That has to suck for their playerbase, damn.It also shows how devoted Blizzard are to their new principles if they're willing to chop off such a huge supply of income for them.
This is so bad for all WOW players. Less revenue for WOW means less budget and less content. Don't let the meagre 3% fool you. China is a major market for WOW, and it could contribute to more than a quarter of WOW's revenue.
I feel sorry for all the players who may lose access to their favourite games. On the other side I can't help but feel like this loss of revenue for Blizzard will only motivate whoever is in charge to get even more money from non-chinese audience via in-game shop and such. I do hope though it won't come to this and that relevant parties in blizzard will manage to find a way back into china, for the sake of both the chinese and non-chinese players.
I wonder how much of this is due to Blizzard being bought by Microsoft and preferring to let Microsoft handle such matters on their own without the 3rd party. This seems like a common sense business move considering the pending buyout.
Failing to come to an agreement just means NetEase wanted the Top Dog position in the negotiation and Blizz wouldn't give in.Good for Blizz, sucks for the Chinese playerbase, but nothing good ever comes out of China being Top Dog in an agreement.
I used to work in a law firm that handled similar (though smaller) negotiations. One thing I noticed was that almost without exception they all went down to the wire. There was a last minute flurry of faxes before the midnight deadline, but in the end someone blinked.
Reminds me of those commercials you used to see on TV as a kid. "Our agreement with your cable provider is about to expire! Please call them if you do not want to lose our service!"Unless the Chinese government has decided to end it (which there is precedent for, both with games in general and American companies) I'm sure they will come to an agreement. The only thing that would make them both leave all that money on the table is the government telling them they have to. Not some vague allusion to "principles".
Haha RIP any kind of possible Warcraft movie sequel.
people don't need to buy expansion in China, they just pay ~10$ per month. this may be the reason that breaks the negotiation.
Good. Don't do business with China.This should've happened a long time ago once the Hong Kong stuff happened.
feel like they know about that just from the Blizzard anouncement... sad for those workers and players.
I am disappointed
Hopefully Microsoft can do something about this let them handle it. It's sad for that player base that this is happening. I really want a warcraft movie sequel. This is just sad because I'm thinking mainly about how I would feel if I were one of them this is just terrible.
