There is a snowstorm announced that its games will return to mainland China in the summer of 2024 after nearly a year and a half out of the market. Additionally, Microsoft (which now owns Blizzard) and NetEase signed another separate deal to bring NetEase games to Xbox and other platforms.
Blizzard's games were taken offline in China in January 2023 after NetEase and Blizzard were unable to reach a new publishing agreement. However, both companies have now reached one. This deal will include all the games that Chinese players had access to from the previous deal, including the likes of Overwatch, Diablo, and World of Warcraft.
Although both sides are working on restarting the game, more details will be revealed later. Phil Spencer praised Microsoft's new partnership with NetEase, saying: “Returning Blizzard's legendary games to players in China while also exploring ways to bring more new titles to Xbox can shows our commitment to bringing more games to more players around the world.” However, Spencer did not provide any other specific information.
Thanks for the incredible work done by @Blizzard_Ent and NetEase to renew our commitment to players, we will soon welcome millions of community members in China back to our Blizzard universe. This is exciting for everyone at Xbox, Blizzard, and players everywhere. Read more: https://t.co/JKuZAH6bLj
– Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) April 10, 2024
This new agreement comes after Blizzard and NetEase had a bit of a falling out November 2022 as their original publishing contract was about to expire. Blizzard China and NetEase are pointing fingers at each other, where previously proposed to expand servicesbut then denied it, with a NetEase CEO declared that the original agreement extension failed because of a specific “incident”.
Either way, Blizzard was committed to finding alternative ways to bring its games back to the Chinese market, but they ultimately reached a new agreement with NetEase.
George Yang is a freelance writer for IGN. He's been writing about the industry since 2019 and has worked with other publications like Insider, Kotaku, NPR, and Variety.
When he's not writing about video games, George is playing video games. What a surprise! You can follow him on Twitter @Yinyangfooey
