As of today, Blizzard loses the “Asian giant” market with several layoffs behind them

Despite completing 5 months of life this February, Overwatch 2 leaves China never to return. This news was already brought forward in 2022 after the termination of the collaboration agreements between Activision Blizzard and NetEase Games for the distribution and maintenance of their games on the other side of the globe. Today is the deadline, and from now on, Overwatch 2 or World of Warcraft no longer work in china.

As we announced last November, the collaboration contract between both companies lasted no less than 14 years. However, the renewal of that same agreement led to a series of tug-of-war between Blizzard and NetEase, which is why any type of alliance ended up being settled and the support in the Asian giant said goodbye.

As highlighted by the unofficial Overwatch Cavalry account, any player who decides to enter within the country limits will run into a closed server. At the moment, it is not known if those Asian users can use vpn to play, especially considering the tight government control.

Of course, this situation would have sought to be avoided some time ago. Apparently, Activision Blizzard wanted to recover the agreement signed with the Chinese, something that NetEase Games did not see favorably. This gave the US business pairing an excuse to counter ensuring that it is the sole fault of NetEase that millions of gamers in China are left without access to their favorite games.

Be that as it may, it does not seem that the situation is going to improve. The NetEase team for the distribution and maintenance of Blizzard games was disbanded last week. A very important goodbye, especially if we take into account the power of eSports in Asia and that Overwatch 2 is trying to gain a significant foothold in the market.