Netease has made public their grievances with business partner Blizzard by destroying a World of Warcraft statue on livestream.
Netease became business partners with Blizzard in 2008, brokering distribution deals in China for Blizzard games World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft III: Reforged, Overwatch, the StarCraft series, Diablo III, and Heroes of the Storm. They penned a separate agreement for work on Diablo Immortal, which Netease developed for the publisher and was just published last June 2, 2022.
Blizzard and Netease’s deal is ending this month, and while Blizzard had been gracious in their statements about this partnership ending, Netease had less nice things to say, then as well as now.
When they first made this announcement, Netease head of partnerships Simon Zhu had this to say:
“One day, when what has happened behind the scenes can be told, developers and gamers will have a whole new level understanding of how much damage a jerk can make.”
Netease’s anger seems to stem from statements Blizzard made earlier this week. Blizzard stated that they attempted to hammer out a six month deal with Netease to extend their contract, but were not able to come to a deal.
Netease shared this statement in response, at the same time they initiated this livestream:
“And as far as we know, Blizzard’s negotiations with other companies during the same period were all based on a three-year contract period. Considering the non-reciprocity, unfairness, and other conditions attached to the cooperation, therefore, the parties could not reach an agreement in the end.”
Netease went on to say that they could not guarantee the save data that their customers had for Blizzard’s games, as the servers were all handled by Blizzard. This makes any possible issues or errors with that data Blizzard’s responsibility.
The livestream for this event was held on the channel for one of Netease’s other games, Naraka Bladepoint. The video simply showed staff members destroying a statue with hammers, as some people on the stream were also served green tea. The green tea had a double meaning also intended to malign Blizzard, by suggesting the company is manipulative and fake, while pretending to be innocent and acting in good faith.
Diablo Immortal continues to be live and in development, meaning, as strange as it seems, Netease and Blizzard still continue to have a business relationship while this is all being aired out.
It will certainly be interesting to see what Blizzard’s response will be, and hopefully this spat won’t affect Diablo Immortal players.
Source: Twitter via Video Games Chronicle, Dexerto
