Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, & more return to China as Blizzard partners with NetEase again BlizzardBlizzard titles are returning to China as the publisher announces a renewed publishing deal has been signed with NetEase. In November 2022, Blizzard announced that most of their game services would be suspended in China as their publishing agreements with NetEase fell through. And on January 23, 2023, Chinese gamers had to say goodbye to Blizzard titles in the region. But after a year and a half since Blizzard\u2019s servers were shut down in China, their titles are coming back with a renewed publishing deal with NetEase. \u201cOur legendary worlds are for all to share and that includes our passionate Chinese community,\u201d Blizzard announced. \u201cWe are pleased to announce a new agreement with NetEase to bring Blizzard games back to mainland China.\u201d In Blizzard\u2019s press release on the new deal, they announced that beginning this summer, Blizzard\u2019s titles will be returning to China. This includes titles such as Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Hearthstone, all of which have a sizable fanbase in the country. Johanna Faries, Blizzard\u2019s President, said of the new deal, \u201cWe at Blizzard are thrilled to announce a new partnership with NetEase to bring Blizzard\u2019s incredible games back to mainland China. Grateful to the hard work and dedication put forth to once again serve our players in the region under a renewed agreement.\u201d The re-partnering was first reported back on Christmas 2023 in which Chinese news site 36Kr reported that Blizzard was in talks with various domestic game publishers in China, however, chose to partner with NetEase again. Blizzard\u2019s year-and-a-half departure has caused some issues for the publisher, particularly in Overwatch, as its newly established Overwatch Championship Series had to leave out China as a competitive region entirely, despite the region\u2019s long history in the scene.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Overwatch 2, Diablo 4, & more return to China as Blizzard partners with NetEase again BlizzardBlizzard titles are returning to China as the publisher announces a renewed publishing deal has been signed with NetEase. In November 2022, Blizzard announced that most of their game services would be suspended in China as their publishing agreements with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}