Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizen goodfull for the clue delivery! The original title: "NetEase refused the details of Blizzard's extension from the bottom, and this is unexpectedly the pick-up."

There are only five days to go before the service is stopped.

Blizzard took the lead again this time.

At around 14:00 on January 17, Blizzard China's official WeChat was the first to release Blizzard's updated instructions for the national service player community. The main idea is to contact NetEase again with a view to extending the terms of service for six months. However, this proposal was rejected by NetEase, so Blizzard games will be suspended on January 23.

As of press time, NetEase's game has not responded to Blizzard's instructions.

The nuclear competition learned that the specific time of contact between the two sides is the evening of January 14, local time in the United States. At that time, Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard Entertainment, initiated a conference call with Li Riqiang, vice president of NetEase and head of Blizzard Cooperation Department of NetEase.

The two sides negotiated three times, each for a short period of time, according to a person familiar with the matter. With regard to the commercial terms, although NetEase was unhappy, he still chose to accept it for the sake of the players. NetEase originally hoped to continue to operate until Microsoft took over Blizzard.

Helplessly, in view of the compliance issue that NetEase is most concerned about, which is also the bottom line of NetEase's negotiations, Blizzard has always been tough, and finally this communication broke down.

A NetEase game executive told CNPC that the collapse of the negotiations had no impact on promoting the layout of the global game business, and its negative impact had already been digested in November.

NetEase game executives originally hoped to restart negotiations on this matter to act in a low profile, the negotiation broke down and broke up quietly. Unexpectedly, the back stab technique repeats itself.

Jingcore believes that from the events such as NetEase games against the current, cold beasts carrying old clothes and CCG category press conferences, NetEase has indeed made sufficient preparations to deal with the post-blizzard era. For NetEase, the follow-up need to prove when to become a global game developer and operator leader from a Chinese local game developer and operator leader.

Breaking up is not respectable in the official and public opinion field, Blizzard and NetEase have a clear attitude.

In response to the statement issued by Blizzard, Zhang Dong (Weibo sweeping and washing), the legal representative of Blizzard, directly forwarded the Weibo posted by the former president of Blizzard Greater China on the day Blizzard announced the "breakup".

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick began to crowd out Blizzard Entertainment co-founder, former president and CEO Mike Morhaime around 2017, denying it the corresponding executive contract and status, which eventually led to Mike leaving Blizzard in 2019.

From then on, Blizzard no longer established the post of CEO, only the position of studio president. This also means that Blizzard lost the right of independent commercial operation and completely became the existence of studio-level within the company.

Meanwhile, NetEase's investment of $100m in Bungie in 2018 disrupted Bobby Kotick's plan to buy Bungie at a low price by defaulting on Destiny's development money. Since then, Bobby has begun to plan to end its cooperation with NetEase.

Since Microsoft announced the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick has been planning for its future. One is to keep your current job and high salary after the acquisition, and if you have to leave Activision Blizzard, try to make more benefits for yourself before the acquisition is completed.

Therefore, in the contract renewal negotiations with NetEase, Bobby Kotick not only proposed to further improve Activision Blizzard's income share, pay a huge margin or prepayment. NetEase is even required to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in advance on the two-year partnership at the time of signing the contract to boost performance.

In addition, it is reported that Bobby Kotick also requires Blizzard to control the data of Chinese players. At the same time, NetEase is required to develop Blizzard IP mobile games for Activision Blizzard, and NetEase can only get revenue from Chinese mainland area, Activision Blizzard may have to further share from Chinese mainland area.

Seeing that the cooperation was difficult to achieve, Bobby Kotick chose to release the news to Bloomberg on the morning of November 17, the day NetEase released its third-quarter 2022 results, saying that it would no longer renew its contract with NetEase.

It was during the trading hours of NetEase's Hong Kong shares, and according to HKEx regulations, the trading time could not be announced. This made NetEase's IR team very passive and could only wait for three hours before the lunch break issued a NetYFang statement. By this backstab, NetEase Hong Kong stocks fell 12% in intraday trading.

After the breakup between Blizzard and NetEase, Simon Zhu, president of NetEase Games Global Investment and Partnership, wrote on social media: "one day, when all the secrets are uncovered, people will have a whole new level of understanding of how much chaos a smelly SB can bring." The spearhead is directed at Bobby Kotick.

