Return of Warcraft: Blizzard makes a small profit, Netease does not lose money.
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Walking into the story behind business
Source: Blizzard China official Weibo
Over 500,000 players call overnight.
Writing/Meng Huiyuan
Editor/Li Jinlin
Typesetting/Annalee
In recent days, the game circle’s "Xi Fei returned to the palace" drama began.
On April 10th, Blizzard officially announced that it had reached an agreement with Netease to return to the China market, and vividly interpreted what it meant to be "divorced for nearly a year and a half, and it was better to return home".
At the beginning, when "wrangling" happened, Blizzard and Netease blamed each other, and the scene was once very ugly. Now, with Hershey, Blizzard and Netease can sit together again and discuss the compensation benefits for players. Of course, judging from various signs, the combination of game manufacturers is not only the need of their own development, but also the entanglement of interest exchange.
But no matter what kind of consideration, the behavior of the game company, only the players are finally injured.
Abandoned veteran player: I can’t stop cursing and can’t let go.
After Blizzard officially announced that its games will begin to return to the domestic market in the summer of 2024, netizens were excited for a while, and the excitement was comparable to that of the New Year.
Some people recall the past and want to relive the beauty of the game time: "I miss the vegetable garden on my mid-mountain, I miss whether my sunflower has eaten well, whether the song can be sung, and whether it will only be sung to me. I miss my hearthstone Tianma, which is healthy and unhealthy, and I will ride it to soar in the sky and travel all over Azeroth."
Some people care about the gains and losses, urging the players to pay compensation during the suspension period: "It is a good thing to return, but there are also some concerns to be raised here. For example, during the suspension of service, the store tokens and the monthly and annual rewards of the store; Rewards, prestige, illusion, etc. that are often missing in various activities (holiday activities) and weeks during the period of stopping taking medicine; The pvp season rewards that were missing during the suspension period, etc. The catch-up mechanism after the new service. If the above content is not handled well, the reopening of the national service is also the carnival of the studio. "
Others scolded from the beginning to the end, claiming that the most innocent players were gamers: "At that time, one person acted as if he didn’t need China players at all, and the other person said that the other party wanted our information to touch the bottom line. What does it mean to make up now? What is not the bottom line is not as important as money. "
Game players are all in phase.
Qin Zhen, a veteran Warcraft player, thinks that all the seemingly opposing voices on the Internet are understandable. "For example, the game World of Warcraft is basically a lot of youthful memories of the post-80s and post-90s. For this typical emotional game, the more people scold it, the more they love it. Moreover, scolding it is also afraid that it will abandon domestic players again. It’s a fatal blow that memories of youth, who has spent so many years, said no, no, no,no. "
"Imagine that one day Jay Chou collapsed and all the songs could not be heard. Can you accept it as an iron powder?" Qin Zhen told Zinc Scale that one of the most popular sayings among players now is: "Don’t forget that players are just victims of Microsoft and mobile violence". The point that makes everyone unhappy is that "the game company acts to let the players pay the bill. But the problem is that the player is innocent! " .
Obviously, at the beginning, Blizzard and Netease suddenly got divorced, which caught the players off guard. However, it seems sincere to see all kinds of promises and actions made by Blizzard officials after their return.
The discovery of zinc scale has been clearly mentioned in "Try to heal, then recover excessively-a letter to the national service Blizzard gamers", "When the server is turned on, we will ensure that your account data is completely preserved", directly feeding the players who are willing to return. A reassurance.
In addition, when Netease is recruiting for Blizzard Games, the released job requirements can also be seen as additional requirements such as "arranging sincere compensation content when the server restarts" and "fully understanding the game content during the suspension period, and arranging appropriate operational content to help players regain the opportunity to obtain these contents as much as possible".
These actions have made many Blizzard players who are "outspoken" consciously wait for the specific opening time. By the time the zinc scale was published, 525,000 people had reserved World of Warcraft. "Anyway, I have already made an appointment. The new’ cake’ drawn by the game company is delicious. Wait until I taste it first." Qin Zhen said so.
Looking at the market, Blizzard can’t let go of millions of players.
From November 2022, Blizzard announced that it would break up with Netease, and on April 10, 2024, Blizzard officially announced that it would return to cooperate with Netease again. Blizzard, which had made a high-profile announcement to withdraw from the China market, also chose a high-profile return after nearly a year and a half of absence (Blizzard’s Battle.net server in China was officially closed on January 24, 2023).
In fact, looking back, the reason why Blizzard and Netease "divorced" has been inconclusive.
At that time, it was rumored that the cooperation conditions proposed by Blizzard were harsh, requiring Netease to develop other IP mobile games for global distribution, but Netease was not allowed to share the proceeds except China, and Netease was required to provide a deposit and two-year advance payment. In addition, Blizzard also wants to control all intellectual property rights and data control for China players.
The statement issued by Blizzard said, "Because Netease has not reached a renewal agreement that conforms to Blizzard’s operating principles and promises to players and employees". In this regard, Netease said, "The conditions put forward by Blizzard are harsh, and it is impossible to reach an agreement on some key terms involving sustainable operation and the core interests of China players."
