Blizzard, NetEase partnership reportedly broke down over misunderstandings
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Details have emerged about how the 14-year partnership between Blizzard and NetEase broke down earlier this year.
Sources familiar with both sides of the negotiations told The New York Times about a series of misunderstandings, disagreements and perceived threats between the two companies, resulting in Blizzard's most popular games becoming unavailable in China.
According to the NYT, much of NetEase's concerns centred around growing government restrictions on video games in China, including the limit that young people may only play online titles for three designated hours per week.
The Chinese publisher reportedly sought to make changes to it contract with Activision Blizzard to ensure it would be compliant with new regulations.
NetEase is said to have asked Activision to disclose annual revenues and other details to Chinese regulators as part of this, but Activision reportedly disputed that it should have to do so.
Activision later objected to a NetEase proposal that it should licence its games to the Chinese publisher, rather than the two handling them as a joint venture. This would give NetEase more control over operations to help ensure it complied with regulations, but it was perceived that the publisher was using the regulations to get a better deal.
According to sources, Activision execs believe that NetEase CEO William Ding threatened Bobby Kotick, CEO of the Call of Duty publisher, by suggesting his company could sway government regulators on whether or not to block or approve the proposed acquisition by Microsoft depending on how negotiations went over the licensing deal.
Sources familiar with NetEase claim this was not the
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