Under the irreconcilable contradiction, the crack came into being, and the termination of NetEase Blizzard has become a foregone conclusion. For nearly two months since then, countless Chinese players have had to wait for news from Blizzard and new agents.

However, it is understood that among the potential options, Tencent has been "backstabbed" by Bobby Kotick in the cooperation of "call of Duty: mobile Games", and Byte has basically given up the idea of cooperating with Activision Blizzard after making great efforts to represent a product called call of Duty.

For companies such as perfect and bilibili, narrow profit margins, huge data migration and the most intractable version number problems are all huge obstacles between the two sides. According to the consistent style of Activision Blizzard, it will hardly "give profit" to the agent.

This announcement of Blizzard China today may also be an "out-of-disk move" that pinned hopes on players' public opinion after seeking cooperation was blocked.

Get ready to Say Goodbye with Blizzard however, to Blizzard's surprise, after two months of fermentation, players who figure out the causes and consequences are almost entirely on the opposite side of Blizzard. Today's Blizzard this pot means obvious statement, but also caused the dissatisfaction and mockery of the national service players.

"if we unilaterally end the cooperation, we are still throwing off the pot, NetEase. Is that embarrassing?" , "laugh to death, other people's teams have been disbanded, you wait to close the service two weeks before the negotiation with people to extend? really for the sake of the players, can't you act earlier?"

Such comments appear in the major player communities. And the disbanded team that the player mentioned is Shanghai net easy Network Technology Development Co., Ltd., that is, NetEase Blizzard's joint venture operation company.

Just a few days ago, on January 14, according to people close to NetEase, most of the employees of the net Zhiyi team had left. It is reported that before the dissolution of the network, there are less than 100 people, most of whom are operators. After NetEase confirmed in November that he would no longer renew his contract with Blizzard, most people chose to leave, and a few were transferred to other teams. There are only about 10 team members left to handle the follow-up work, but the stay is unlikely to exceed half a year.

In addition, NetEase recently resurrected the CCG game "Secret World duel", and the TPS perspective of the MOBA game "endless duel", followed by the launch of "reverse water cold" Warcraft veteran suit. This series of actions seem to show that NetEase has the intention to receive and transfer Blizzard game users.

The author believes that the re-cooperation between NetEase and Blizzard is very slim after the two sides openly confront each other. The news of the dismissal of the NetEase team can be said to have eliminated the faint possibility of resuming cooperation between the two companies at the last minute.

Therefore, Blizzard did not act at first, and then expressed helplessness and apology after the dissolution of the net. Not only failed to achieve the goal of getting players' sympathy and saving the corporate image. It even had the opposite effect from the original intention.

Up to now, the easiest thing may be NetEase. How to gather as many former Blizzard players as possible in this time window and urge its similar games to seize the competition vacuum as soon as possible may be the focus of its attack at this stage.

On the contrary, Blizzard, the temporary loss of the Chinese market has become a foregone conclusion, the player base and brand image has also been seriously hit. The next best plan may be to keep a low profile and actively look for domestic partners after being acquired by Microsoft. And get the recognition of the players again through excellent products and preferential benefits.

For players, after the initial confusion and consternation, most players have actually done their psychological construction and accepted this fact. Recently, in their own way, they have said goodbye to the games that have accompanied them for more than a decade, as well as their beautiful memories of youth.

Take World of Warcraft for example, the current national service game environment is unprecedentedly good. Players who help practice, bring free brushing equipment / achievements, and take screenshots everywhere can be found everywhere, and some even give the assets on their accounts to other players for free before AFK. The feud between tribes and alliances melted in such an unexpected way.

In addition, the game national service has always been a tradition of free play before and after the Spring Festival. From February 1 to 3, 2020 and January 29 to January 31, 2021. All have started a three-day free game event. If this tradition continues this year, it may be the last chance for Warcraft players to say goodbye to the game.

As the players say, no one is the winner of NetEase Blizzard's dispute. And the players who can only accept passively are undoubtedly the most helpless. Jingcore sincerely hopes that the player-centered vision of manufacturers is no longer just a slogan, let the game return to the game, and let happiness return to the player.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:Coreesports, by Zhu Taowei and Qian Hongyan

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