Blizzard and NetEase fallout - how big is the impact?

[mysticx]

They probably wanted access to the source so they could just pay a bunch of monkeys $0.0002/hr to copy and paste the entire game's engine and create their own proprietary CCP-approved WoW clone.

I saw a trailer for just that on Twitter this morning, with the exact same airship as the Alliance uses (Basically a wooden boat with rotors attached to the sides giving it lift), a dragon that looks conspicuously like Deathwing doing the "Landing on a city wall, crushing two towers"-thing, the works...

The Chinese don't need the source-code to rip off a game, most of their gaming industry is ripoff-work...

If i was a conspiracy kind of guy, i'd think China blew up the deal with Blizzard on purpose to pave the way for their own knock-offs of Blizzard games.

[baskev]

Title.

Blizzard and NetEase right now are blaming each other for the end of their partnership and in the last days one company is accusing the other of wrongdoings. From this point on it just seems to get worse and worse and there are millions of players in China that are just cut off from Blizzard games in general.

How do you think all of this will continue and how big of an impact will this be for Blizzard in general and for WoW's future?

was to be expected. China is cracking down on gaming in general.
Blizzard has in someways bad, in someways gone good with lgbtq stuff. ( some forced bleh content, some nicely written stuff).

But the over reaction is insane.

But hey, a country where you need to talk to specific company just for the rights to sell/stream etc your game there....never was going to last.

[Orange Joe]

There's a 0% likelihood the breakdown in negotiations was due to anything Blizzard did. It's absolutely ridiculous that anybody would think they'd use this as a pivot-point for human rights activism but that doesn't make Blizzard the bad guys here. This is the CCP doing CCP clownfuckery through and through.

I wasn't trying to blame blizzard for anything. Just the idea that they should stop business with citizens to show they stand up to the government. It's pretty stupid when you think about it.

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China is and was a huge market for them especially considering that Blizzard made games constantly decline in sub numbers. And with incoming recession it’s not gonna play well for Blizzard employees. For hint look at what happened at Facebook, Amazon, Twitter and MS firing tens of thousands of the workforce in 2022.

https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/1...erwatch-diablo

As reported by Bloomberg, China accounted for at least 3% of Activision Blizzard’s net revenue last year, including over $400 million in esports earnings.

It's not as large as people make it out to be.

[Relapses]

I saw a trailer for just that on Twitter this morning, with the exact same airship as the Alliance uses (Basically a wooden boat with rotors attached to the sides giving it lift), a dragon that looks conspicuously like Deathwing doing the "Landing on a city wall, crushing two towers"-thing, the works...

The Chinese don't need the source-code to rip off a game, most of their gaming industry is ripoff-work...

If i was a conspiracy kind of guy, i'd think China blew up the deal with Blizzard on purpose to pave the way for their own knock-offs of Blizzard games.

lmfao yeah I saw that right after I posted it.



Who knows why China is China, honestly. It's fun to speculate but we won't know until somebody leaks something.

[arandomuser]

lmfao yeah I saw that right after I posted it.



Who knows why China is China, honestly. It's fun to speculate but we won't know until somebody leaks something.

game looks kinda nice even if it is a wow ripoff if the graphics live up to the trailer and has similar mechanics but i imagine it probably wont get a western release due to the obvious copyright issues right?

[Ethas]

gamers
" wow game companys like blizzard always sell out to china im mad!
blizzard " gives netease a bad enough deal that they cut of all business"
gamers: " aha another show about how blizzard is a bad company to work with"

which one is it? if your not gonna praise a company for losing business in china dont criticize other companies or that same company for gaining business there

For some reason I think the people who think working in China is somehow inferior to working in US are the reason why Blizzard will die in 5-10 years and also the reason why Blizzard performed so bad during the last years.

[Jester Joe]

lmfao yeah I saw that right after I posted it.

[video=youtube;yNX_lhznMO4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNX_lhznMO4[video]

Who knows why China is China, honestly. It's fun to speculate but we won't know until somebody leaks something.

My favorite part of seeing the trailer someone posted on Twitter was Chris Metzen just responding with "Huh.".

I was honestly willing to give the benefit of the doubt that there's probably something on both ends until NetEase went full baby mode with destroying the statue and everything. At that point, it comes across as just grandstanding.

[Relapses]

game looks kinda nice even if it is a wow ripoff if the graphics live up to the trailer and has similar mechanics but i imagine it probably wont get a western release due to the obvious copyright issues right?

The problem with these WoW clones is that the art direction is usually pretty good but the games play like an assbackwards mobile game ripoff. While it's pretty easy to make a pretty game (in WoW's style), it's much harder to make a pretty game that also has fun, engaging gameplay loops which keep players coming back for more.

[Raisei]

I wasn't trying to blame blizzard for anything. Just the idea that they should stop business with citizens to show they stand up to the government. It's pretty stupid when you think about it.

You are applying the normal standard here. Blizzard isn't doing buisness with the citizens directly. That is all happening over Netease, who had already reserved the rights to do whatever they want to the game content (like the infamous censorship). Considering that, the deal must have been really really unreasonable.

Personally, I assume that Netease was ordered by the government to botch the deal on purpose, so that the citizen are no longer distracted from working 22 hours a day by the capitalists. Now, of course the government would never say that openly, so they are officially blaming Blizzard in a huge theater show.

