Bad news for World of Warcraft fans who have been waiting for a mobile version for a long time… although, given what Activision Blizzard has done with Immortal Devil (in a model that the company insists on considering successful despite the fact that it is clearly being proven that it is an error) I think that, deep down, it is rather something that they, or more specifically their economies, will greatly appreciateEven if it’s in your subconscious.
As we can read in The Verge, Blizzard and NetEase had been working on this project for three years, which would have been canceled, within the framework of the collaboration maintained by both companies since 2008, and which has borne fruit as Diablo Immortal. Additionally, NetEase publishes Blizzard games such as Hearthstone and World of Warcraft in China, and is a shareholder in Blizzard’s Overwatch League. In short, it is (or perhaps we should say it was) a very extensive collaboration and, as far as can be assumed, a mutually beneficial one.
And I say maybe we should speak in the past tense because, according to information from Bloomberg, the reason for the cancellation of World of Warcraft for smartphones is a conflict between both parties over financial terms. The positions of both parties have not been made public, but given the economic success of Diablo Immortal, and the fact that the cancellation has not occurred until now, it suggests that NetEase may have wanted to improve the initially agreed conditions.
However, we must remember that Activision Blizzard is immersed in the process of buying by Microsoft which began at the beginning of this year and, therefore, is subject to a supervision that we can assume to be much higher than usual previously. Therefore, we cannot rule out that the pressure has come from the other side, that is, from Blizzard itself, to try to improve their conditions.
