and cannot continue playing.
The suspension and refund also had a financial impact on both NetEase and Blizzard. NetEase's stock price fell after Blizzard's announcement, and then NetEase announced that Blizzard's cooperation income accounted for only a few, and it can be seen from the financial report that NetEase's self-developed and operated mobile games have long been the mainstay of revenue. Blizzard also failed to reach a higher-yield contract extension as expected, and Activision Blizzard's stock price reached a nearly one-year low.
268 Hearthstone streamers
The value generated by Blizzard games is not only to directly provide players with a game experience, but also to provide a lot of material for game streamers who create entertainment content because of the story, art, gameplay and other in-depth parts. Game streamers attract more viewers because they play Blizzard games, and these games also get unimaginable out-of-circle effects before 2010 because of the influence of streamers.
The most typical case is Hearthstone and the streamers who rely on this game to get to the stage. "Hearthstone" is a card battle game derived from the "Warcraft" series, inheriting the story setting while having a gameplay experience that does not require too many thresholds, attracting streamers with its early game experience and golden signboard, and the easy to get started essence makes it loved by a large number of players who are not Blizzard fans.
(Source: "Hearthstone" national service official blog)
Games-streamers-audiences, the three form an ecosystem of mutual dependence and common prosperity. Game streamers can more effectively generate program content in battles, viewers will be interested in the game itself to experience it when watching live broadcasts for entertainment, and NetEase and live streaming platforms are more willing to organize activities to drive activity. At its peak, many anchors took advantage of this to gain a class leap, and it became a beautiful talk for a while.
According to statistics, there are 268 full-time or part-time Hearthstone streamers on the Douyu live broadcast platform alone, some of whom are still working on the live broadcast content of this game, and some of them have completed career transitions through the popularity accumulated in the process. After the news of Blizzard's NetEase negotiation failure, they all expressed regret and discussed what to do after the "Hearthstone" national service was stopped.
Just like players, streamers have their own choices: switch to foreign servers, try similar card battle games, or try other games, such as the quietly emerging Goose Duck Kill. Without Blizzard games, streamers are gradually experiencing new games and discovering more content. Some people have long disassociated themselves from Blizzard games, which bring joy and assets, but are only part of life.
$35 million fine
According to the earnings report, the revenue generated by Chinese player consumption across the Activision Blizzard group progresses to 3% of the total revenue, but for Blizzard, the most closely connected segment of the Chinese market, this land provides nearly 20% of the revenue. Blizzard did not reach a contract renewal with NetEase or look for a new operator, and directly lost this piece of "fragrant food", which seems irrational, and also reflects the company's situation.
Once upon a time, Blizzard Entertainment was the representative of the top development strength in the game industry. The reputation of "produced by Blizzard must be boutique" has been spread among the player group, from the "Warcraft" series to the online game "World of Warcraft", epoch-making products have been put out under the huge transformation. Since then, new games, Hearthstone and Overwatch, have achieved considerable success in their respective fields.
(Source: Blizzard)
In the past ten years, the core members of Blizzard have been left continuously, and the changes that have occurred synchronously have greatly affected the quality of the game and the pace of development. The MOBA game "Heroes of the Storm", which was pinned on high hopes, did not achieve any commercial achievements, "Overwatch" started brilliantly but the subsequent content update was weak, and the former pillar "World of Warcraft" was also criticized by players for mediocre plot.
At the company level, Blizzard is even more scandalous: around the management and operation dispute between Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Blizzard Entertainment executives, people feel the vortex under the surface storm. Many sex scandals closely related to Blizzard's corporate operations have completely pulled this company, which could have been the representative of game culture, off the altar and lost the last fig leaf.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently announced that Activision Blizzard will be fined $35 million for sex scandals and other incidents, which is just a drop in the bucket for Blizzard and even the entire Activision Blizzard's revenue, and it is difficult to see the dawn of a fundamental solution to the Blizzard crisis. The of a thousand miles collapsed in the anthill, and Blizzard Games stopped serving, but it was the end of the disappearance of a great company.