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 that the agency authorization contract with China NetEase will be terminated on January 23, 2023. Only the mobile game “Diablo Immortal” jointly developed by the two parties has become the only product that will not be affected due to its exclusive development and distribution contract. All other games were completely shut down yesterday (24th).

The breakup process between Blizzard and NetEase did not turn around for several months. Last week, Blizzard announced that NetEase was unwilling to extend the contract and asked players to download and save their own data. NetEase then criticized Blizzard heavily. The official website of Blizzard Games is forwarded to the refund instructions for Blizzard products for players.

In addition to online games, another impact of Blizzard’s game suspension is e-sports events. Blizzard released the relevant instructions for the “Hearthstone” World Championship last week (20). U.S. dollars, emphasizing that the reduction in prize money has nothing to do with NetEase’s break, saying that it has already begun to evaluate the scale of the event before ending the cooperative relationship 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 to Blizzard’s announcement, the World Cup trials in June this year will be divided into 6 groups by the Americas Association (AMER), Europe and Middle East Association, (EMEC) Asia Pacific Association (APAC), and 15 teams will eventually be selected to participate in the 2023 autumn competition. Tickets for the offline finals.

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 in the national server, which means that the player’s character information, appearance and tokens have disappeared, but this situation may not last long, because according to foreign media, Blizzard seems to be Has 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. Taking the topic, NetEaseCafe sells snowstorm green tea and is making the topic even more exciting 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 mourning xswl 🤣https://t.co/TkSe2JsB9v pic.twitter.com/dQ7E9bsxcJ

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

A spokesperson for Blizzard China told the British Guardian that “the closure of the server is not the end, but just an “unpleasant suspension”.” Blizzard also emphasized in a letter to PC Gamer that they are working hard to restore the game for Chinese players: “We are committed to Chinese players serve and look for alternatives, and we will bring their games back to them.”