That is all it is. A show.

[Schizoide]

It's not as large as people make it out to be.

Those numbers don't add up, as 3% of Actilizzard's 2022 revenue ($7.36B) is $227M. Maybe they meant in addition to the $400M from esports? Anyway, Bobby Kotick didn't get to be Bobby Kotick by passing up twenty bucks, much less hundreds of millions. He will not willingly abandon the Chinese market for any reason short of a Taiwan invasion, which would force his hand. Probably. China isn't Russia, they're an actual superpower.

And yeah, of course this won't kill Actilizzard, far from it. Doesn't mean they're happy campers.

[SinR]

lmfao yeah I saw that right after I posted it.



Who knows why China is China, honestly. It's fun to speculate but we won't know until somebody leaks something.

Ernie.....

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Sure it looks pretty but the gameplay looks like the same stuff we're doing now in WoW.

[Dystemper]

MS overhired during the pandemic like everyone else. They ARE laying people off from game development studios as well but . . . those studios are probably underperforming? I am not saying it's ok but it is not a sign of MS not having the cash and it is fairly late for them to pull back now anyway, they'd be paying some very hefty fines.

They are taking other cost cutting neasures, but who knows. The EU is suing to stop the merger to. Its not as sure of a deal as it once was.

[Zabino]

This has nothing to do with human rights. The CCP NetEase probably wanted something completely unreasonable from Blizzard and they rightfully told em to fuck off. Instead of capitulating, they are throwing a hissy fit on the global stage and are using WoW's Chinese playerbase as a bartering tool.

Considering it's the stinky chinkies, the demand was probably something along the lines of "remove this tranny and gay shit"

[Chilela]

They now have the opportunity to do so and be trailblazers. They can show they truly stand for human rights.

If the past few years have been any indicator, this will not happen, if Blizz believes it will negatively impact their bottom line.

game looks kinda nice even if it is a wow ripoff if the graphics live up to the trailer and has similar mechanics but i imagine it probably wont get a western release due to the obvious copyright issues right?

It probably won't. Though Rush of Heroes was a blatant WoW ripoff, albeit a highly-stylized one, and it got a western release for some months.

[Zabino]

lmfao yeah I saw that right after I posted it.

[video]

Who knows why China is China, honestly. It's fun to speculate but we won't know until somebody leaks something.

lmao there is so much shit that is just straight up stolen.

in the first few seconds i spotted
-the abyss portal from genshit
kaelthas, now a helmsman
straight up one for one just copied the deathwing on stormwind animation
that warrior doing the straight up copied thunderclap animation
thats literally just a demon hunter, glaives and all
literally dragonflight, including valdrakken
literally that one library dungeon from FF14, same boss and all

[Jastall]

They're evidently looking for another partner.

While China is obviously a huge market, I reckon the margins are actually low enough that it's not a gargantuan financial loss for Blizzard or they would've pushed harder to maintain status quo instead of ending their partnership with NetEase.

That's my take as well. The Chinese market is big in theory but in practice perhaps not THAT profitable and still dwarfed by the US one as far as Blizzard is concerned. They want to stay there but not at any price, and I wouldn't be surprised if the government's recent crackdowns on all things video game had a hand in this whole mess.

Acti-Blizz will still want to do business in China if at all possible so of course they're looking for a new partner as we type, but not at any cost. It mostly sucks for the players there, really.

[huth]

Those numbers don't add up, as 3% of Actilizzard's 2022 revenue ($7.36B) is $227M. Maybe they meant in addition to the $400M from esports? Anyway, Bobby Kotick didn't get to be Bobby Kotick by passing up twenty bucks, much less hundreds of millions. He will not willingly abandon the Chinese market for any reason short of a Taiwan invasion, which would force his hand. Probably. China isn't Russia, they're an actual superpower.

And yeah, of course this won't kill Actilizzard, far from it. Doesn't mean they're happy campers.

Remember, revenue is not profit. If operating costs were $230M, the $227M revenue aren't worth the effort, for a very simplistic example.

[Razorice]

Looks like Blizzard Empire is falling apart. They will feel the aftermath of not getting big money from China. Will probably lay off a lot of american workforce. Can’t say they don’t deserve it tho. Instead of focusing on what made their games the best now they are nothing more than yet another simple propaganda machine. Sadly, Blizzard is going to collapse in the next 5-10 years.

Blizzard has been dead since... 2007? According to a lot of forum posters.

[mbit2]

Blizzard has been dead since... 2007? According to a lot of forum posters.

Its been announced dying since late wotlk. Was about the time koticks famous quotes of "fuck fun , i taught them to look at numbers and chase metrics cause they didnt know how" and something how devs need to be afraid for their job to stay motivated to work as much as possible. Was a talk given to investors but that was caught by players and shared on gaming sites. Pandering gone wrong.

edit ontopic:
China has no reason to let blizz back in. Gives them no benefits. Why let some Baizuo take your peoples money when you can have them pay gaming companies under your own control? This routine has been played numerous times already. You only tolerate foreigners so you can copy them and then kick them out. A bit later they even sell you your own tech cheaper.

[JDL49]

unless i see 10% unemployment its not a recession its just de inflation which was what people wanted, what policy do you propose the government due to reduce inflation without reducing spending in order to reduce demand and consumer spending resulting in some gdp growth reduction?

Wage and Price Controls.