NetEase and Blizzard Continue Chinese Publishing Partnership

Blizzard and NetEase Will Continue Their Chinese Publishing Contract Through 2023

January 11, 2019

Blizzard continues to stay in the news, as more interesting things keep unfolding at the company. It has been announced that NetEase, a Chinese company that publishes games in the region, and Blizzard would continue their partnership to bring many popular franchises to China through 2023. These games include Overwatch, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Heroes of the Storm, and Diablo.

The two companies have been partnering since 2008, bringing many games to nearly 619 million Chinese players since they started working with one another. Additionally, the two recently announced they would be co-developing a game, Diablo Immortal, an announcement that received much backlash from the community when it was revealed at Blizzcon 2018.

On top of that, NetEase seems to be impacted by the separation between Activision Blizzard and Bungie, a story that sort of shook the internet when it was announced yesterday. The Chinese company invested $100 million in Bungie to help them develop a new IP, a move that gave NetEase a minority stake in the studio. As it stands, NetEase may need to invest more money into Bungie to help with the transition to self-publishing, since Bungie doesn’t have the nearly infinite funds from Activision Blizzard anymore.

There are a lot of interesting events occurring with NetEase and Activision Blizzard as of late, and it will be fascinating to see how they play out given the circumstances. What do you think of the continuation of NetEase and Blizzard working together? Let us know!

[Source: GameDaily.biz via Venture Beat]