Though there has been controversy since its release, Diablo Immortal has made an obscene amount of money during its launch window, Pocket Gamer reported.

† This led to the removal of all release date messages and eventually the announcement and ban post. You wouldn’t expect that though, especially for a game clearly designed for the Chinese market – in fact, it’s one of the few times Blizzard has worked with a third-party developer, in this case NetEase, on its own intellectual property.Īccording to user surveys by Reddit, the entire fiasco may have been due to an employee posting anti-government messages on the Weibo page that read “Why didn’t the bear resign?”, a reference to President Xi Jinping that is often censored. As explained by the South China Morning Post, there are far more severe penalties than a Weibo suspension, such as a complete removal from the page.

Although the account has ‘only’ 47,000 followers, it is a significant loss. This is similar to deleting a Twitter account, Facebook page, or Discord server in the days before launch.

Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.On the Weibo side, the official Diablo Immortal page was banned last Wednesday for “violating relevant laws and regulations” and can’t post it yet. Subscribe to my free weekly content round-up newsletter, God Rolls. But it’s one more headache for Microsoft to potentially deal with now.įollow me on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Again, it’s unclear what may happen in the future, especially if Activision Blizzard is indeed bought by Microsoft, but it’s possible a new deal could be hammered out in the future. While both companies are attempting to say this will not significantly affect their business, both NetEase and Activision stock are starting to drop in the pre-market, and we’ll see how they open.Įven if this is true, that Blizzard’s reach in China isn’t that big, it’s a huge blow for Chinese players who will simply be unable to access games they have sunk potentially thousands of hours and dollars into. This fracturing comes in the wake of a few recent dust-ups, including a cancelled World of Warcraft mobile game that was supposed to be collaboration between NetEase and Blizzard, and other drama involving the ownership of IP and player data, according to a Bloomberg report. The implication there is that the “jerk” in question may be Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, but he’s not named specifically. “One day, when what has happened behind the scene could be told, developers and gamers will have a whole new level understanding of how much damage a jerk can make.”

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