On the third day of the Lunar New Year, Blizzard’s games were completely shut down in China. Players drank “Blizzard Green Tea” and set up a “Blizzard Mourning Hall” to criticize Blizzard | 4Gamers

On the third day of the Lunar New Year, at midnight on January 24th, Beijing time, Blizzard Entertainment’s games in China were officially suspended, including “World of Warcraft”, “Diablo 3”, “Overwatch 2”, “Hearthstone” “, “Blizzard Heroes”, also symbolized the complete termination of the memories of millions of Chinese players in the 15 years since 2008.

In November last year, Blizzard announced the partnership with China’s NetEaseThe agency authorization contract will end on January 23, 2023but the mobile game “Diablo Immortal” jointly developed by the two parties became the only unaffected product due to the exclusive development and publishing contract. All other games were completely shut down yesterday (24th).

The breakup process between Blizzard and NetEase did not turn around in the middle of a few months. Last week, Blizzard announced firstSaid that Netease is unwilling to extend the contract and requires players to download and save data by themselvesand Netease followed up with heavy artilleryCriticize Blizzardthe two sides officially tore apart, Netease forwarded its Blizzard game official website to open to playersRefund Instructions for Blizzard Products。

In addition to online games, another impact of Blizzard’s game suspension is e-sports events. Blizzard announced last week (20)Instructions for the Hearthstone World Championshipthe total bonus pool has been reduced from US$100,000 in 2022 to US$50,000, emphasizing that the reduction in bonuses has nothing to do with NetEase’s failure, saying that it has already begun to evaluate the scale of the event before ending the partnership with NetEase.

Although Blizzard reiterated that it will try its best to serve Chinese players and actively seek other ways to allow Chinese players to continue to experience our games in the future, it also specifically states thatChinese players are currently unable to participate, due to the current termination of the agency contract with Netease and cannot be achieved。

Another issue that was affected by the agent’s break was related to the trials of “Overwatch World Cup”.according toBlizzard announcementthe World Cup trials in June this year will be divided into 6 groups by the Americas Association (AMER), Europe and the Middle East Association, (EMEC) Asia Pacific Association (APAC), and 15 teams will be selected to participate in the offline finals in the fall of 2023 tickets.

Although China is at the end of the agency, Blizzard said that in view of the excellent performance of the Chinese team in the past (the second place in the last two “Special Attack” World Cups), the teams from China will directly enter the autumn group stage , and the teams from China will not conduct online qualifiers. It is speculated that Blizzard hopes to find the next agent to make a decision during this time.

Right now, Chinese players cannot access their Blizzard account on the national server, which means that the player’s character data, appearance and tokens are all gone, but this situation may not last long, because according toForeign media get newsBlizzard seems to have approached many agents in China, including Tencent, as well as Ninth City, the earliest Chinese agent of “World of Warcraft”.

However, the breakup between Blizzard and NetEase has made Blizzard a target of bombardment in the Chinese player community. Recently, the “Blizzard Green Tea” hand shake drink that has been spreading wildly on Weibo and Douyin has become a topic. The SNS community criticized Blizzard, and some players set up a “Blizzard mourning hall” to mock Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick.

[Spoiler]China’s long-popular online game “world of warcraft (WoW)” developed by blizzard and operated by NetEase will end its service in China. NetEase is asking for an extension, but there is no compromise.Riding on the topic, NetEase Cafe sells snowstorm green tea and further raises the topic.https://t.co/mBDkI2oc8E pic.twitter.com/UFkibj03O2

— 36Kr Japan @ China’s NO.1 tech startup media (@36krJ) January 25, 2023

🤣🤣🤣 Blizzard Green Tea pic.twitter.com/2Svzq1JhPt

— DeFi Little Miner (@DeFi8362) January 18, 2023

Blizzard Hall xswl 🤣https://t.co/TkSe2JsB9v pic.twitter.com/dQ7E9bsxcJ

— 🎀 Yuriko Hiiragi 🎀 (@Hiiragi_yuriko) January 24, 2023

The spokesperson of Blizzard China told the BritishGuardianSaid that “closing the server is not the end, but just an “unpleasant pause””, and Blizzard is also giving PC Gamer The letter emphasized that they are working hard to restore the games of Chinese players: “We are committed to serving Chinese players and looking for alternatives, and we will bring their games back to them.”