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World of Warcraft: Facing Permanent Suspension in China?
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
According to a report over at MMOSite, Blizzard is being suspected of having violated Chinese regulations in their business partnership with company NetEase to operate World of Warcraft in China.
The General Administration of Press and Publication of PRC has assigned Shanghai News and Publication Bureau to investigate the joint venture established by Blizzard Entertainment and NetEase.
If these allegations are found to be true, this could mean World of Warcraft could face permanent suspension of operations in China.
Get the full story here.
Comments
What an interesting article...
I wonder if Blizzard will acknowledge or defend itself if it doesn't become a big issue here in the west...
Ouch...heads are rolling if they haven't already...
I Reject your Reality and Substitute it with My Own!
OH SNAP.
Gotta love american thinking. I can do whatever i want in the USA so why cant i do it in a foreign country.
in all seriousness though, sucks for chinese players who have put actual time into the game but it really wont hurt Blizzards business to much.
American thinking isn't the problem. The chinese government is basically screwing not only blizzard but all gaming companies that want to launch their products in the country. Basically China takes full control over these developers games as well as majority of the profit. Of course Blizzard is gonna fight this. It'll be resolved in time its just a shame that so many people in china have to be punished because of their countries retarded policies
Personally, if I were Blizzard, the first time the Chinese told me I had to change my game ( like putting skin on undead players and removing skeletons ), I'd have told China to fuck off. Especially since the little Chinese goldfarmers would be paying to play on NA/EU servers anyway, so I could get their money anyway and then ban them.
Even without China, WoW is the bull in the China shop ( pun intended ). 5 million non-China customers paying full subs is nothing to scoff at, and still makes them the most successful and profitable mmo company.
Ban (or tax the s**t out of) Chinese games. Go Go Us Gov...
F*&k China. What a country. No one can do business unless China is part of it. Are they afraid thier's hidden political propoganda in the code? They can comb through it, Steal it, produce their own insert propoganda as they deem appropriate. Hopefully they kick WOW outta China causing riots and and overthrow of the government haha. They must be afraid of WOW being another opium for the people lol, remember your history. We let them sell their products all over this country without this shit. Even poison our Kids, Pets and Families with their products. Hell complete housing tracts are unlivable because the drywall made in China contained so much damn sulfer. Would really be interesting to know the details of this "joint venture" required contract. Joint Venture is a form of business partner so how do you keep a partner from proprietary information. Im sure Blizzard has the legal crew necessary to make the right decision. I do not trust that government, Sorry. Now are we going to get people defecting to the U.S. to play WOW? Just a joke (I hope:)).
This post is intentionally written as to not make any sense what so ever. Thank You Very Much.
Dump China. Blizzard barely makes any money off China subs anyways. Something like 80% of WoWs revenue comes from NA/EU.
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Unfortunate as it is this is the way China does business and alot of western companies do very nicely from it aswell, so long as they are within China's very strict rules.
Other countries go so far as to nationalise foreign companies, and strip all assets away for themselves leaving the foreign investors with nothing at all.
However this is China we are talking about, and the politicians certainly won't lose any sleep over a few million players unable to play their beloved WoW.
China has always been a high risk to invest in but one which would pay off well if you could break into the country, however this time it looks like Blizzard is going to lose out, other games companies should take heed and watch their step if this is the prelude to stricter rules.
99% of all statistics are made up.
But regardless of the figure, Blizzard would still be losing LOTS of money in losing China, and sorry folks, I know you're all Blizzard fanbois, but Blizzard is a BUSINESS, and their business is making money.
I support this motion.
99% of all statistics are made up.
But regardless of the figure, Blizzard would still be losing LOTS of money in losing China, and sorry folks, I know you're all Blizzard fanbois, but Blizzard is a BUSINESS, and their business is making money.
yeah im guna go with 67% of stats are made up
however when the words come out of someone who not only works at blizzard, but helped start it, you kinda believe them when they say that they really do not get a lot of money from china.
they *have* confirmed this, while numbers are over half, profit is way way less. this is the ENTIRE reason they wanted to leave t9, they were greedy, and shit, and they made nothing from it, and realiztically with all the extra patching (WotLK anyone, its all undead, bones galore) it becomes less and less viable to run wow in china. i wouldnt be surprised if they just drop it
Playing polished, lag free, feature complete games is carebear. Whining about a game you hate but still play is hardcore man!
