The American company Activision Blizzard has lost access to the Chinese market with the online games World of Warcraft, Overwatch 2 and Diablo III, due to its inability to agree on new terms with the Chinese company NetEase. The newspaper writes about it New York Times.
It was noted that when the Chinese government increased the penalty for violations in transactions between domestic and foreign companies, NetEase management asked Activision Blizzard to provide additional data, including annual revenue information, to the Chinese regulator.
According to NYT sources, the American company refused to do so. As a result, the Chinese company wanted to renegotiate the deal with Blizzard.
Various controversies arose during the negotiations between NetEase and Blizzard. Bobby Kotick, president of Activision Blizzard, feared that NetEase would have more freedom of action with the updated deal.
“At one point in the conversation conducted through the translators, Activision executives felt: [глава NetEase] Ding Lei threatened Kitty,” said two sources familiar with the situation.
Ding said he pointed to NetEase’s ability to persuade the Chinese government to block Activision Blizzard’s deal with Microsoft. However, other NYT sources claim that the translator apparently misrepresented the meanings of the words. A NetEase spokesperson told the newspaper that Lay and other senior executives had never threatened Kotick.
As a result, Activision Blizzard initially offered NetEase a $500 million upfront license agreement instead of paying for the term of the agreement. NetEase has denied such terms. Then the American company offered to extend the partnership for six months, but in this case NetEase representatives refused.
As a result of the termination of the cooperation between the two companies on the night of 23-24 January 2023 in China servers are stopped World of Warcraft, one of the most popular online games in the world, causing millions of people to lose access to their accounts.