Millions of gamers in China lost access to popular games such as Diablo III, StarCraft 2, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone and Overwatch 2 over the past two days. The license to publish these video games has been lost in China following a dispute between Blizzard and NetEase who are their publishers in that country.
In a statement published on Weibo, Blizzard said talks between the two companies to extend the publishing license for six months failed to reach an agreement. Because of this Blizzard games were pulled from the Chinese market immediately. Only Diablo Immortal is accessible due to different consent and COD Mobile published by Tencent is accessible at this time.
All games can only be accessed again if Blizzard has a new publisher. NetEase has been Blizzard's publisher in China for the past 14 years. The loss of the Chinese market will have an impact on the income of Activision Blizzard, which has been plagued by various problems over the past two years.
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APPS & GAMES