An implosion occurred in China in their theater of the gaming industry there and Blizzard Entertainment has a well space in the chinese market along with NetEase, the second biggest local gaming enterprise.

But unfortunately, everything comes to an end as individually, Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase have confirmed that they are no longer in partnership.

With the exception of Diablo Immortal (As the agreement for this game was dealt in a different agreement), it means that World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft III: Reforged, Overwatch, the StarCraft series, Diablo 3, and The Heroes of the Storm will be retired from local storefronts and disconnected on January 23th, 2023 which mark the end of the original 2008 agreement.

We got a tip that things were going sour already between Blizzard and NetEase after an unnaounced World Of Warcraft derived mobile game development got canceled a while ago.

Blizzard stated that the agreement ended due their consistency with their operating principles and commitments to players and employees, while at the other side, NetEase said that material differences on key terms and referenced protecting the “data and assets” of Chinese players.

NetEase’s disclosure  led me to agree with gaming community’s take that this probably has to do with Blizzard not wanting to relinquish more access to user's information as the Chinese government has not been timid in making information accessibility a requirement for any operations.

And yes, there is a STRONG RUMOR that NetEase is a Chinese Government corporate wing, a rumor that NetEase has already denied in the past.

Finally and apart from official communications, NetEase CEO Simon Zhu, appears to be really upset about the fallout and suggested on social media that when things can be revealed in the future “developers and gamers will have a whole new level understanding of how much damage a jerk can make” and probably, he is referring to Mike Ybarra, current leader of Blizzard Entertainment.

Via VGC