Recently, the foreign media “New York Times” released the latest report on the inside story of NetEase Blizzard’s “breakup”. The article stated that Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Cordick once offered NetEase a sky-high contract renewal condition of “a one-time payment of 500 million US dollars in advance”. Activision Blizzard stated that if NetEase paid 500 million U.S. dollars in advance (currently about RMB 3.445 billion), Activision Blizzard agreed to sign a new agreement with NetEase, but in the end Netease rejected this unreasonable “sky-high price” plan.
According to reports, long before the start of cooperation negotiations, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Cordick was “dissatisfied” with NetEase because NetEase invested in companies he did not want to invest in.
For example, in 2018, NetEase announced a $100 million investment in game developer Bungie. Since Bungie partnered with Activision on the hit game Destiny, Cordick was unhappy with the NetEase investment because Bungie was behind schedule in developing content for Destiny, and he feared the investment would further distract the company from developing Destiny. The energy of fate. In 2018, NetEase also invested in a game development company, but because the founder of the company was a senior employee of Activision Blizzard, it also angered Activision Blizzard CEO Cordick, people familiar with the matter said.
On January 24, Blizzard and NetEase officially ended their 14-year agency cooperation, and 7 national server games including “World of Warcraft”, “Hearthstone”, and “Watching Pioneer” officially terminated their operations. A week before the suspension of the service, Blizzard China tried to “throw” the responsibility for the suspension of the service to NetEase, saying that because NetEase was unwilling to extend the game service for six months based on the existing cooperation terms while Blizzard was looking for a new partner, Blizzard could not Do not “stop the national service game service”.
However, players on the national server did not buy into Blizzard’s “throwing the pot”. NetEase also pointed out in a subsequent response statement that Blizzard’s “postponement proposal” and sudden statement were arrogant, inappropriate, and not in line with business logic. During the same period, all negotiations between Blizzard and other partners were based on a three-year contract period, except that NetEase was only given a 6-month contract period. In this foreign media report, Activision Blizzard’s CEO proposed a one-time advance payment of up to 500 million US dollars, which also confirmed that NetEase’s previous Blizzard terms were indeed “outrageous” and “not in line with business logic.”
It is reported that after the suspension of the Blizzard national server, Blizzard has been trying to find a new partner, but there has never been a “taker”. According to foreign media, both Tencent and ByteDance have expressed interest in cooperating with Activision Blizzard, and Activision Blizzard has also considered cooperation with communication companies such as China Mobile. And this time Activision Blizzard proposed to NetEase the sky-high price of “500 million U.S. dollars” in advance, as well as the many unreasonable terms proposed in the cooperation, which may also make the new agents on the poker table retreat and have the intention to withdraw.
