NetEase and Blizzard are "reunited" after a year, and the national server version of "World of Warcraft" is coming back|36 Krypton exclusive

Text | Liu Shiwu

Edit | Qiao Qian, Yang Xuan

"Break up" for a year, or the old partner is the most suitable.

36Kr learned from a number of independent sources that in the past period of time, Blizzard negotiated the "return of the national server" with a number of domestic game manufacturers, and finally chose to re-cooperate with NetEase.

36Kr asked NetEase for confirmation of this news, but the other party did not respond as of press time.

It is understood that after the cooperation is confirmed, NetEase and Blizzard need to rebuild the national server operation team and test the server and related systems, so the game that players are looking forward to may have to wait for half a year or more to be relaunched.

NetEase Blizzard's "divorce" is a major event in the gaming circle this year. On January 24, 2023, the Chinese "Battle.net" server of Blizzard's game platform was officially shut down, and Blizzard's 25-year-long business in China came to an abrupt end.

In the nearly a year since the service was closed, Tencent, NetEase and other first-tier game manufacturers have reported news of cooperation with Blizzard's national server, but there has been no follow-up.

According to people familiar with the matter, Blizzard's conditions for sharing the agency at that time were very harsh, and even a partner like NetEase, who has been working together for more than ten years, found it difficult to accept. If other manufacturers want to cooperate with Blizzard, they need to reinvest a lot of technical and operational costs to build servers and game platforms, which is not cheap.

In the information previously released by NetEase, it was stated that the revenue provided by "Battle.net" accounted for only a single digit, and the termination of cooperation with Blizzard would not have a significant impact on revenue and profits. On the other hand, according to the financial report, several of Blizzard's games have an annual share of about 2 billion yuan in the national server, accounting for only 3% of Activision Blizzard's overall revenue.

Of course, from the perspective of the proportion of terminal games/mobile game revenue, terminal games are still the foundation of NetEase's foothold in the Chinese game market.

In 2022, NetEase's net revenue from games and related value-added services will be about 74.57 billion yuan, of which mobile game revenue will be about 46.2 billion yuan, and terminal game revenue will be about 22.8 billion yuan, the latter accounting for 30%, and in comparison, Tencent's total game business revenue in 2022 will be 207.4 billion yuan, of which mobile game revenue will be about 160.5 billion yuan, and terminal game revenue will be about 46.9 billion yuan, the latter accounting for only 22%. Judging from the revenue of the two companies that have a large number of mobile games and terminal game products at the same time, NetEase's terminal game revenue accounts for a significantly higher proportion.

In the past few years, the scale of China's mobile game market has grown rapidly, and in addition to its low threshold for play, the "short, flat and fast" development model can enable a mobile game of acceptable quality to be quickly developed, launched, and profitable. However, with the release of the "Measures for the Administration of Online Games (Draft for Solicitation of Comments)" issued by the National Press and Publication Administration on December 22, which restricts the "pre-test of games" and the prevalent charging mode of mobile games, the mobile game industry may usher in a bottleneck period of development, which also gives more opportunities to the end games of the hourly charging and buyout system, and NetEase's main position in the PC version of "Fantasy Westward Journey" (hourly charging) and "Naraka: Infinite" (The first two years of the launch were buyouts, with a total sales of more than 20 million copies) and other types of games are included.

For NetEase, more than ten years of experience in cooperation with Blizzard is still there, and after the cooperation is re-reached, the game is also expected to return in a few months.

In addition to the changes in the domestic market environment, the reason why NetEase and Blizzard, which were previously very different, chose to cooperate again may be related to the internal changes of Activision Blizzard.

In October this year, the long-awaited "Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard" officially ended, which means that Activision Blizzard is about to adjust the configuration of the executive team and strategic direction to adapt to Microsoft's layout in the game field.

After the completion of the acquisition, Activision Blizzard CEO Caldek announced that he will continue to remain CEO in 2023 as a transition period, and recently, Microsoft announced that Caldecott's "last day" is December 29, and in 2024 he will officially leave the company where he has worked for 32 years.

In the player group, Caldecott, who is known as the "devil CEO" in the circle, does not have a good reputation.

Previously, the New York Times reported that when Activision Blizzard's acquisition had not yet landed, Blizzard had proposed a one-time payment of $500 million for NetEase to renew the contract, which made many players disappointed with Blizzard, and the source of the contradiction also pointed to Caldecott, who was the CEO of Blizzard at the time.

As a businessman, Caldecott once acquired Activision for $4.4 billion, not only saved the company from bankruptcy, made itself dozens of times the revenue, but also led the company to become a global gaming giant as a core executive. Calderick also poached his peers to found IW Studios and launched the critically acclaimed Call of Duty series, which made many players fans of Activision Blizzard.

However, in recent years, Activision Blizzard's business strategy has made mistakes one after another, first-party series such as "Call of Duty" are difficult to satisfy players, new works generally have poor ratings on third-party platforms, and there are no phenomenal works such as "World of Warcraft" in Blizzard's IP.

Jason Schreer, a journalist at Kotaku, said that after the acquisition was completed, he spoke with several Activision Blizzard employees, and everyone was excited about Microsoft's successful acquisition of Activision Blizzard, because the company's management could finally be replaced.

According to people familiar with the matter, many NetEase employees who participated in NetEase Blizzard's cooperation have a bad reputation for Caldecott, and in the previous "breakup" incident, Caldek was also considered to "play the image of a villain". Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard and Caldecott's departure from the company may also be one of the reasons why NetEase and Blizzard have eased their relationship.

In the long run, there will be some time before the final implementation of the "Measures for the Administration of Online Games (Draft for Solicitation of Comments)", and the relevant departments are also improving its detailed rules, but in the future, it will be more and more difficult for many risky "short, flat and fast" games to gain survival space, and mature IPs and games will have a better chance of surviving.

In November of this year, the Battle.net iOS App was suddenly updated, and iOS users can directly access the content, and it is also suspected that the new version of the national server Battle.net client is already being tested.

Now, the era of Caldeco is coming to an end, and Mike Ybarra, the current president of Blizzard Entertainment, said that there are many players who love Blizzard games in Chinese mainland, and Blizzard hopes that its games can be spread all over the world, including the Chinese market. With reasonable business conditions, the return of Blizzard's national server is a good thing for NetEase and players.