I thought one of the major points of contention with the Chinese government is that Blizzard moved the contract to a Taiwanese company, and away from the mainland Chinese company The9.
This actually might have a much more chilling effect on foreign investment in China then the chinese regulators are anticipating. Remember Blizzard is part of Vivendi, one of the worlds largest companies, and one that has been making long term investments in China and the chinese market. Blizzard and WoW is one of Vivendi's showpiece arms. Add to this the shenanigans this week involving China arresting executives (and Australian citizens) of the Australian minimg and ore firm Rio Tinto, on trumped up spying charges, in a rather sadly obvious retaliation for Rio Tinto tanking a controling investment deal from the Chinese national mining company (ie government).
These are hugely public incidents, that are being watched very very closely in the business world. It wouldn't surprise me to see Blizzard simply walk away from China (followed by the rest of Vivendi and many western media companies) and simply put the products and investment in India instead. Mumbai certainly has the resources to host WoW servers and handle support and development. Plus they have a media and entertainment industry that rivals hollywood.
Right now Blizzard is keeping very very quiet to avoid offending the chinese regulators (once again playing by chinese rules), and hoping that everything may eventually be salvaged. When Blizzard begins talking publicly it will be safe to assume that they have walked away from China, feel that China can collectively go f*ck themselves. You will probably see that followed by a WTO complaint filed by Vivendi.
Lol@Blizzard.
GO, CHINA, GO!!
Pretty sure china makes up like 40-50% of their playerbase...not 100% on that though.
http://www.gamersreports.com/news/11182/world-of-warcraft-still-offline-in-china/
Personally, I think the amount of government regulation is a big problem. I never would've put myself into a market like that.
If you read the artickle you would have seen that the reason Blizz changed partner was so they would get 3 times the income, the old company paid peanuts money. 6 million times peanuts are still some money so Blizz surely isn't happy about it, and they lose a lot of status on it too but it is no disaster for them either.
It costs 6 cents to play one hour Wow in china (old numbers, would probably be more with the new publisher). Blizz would get 1 or maybe 2 cents from that. So I wouldn't call it lots of money, more some money.
And I am not a Blizz fanboi, I played the first Diablo game and Warcraft 3, other than that the only Blizzard game I played for more than a few days was Battlechess.
If you read the artickle you would have seen that the reason Blizz changed partner was so they would get 3 times the income, the old company paid peanuts money. 6 million times peanuts are still some money so Blizz surely isn't happy about it, and they lose a lot of status on it too but it is no disaster for them either.
It costs 6 cents to play one hour Wow in china (old numbers, would probably be more with the new publisher). Blizz would get 1 or maybe 2 cents from that. So I wouldn't call it lots of money, more some money.
And I am not a Blizz fanboi, I played the first Diablo game and Warcraft 3, other than that the only Blizzard game I played for more than a few days was Battlechess.
If your talking about Battle Chess, the animated chess game. It was not made by Blizzard, it was developed by Interplay and published by them also. Now Battlechest with a t was a Warcraft set pack. Sorry for the off-topicness.
Not good. I own ATVI. Hopefully Blizzard can bribe their way out. That is the Chinese way of doing business, right?
While that sucks for Chinese WoW addicts, I welcome the idea of less gold seller spam.
And all of the Chinese WoW players are probably playing Aion as we speak.
How does someone not able to play on the Chinese servers for World of Warcraft translate into less gold seller spam on North American and European servers for WoW?
Think more people in China upset over the current ban of Facebook then anything to do with playing WOW.
lol yeah.
Blizz will figure something out, i'm sure china just wants to black mail them for more cash somehow.
"The great thing about human language is that it prevents us from sticking to the matter at hand."
- Lewis Thomas