Back in November, Blizzard and NetEase ended their 14-year partnership to bring the Warcraft Games from developers to China. Now it sounds like the NetEase team that managed the company’s games has been completely disbanded.
South China tomorrow post reports that NetEase-affiliated Shanghai EaseNet Network Technology has fired or reassigned “most of the employees” working on the subsidiary’s team. The team of fewer than 100 had already lost talent after NetEase and Blizzard called off their partnership, though a “small number of technical staff” were transferred to other teams in Shanghai.
According to South China Morning Post sources, the team consisted mostly of operational staff who took care of general operations instead of taking care of the actual game development. According to the report, 10 team members will stay behind to deal with technical and customer service issues that arise after the games are suspended in China but are likely to be gone within the next six months.
This whole mess affects surveillance 2, Diablo III, World of Warcraft, star ship, Hearthstoneand Heroes of the Storm, and makes these games unplayable in China. Above all, Diablo immortaldeveloped jointly by Blizzard and NetEase is not affected by the end of the partnership.
NetEase and Blizzard’s partnership began back in 2008, but the companies didn’t renew the deal last year, ending the 14-year partnership. According to a statement from NetEase CEO William Ding, the two companies disagreed over “material differences in key terms” and failed to resolve the issues that arose. However, what followed was a suspension of Blizzard game sales in China surveillance 2‘s second season and World of Warcraft‘s dragonflight Extensions were started at the end of the year.
The timing of the partnership troubles came shortly after Overwatch 2 Launching in October, which meant Chinese players only had a short few months with the shooter before it was yanked out of territory.
