NetEase's Response to Suspending Game Services in China

[Swnem]

Somehow i find it hard to believe the Chinese care and want to protect players.

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Probably Blitzchung. Blizzard's refusal to permaban him was seen as an act of terrorism

If that is the case, good on Blizzard.

The true jerk would be the president of Netease and how easily he would sell a young man's future for personal gain.
We stand for freedom. I will be very pleased if that was indeed what Blizzard did. Many points gained.

The president of netease severely lacks the understanding of how the western world thinks. It's funny, Putin made the same mistake. They always underestimate our resolve.

[ShimmerSwirl]

The same thing has been happening with Hollywood studios and their relationship with China. China isn't viewed as a viable market anymore by most Hollywood studios due to increasingly strict governmental rules about content. Top Gun: Maverick not being released in China due to its pro-American military theme is a recent example, but there are many more. The creative side of Hollywood is thrilled about this because they no longer have to be slaves to what the communist part of China wants.

China faces immense internal issues and need to keep their citizens free from western ideas of personal freedom in order to try and maintain some stability. Turns out that having millions of horny young men who are likely to be alone for their entire life isn't great for a society. The brilliance of their one child policy in action.

Blizzard being freed from the shackles of Chinese interest is a major win. This trend is likely to keep spreading to other studios.

[Surfd]

SO based on whatever everyone is saying, it sounds like bobby wanted more money that netease was unwilling or unable to pay and now they can't play wow anymore. sadge

99.9% chance this has more to do with Blizzard refusing to lick the ever more authoritarian and restrictive CCP boot to make a deal than it does with how much that deal might have cost.

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I agree, i feel like if you bought the expansions, you should be able to enter the game word and explore, the sub is just blizzard maintaining the servers right?

Except that you didn't actually buy "The Expansion". You bought access to the expansion. You don't own any of the content in those data files.

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This is a big deal. If that happens to them, it can happen in other countries.

Name another country where it is a literal requirement to essentially proxy your business through a state actor if you want to operate within their borders. Go ahead. I will wait.

[Kikazz]

I wouldn't be too sure that all the bots are chinese. And this is only the chinese servers/clients. They can still run NA/EU clients.

not in china, they are blocked,

only things the government allows into the country get through,

so no playing on EU/NA Clients wont happen as they cant.

[Cosmic Janitor]

If my contact with chinese in business has taught me anything then it's that the chinese are utterly incapable of reflection and acknowledging doing anything wrong unless you virtually beat them into submission. And even then they advance their scapegoat game to an entirely new level. The jerk comment was probably not about one of the guys reasonable people would expect, like their fascist leader Winnie or the greedy trash goblin Bobby. Most likely he is refering to someone like the guy that used their social media to post something critical about their glorious government or some other scapegoat who will get all the blame behind the scenes. Blizzard may have used them not having a tight enough leash on their employees as an excuse to either switch over to some of the MS resources to publish in china in a different way or they already have a better deal lined up elsewhere. I'm leaning more towards the former, because a deal they could have lined up seamlessly, the MS stuff hinges on lots of global legislation shenanigans which may make a fixed date unfeasible right now, but it's probably better to get out of a long term deal right now than being tied down for a couple more years.

[Chromeshellking]

It seems that you don't know how region clients and servers work. If anything, this might make it even worse

Not sure if it was reference but in places like China, Russia, NK and etc any public comment disparaging government can result and WILL most of the time result in you being arrested.

Edit: Nevermind they referred to bypassing the laws to access western services. Which yea this would still result in an arrest, they really really don't want people seeing things they do not approve of.

[Unholyground]

Offline MMO, eh?

To be fair Blizzard has advanced AI they developed for Island Expiditions that can do each of the game roles quite well.

It is beyond me why they don't have pocket Healer or Tank NPC's for players soloing certain content that are not locked to specific zones/expansions.

[Linkedblade]

not in china, they are blocked,

only things the government allows into the country get through,

so no playing on EU/NA Clients wont happen as they cant.

Not true at all. They can access the entire internet with workarounds.

If it were true that the Chinese population couldn't access the worldwide internet, then the meme of "Chinese gold farmers" wouldn't exist.

[Airlick]

not in china, they are blocked,

only things the government allows into the country get through,

so no playing on EU/NA Clients wont happen as they cant.

Glad to know VPNs don't exist, I always worried the millions of bots spamming Chinese gold selling ads in any given MMO were just figments of my imagination, now that I know for sure I guess it's time to visit a doctor.

[hulkgor]

It would be moral for them to include an offline mode in wow, but probably not worth the money sadly.

O_o. Seriously?

[Relapses]

not in china, they are blocked,

only things the government allows into the country get through,

so no playing on EU/NA Clients wont happen as they cant.

NA/EU realms aren't even blocked by China's firewall.

[rebjorn79]

I feel bad for the Chinese players, hopefully all of their progress is properly backed up and will be accessible somehow in the future.

Could you imagine the outrage in the player community if Blizzard all of a sudden decided to shut down the NA or EU servers?

[Asrialol]

I feel bad for the Chinese players, hopefully all of their progress is properly backed up and will be accessible somehow in the future.

Could you imagine the outrage in the player community if Blizzard all of a sudden decided to shut down the NA or EU servers?

Most of the community hates the game, so Blizzard would do them a favor. I know you're not really supposed to "take away" the drug someone is addicted to suddenly and then just say "get well soon" but sometimes it works. Some people will find their copium somewhere else though.

[tomten]

Hopefully, this starts a conversation about DRM and what you actually own. We're talking about 20+ years of game data and it's all going to be gone in an instant.

Say you "owned" it. What would you actually do with said game data? Nothing? Because you dont own the client so you cant use any of it?

[Linkedblade]

Say you "owned" it. What would you actually do with said game data? Nothing? Because you dont own the client so you cant use any of it?

Well, that's part of the whole End of Life for video game content. Companies shouldn't just be able to pull the plug and it be gone forever.

[tomten]

Well, that's part of the whole End of Life for video game content. Companies shouldn't just be able to pull the plug and it be gone forever.

What are they supposed to do exactly? Go bankrupt over providing a dead game to a couple of users (making an example) but the same logic applies.

[Baraden]

I feel bad for the Chinese players, hopefully all of their progress is properly backed up and will be accessible somehow in the future.

Could you imagine the outrage in the player community if Blizzard all of a sudden decided to shut down the NA or EU servers?

The hundreds of thousands still engaged in their sunk cost fallacy would finally be freed

[Linkedblade]

What are they supposed to do exactly? Go bankrupt over providing a dead game to a couple of users (making an example) but the same logic applies.

Best thing would be to place their server software/info into the public domain. It would cost the company going under nothing.

[rhorle]

Best thing would be to place their server software/info into the public domain. It would cost the company going under nothing.

Wouldn't that impact copyright and trademarks? Assets, even unused, can still be a valuable to a closing company. Someone for sure would be interested in buying the rights to several Blizzard properties if they happened to go under.

[OwenBurton]

Blizzard lost 999999 social credits?

See? The Chinese might indeed be much better off under the Republic of China (ROC) of Taiwan today. At least the Taiwanese still have free and unlimited access to Blizzard services next year. And again, honestly, I think they're much better Warcraft and Hearthstone players.

Anyway, Blizzard pulled out of Russia because of the Ukraine crisis, now they're leaving China also...both of those places represent a massive amount of their revenue. Combined with its other controversies, Blizzard's future doesn't seem to be too great right now.

P.S. I don't know whether the players in Hong Kong will be affected either, I hope not.