In other words, the core interests of the two companies are inconsistent, and cooperation will naturally not continue.
Although we can’t cooperate for the time being, the China market really smells good. After all, Activision Blizzard mentioned in the financial report of the third quarter of 2022 that the blizzard works jointly launched with Netease in Chinese mainland contributed about 3% of Activision Blizzard’s total revenue. According to the report of the new knowledge of the game, if the blizzard part is taken out independently, the "3%" here is equivalent to 13.5% of the revenue in 2022, equivalent to about 1.603 billion yuan.
Mike Ybarra, president of Blizzard, also said in an interview with the media: "There are millions of players in Chinese mainland who love Blizzard games, and everyone in Blizzard wants to make sure that they can play our games. We are a global company, and I hope Blizzard games will spread all over the world, including Chinese mainland. Therefore, when we make progress, we will evaluate this and see what will happen. "
The opportunity of "remarriage" appeared in October 2023, but this time the main body of cooperation with Netease changed from Blizzard to Microsoft.
According to a number of media reports, shortly after Microsoft officially acquired Activision Blizzard, the parent company of Blizzard Entertainment, for about 68.7 billion US dollars, it began to renegotiate the return of Blizzard’s national service with Netease, and it was basically finalized in December last year that it would re-cooperate. One of the clear clues is that on December 20, 2023, Netease Great God platform re-launched the World of Warcraft community.
Blizzard officially announces return
Anyway, now the boots have finally landed successfully. Even though we broke up with Netease, on the basis of cooperation for more than fifteen years in the past, this wonderful drama of reconciliation after breaking up always gives people an unexpected but reasonable feeling.
On the one hand, it is the version number problem. Blizzard’s whole family has a total of 12 version numbers registered under Netease’s name. If Blizzard changes its agent, it is necessary to reapply for the version number after the game stops serving, and the number of imported version numbers is more scarce than that of domestic games. On the other hand, it is a physical server. Even if the agent is changed, Blizzard has to get back the historical user data, which is now in Netease’s hands.
Therefore, in the eyes of many people in the industry, Netease has almost become a necessary option for Blizzard’s return, and the release of cooperation news only confirms their judgment.
Netease, the "pick-up man", laughed?
From Netease’s perspective, it was very ugly when we broke up with Blizzard.
Netease once fiercely countered in an official statement, "Blizzard’s proposal is outrageous, inappropriate and not in line with business logic", calling it "overconfident" and "take whatever you want, ride a donkey to find a horse, and get divorced". Netease canteen has also launched new dishes "Blizzard Green Tea Rape" and "Blizzard Green Tea Small Pacai", directly playing with stalks to insinuate Blizzard.
But once again, Netease is willing to actively strive for it.
Thanks to the help of mobile games such as Egg Party and Going Against the Water, and the stable performance of Fantasy Westward Journey, Netease’s game business revenue reached 81.6 billion yuan in 2023, up 9.4% year-on-year, accounting for 78.8% of the total revenue. This achievement made Netease offset the impact of its breakup with Blizzard in early 2023, and also drove the annual revenue to pass the 100 billion mark in one fell swoop.
However, the competition in the game industry in the domestic market is fierce. Take the Egg Party, which Netease values most, as an example. Although it has brought it a lot of revenue, the Egg Party is often caught in the whirlpool of negative public opinion of "inducing recharge" and "minors paying a large amount". At the same time, the same type of game "Yuan Meng Xing" created by Tencent’s late arrival has performed well, which has also brought a lot of pressure on the business performance of "Egg Party".
However, with the World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, Warcraft, Watching Pioneer, Diablo and StarCraft, and other games under Blizzard, they began to return to the Chinese mainland market one after another this summer. Netease can not only gather the hearts of a wave of old players, but also continue to rely on these classic games to increase their profitability, and can look forward to transforming these online games IP into mobile games IP later (Netease and Blizzard jointly produced the mobile game Diablo: Immortality before the "breakup", and the game performed well).
Blizzard game family barrels will return one after another.
In this way, after the second cooperation, Blizzard may make a small profit, but Netease will definitely not lose money. According to the latest report released by JPMorgan Chase, the re-cooperation between Netease and Blizzard is expected to bring 3% to 4% of the online game revenue of Netease.
What’s more, Microsoft also reached an agreement with Netease to try to bring new Netease games to Xbox and other platforms.
In this regard, Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of Ai Media Consulting, said in an interview with Securities Daily that Netease also needs to increase its overseas revenue share. Microsoft promotes Netease games to log on to Xbox, which can give overseas players more opportunities to understand Netease’s game products. It is very important to enhance Netease’s brand influence and market share in overseas markets, and it is also an easy shortcut for Netease.
Generally speaking, the re-cooperation between Netease and Blizzard is not only the best choice made by them from their own personal perspectives, but also a win-win "commercial marriage".
END
Menghuiyuan
Email: coopert@163.com.
Introduction: You can talk about poetry and distance, and you can also talk about tea and streamer.
Focus areas: streaming media, Internet medical care.
Zinc scale
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