World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Diablo 3 e Overwatch; these are just some of the games that since January in China are no longer accessible to the vast community of gamers. If you play Activision Blizzard are now completely obscured in China there is a reason and a recent article in the New York Times tries to explain it.
To deal with the publication of Activision Blizzard games in China was, until recently, NetEase but relations between the two companies began to fall apart when the second made some investments that the first did not approve of; in 2018 NetEase would in fact have invested a good 100 million dollars in Bungie and Activision Blizzard was concerned about the power that the rival company could achieve with that money. A more recent problem concerns the rules in force in China regarding media products, NetEase would have wanted more control over the works of Activision Blizzard but was denied.
Here the famous misunderstanding arises, during a negotiation call the CEO of the Chinese company William Ding he would have pointed out how, concluded the deal with Microsoft, it would have been up to the latter to deal with them and make certain decisions. This statement was deemed a threat and relations between the two shopkeepers are currently still at loggerheads.