After 466 days of waiting, the bloody drama of Blizzard and NetEase's "remarriage" finally ushered in a climax. This morning, Blizzard China released a photo of Ding Lei, Blizzard CEO, and Microsoft Games CEO, officially announcing the reunion.
In the photo, the three are smiling sweetly. I believe their laughter is a genuine laugh, not a professional smirk. Because in this "divorce" drama, they all won, and only Chinese players lost and were traded.
Image source: Blizzard China
The biggest winner was Ding Lei, so he smiled the most.
When the "divorce" last year, NetEase successfully portrayed herself as a sad little daughter-in-law - she worked hard for Blizzard to manage "housework" for 14 years, purchased hundreds of servers, hired thousands of employees, invested as much as 10 billion yuan before and after, and made 996 money a day to support her family. Blizzard doesn't spend a penny, and it earns 50% a year.
Blizzard was still not satisfied with such generous conditions, and temporarily increased the price when renewing the contract, which provoked the little daughter-in-law who had been oppressed for 14 years to completely explode and angrily filed for "divorce".
There is a wave of crusade against the "negative man" Blizzard on the Internet. NetEase understands traffic very well, and they made full use of this wave of popularity, smashing the "Blood Roar" model and selling "Blizzard Green Tea" live, and fiercely promoted a wave of their new game "Naraka: Bladepoint".
Screenshot of the live stream
In the wave of traffic feast, NetEase, which lost the golden sign of "Blizzard", stopped losses in time, and the stock price did not fluctuate violently, and even walked out of several waves of small rises. turned into a crisis, Ding Lei can be called the grandmaster of the crisis public relations industry.
This time, after the announcement of the compound, as of 10 a.m. today, NetEase shares rose 8.5 yuan, an increase of nearly 6% in two days. NetEase has earned 29 billion Hong Kong dollars, which is more than the 14 years of acting as an agent for Blizzard games combined, can Ding Lei not laugh? !
Microsoft is the "win-win". In this "divorce" drama, Microsoft seems to be a marginal character, a voiceover, and has only heard its voice for a long time, but has not seen anyone. But if you go back to the source, Microsoft is actually the initiator of the conflict between NetEase and Blizzard.
When Microsoft acquired Blizzard, it attached a performance clause that stipulated that if Blizzard's revenue met a certain threshold, the original management would receive an additional "retirement pension" after the acquisition was completed.
Blizzard CEO Caldecott staged the final madness under the stimulation of a huge "pension", and in order to do high performance, he did not hesitate to blackmail NetEase, which has cooperated for 14 years, and temporarily increased the price, which led to the tragedy later.
After the completion of the acquisition, Microsoft issued a statement as soon as possible, saying that it would return to China in the shortest possible time.
They played the role of mediators, shuttling between NetEase and Blizzard, doing Ding Lei's ideological work: "Those moths are all Caldecott's ghosts, we have fired him, now everyone can sit down and talk again." ”
sent Ding Lei a step down, and also left a good impression on Chinese players.
This "remarriage" has led to the cooperation between NetEase and Microsoft. NETEASE HAS ANNOUNCED THAT ITS GAME WILL SOON BE AVAILABLE ON MICROSOFT'S XBOX PLATFORM.
ALTHOUGH NETEASE GAMES ARE GENERALLY POPULAR IN THE WORLD, THEY HAVE A GOOD REPUTATION IN CHINA, ESPECIALLY THE TWO MASTERPIECES OF "NARAKA: BLADEPOINT" AND "AGAINST THE COLD", IF THEY CAN LAND ON XBOX, IT WILL BE OF GREAT HELP TO THE PROMOTION OF XBOX IN CHINA.
Blizzard is a "small win". Since 2015, after the disintegration of the old Blizzard's team, Blizzard has entered a downward spiral.
The reputation of players around the world has plummeted, from "produced by Blizzard, it must be a high-quality product" to a state of "designers never play games designed by themselves". Blizzard has gone from being a game company that serves players to a company that serves the stock price.
"Ticket Jumping" is Blizzard's ancestral skill. The Dark, Warcraft, and Interstellar series have all had substandard quality and have been postponed for release.
At that time, Blizzard did not go public, there was no performance pressure, there was no shareholder pressure, and it was purely for players to make games, and making players feel cool was their biggest motivation.
Later, it was acquired and listed. Under the pressure of capital, the traces of Blizzard's new game rush are becoming more and more obvious, and the new games "Diablo 4" and "Warcraft Remastered" are becoming more and more like "canned food", and it is a pity to abandon them tastelessly.
In the end, the company was controlled by the capitalist Caldecott. The CEO only thinks about his own pension, for which he can sell the interests of Chinese players.
Last year, Blizzard's internal turmoil, the "sexual harassment" scandal, triggered employee strikes and player account deletions. The new version of Warcraft, Dragon Age, has its worst performance in 20 years.
In fact, in the "divorce" war, Blizzard was more seriously injured than NetEase. NetEase's dividends account for 14.5% of Blizzard's revenue, while Blizzard's game revenue accounts for only 7.5% of NetEase's revenue.
After the release of "Diablo 4", due to the lack of the Chinese market, the sales were average, and Blizzard was so anxious that it was forced to break the routine and launch "Diablo 4" on the Steam platform, reaching Chinese players.
Now, Blizzard has finally returned to the Chinese market and recovered a little. It can be regarded as a stop loss and a small win.
The only losers were Chinese players, who were played as monkeys.
First of all, millions of veteran World of Warcraft players were homeless with their "urns" and were forced to pour into the Asian server. The monthly card of the Asian server is 110 yuan, the national service is 90 yuan, and you have to buy an agent to play the Asian server, and the monthly rent is 30 yuan. It costs an extra 50 yuan a month, which could have been saved.
Secondly, tens of millions of players who bought Blizzard's single-player games, such as "Diablo 2 Remastered", "Overwatch" and "StarCraft 2", cannot log in to the game, which is equivalent to being deprived of property rights.
Because these games, which have been bought out, are the private property of the players, they have been plundered by a foreign game company.
Now, the two sides have reconciled, and the sentence "Let's come back and play"! Can it still impress "Blizzard fans"?
In recent years, how many "whites" in China have become "black" is obvious to all.
The most important thing is that the game produced by Blizzard is really not fun, and the playability of a 500 yuan "Diablo 4" is not as good as "Diablo 2 Remastered". Aside from feelings, I don't know what Blizzard has left?
Image source: News Morning Post Weibo
According to a survey initiated by the "Morning News", 42% of players made it clear that they "no longer play" Blizzard games, and will not play them again even if the national server returns, far more than the players who "can play" and "wait for news".
I hope that after this reunion, Blizzard can rediscover its original intention of making games for players, treat Chinese players as its own people, and face up to the voices of Chinese players.
Blizzard can do more activities to win back Chinese players who have cooled their hearts, such as "World of Warcraft" free monthly card for three months, "Diablo 4" half-price sales, etc.
After all, Blizzard games used to be the youth of many people, and they brought us a lot of emotion and happiness, and it was not so easy to say goodbye.
Author: 9527