Microsoft teams with NetEase to bring Blizzard games back to China

World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and more are coming back to China thanks to a new deal with Microsoft and NetEase. Blizzard announced today that an agreement was reached to reinstate all of their games that were shut down in January of last year.

It was a rather messy breakup when Blizzard had to pull away from China. It’s hard to know exactly what happened, as both sides of the relationship blamed the other. But ultimately, NetEase and Blizzard were unable to come to terms that satisfied both parties.

It’s important to note that in China, outside companies need to have a sort of sponsor company from within the country in order to operate. Together, the two companies then create a separate Chinese version of the company that technically operates on its own. That’s the most basic way to describe what is otherwise a very complicated process for outside companies.

The big question I have is what happens next for Chinese players. It was no doubt a gut-wrenching day for players to lose all of their time spent in WoW and Hearthstone. I know that Blizzard typically saves account data on their side, including characters and card collections. Hopefully players won’t have to start over from scratch when Blizzard games show back up.

Along with all of this, Microsoft announced that they’re working to bring more NetEase titles to Xbox consoles and other platforms.