Some time ago, there were some exposures about the situation of Blizzard and NetEase, but I didn't expect that the new news came again just two days later. And this time the news is still exposed by the New York Times, those readers who said that they have come out to say anything before have nothing to say now, the exposure itself is a kind of news, if I can be sure that it is 100% true, it is a real hammer.
The breakup was mainly due to the conflict between Ding Lei and Kodik in business behavior, after NetEase invested in the company created by its former employees, and then invested in "Destiny 2" developer Bungie during the cooperation, and "Destiny 2" was originally a Blizzard Battle.net game, and then broke away from Blizzard and landed on Steam.
It's like we're partners, but you're still investing in an opponent who has backstabbed me? It is also the commercial investment behavior that has caused Kodik to be dissatisfied with NetEase.
During this negotiation, NetEase also put forward new requirements, saying that it hoped to get a new license agreement, rather than a simple distributor relationship. NetEase wants to license the IP directly, rather than a third party, and says NetEase's market in China is enough to influence Microsoft's plans to acquire Activision Blizzard.
(You can translate it yourself, anyway, that's what it means)
And Blizzard saw that you said this to threaten me? (At the moment, Blizzard is throwing the pot again, indicating that there is a translation error) so it says no problem, but you have to provide an advance payment of $500 million first.
You must know that Activision Blizzard's game share in China in 2022 will be $264 million, which means that Blizzard will have to go for two years of money all of a sudden. In the past two years, NetEase also had to bear the initial risks of various situations such as operations, revenues, and events, which made Sanshi unable to accept this request.
In November 2022, Blizzard said that Activision Blizzard's revenue in China in 2021 only accounted for 3% of global net revenue, simply put, Blizzard hopes to get more profits.
Some fans said that Blizzard is worried that IP control affects reputation, this statement is really not true, NetEase CEO directly posted on the official Weibo that NetEase wants authorization without adding how to develop mobile games, peripheral interests, and even used Dota 2 as an example.
As for the current next home, although there are some revelations, but the truth is not known, Blizzard said in the New York Times itself: Tencent, Byte, Mobile these businesses are interested in agents, but they are still negotiating. But whether it is true or false is unknown, after all, the figure of 500 million US dollars is really not small.