Notes:

Key notes:
• The Blizzard-NetEase deal, which was first struck back in August 2008, will now expire in January 2023 after the two firms were unable to agree on renewal terms.

• NetEase’s Hong Kong-listed shares plunged by to 15% as of posting

• Chinese players dug around and claim these are Blizzards demands that NetEase disagreed with:
> Blizzard's share of revenue and net profit had increased by more than 50%, and compared to 2019-2022, NetEase's share was only in the single-digits. At least, according to them.
> Chinese services were priced about 20% lower than the rest of the world. Blizzard wanted their game pricing to adopt a global synchronous strategy, so they wanted to get rid of this.
> Blizzard also asked NetEase to pay a large prepaid agreement/deposit to guarantee the completion of "Article 2" of their contract (might dig around to find the document online). Failure to complete this transaction meant NetEase would be "penalized".

• Going back to NetEase's statements: Compared to other businesses that NetEase works with, Blizzard only contributes around 3% of NetEase's annual revenue
> This is also after much of NetEase's investment into e-sports teams like Shanghai Dragons

• And to toss shade at NetEase since no corporation is 100% innocent:
> There were reports elsewhere of them asking for bigger cuts from other business partners, trying to compensate for losses with international partners since their domestically-made games don't sell
> It's debated whether Xinnie's government shenanigans are playing a role in this, because other foreign gaming companies are doing business in China as usual. Other issues include NetEase having a tussle with the CCP and tensions rising between US and China

• Though services will be suspended, Chinese gaming communities that want to play will simply cross over into other servers; the only thing they really lose are localization changes.

• And while ActiBlizz won't be selling games in China despite bending over backwards to profit there, this isn't going to be the end for their ventures into Poohland. Many assume they're window shopping for another publisher as of writing, not that I can cite anything.