Chinese game developer and publisher, NetEase recently tore down a “Warcraft” statue out of spite of the recent partnership breakup with Blizzard. We’ve previously reported that the 2 companies’ partnership contract was about to end around late 2022, but both parties did not come to terms. This meant that all Blizzard games in China will cease to operate including the “Warcraft” and “Diablo” franchise.
On January 24, Blizzard’s services will no longer be available in China. Due to Chinese law, Blizzard can only distribute their games in the country through intermediary means where they need to form a contract with a local distributor which in this case was NetEase. Blizzard did clarify that they were still interested to operate in the Chinese market, even offering NetEase a 6-month extension on its operation so that players can sort everything out in their games and continue negotiations all the while looking for a new partner with a 3-year contract offering. But NetEase was having none of it.
NetEase refused the deal and obviously, something went really unsavory during that period cause the Chinese company proceeded to destroy the Blizzard office and the giant “Gorehowl” axe statue located at the company’s campus. The whole fiasco was live-streamed and viewed by over 3000 people. The video showed NetEase employees hammering away at the statue stating it was to “vent out their frustrations with Blizzard,” because they were “greedy” and that they “betrayed” NetEase.
Funnily enough, the “Gorehowl” axe was canonically involved in a “Warcraft” story of betrayal. After the statue was destroyed, NetEase gave out a beverage called “Blizzard Green Tea” which is actually something of a Chinese language pun for a “manipulative person.” You can watch clips of the stream through this link.
People scrutinized the whole debacle and found out that the partnership agreement would give NetEase full control and access to Blizzard’s assets which means they can easily, for a lack of a better word, “steal” Blizzard’s intellectual property without facing any consequences. And, well, any gamer who knows about NetEase’s games would find this rather amusing. NetEase denied these accusations, of course.
For now, the future of Blizzard’s games in China remains unclear. The two companies are still engaging in a war of words and pointing fingers at each other while players are getting caught in the crossfire. Hopefully, they can sort this out soon.
