China removes Blizzard’s Hearthstone from Hangzhou Asian Games after collapse of US publisher’s licensing deal with NetEase
- The decision comes four months after the US video games publisher announced an end to its 14-year licensing agreement with NetEase
- Hearthstone, a strategy card game set in the Warcraft universe, became a popular global esports title after its release in 2014
Blizzard Entertainment’s popular video game Hearthstone has been removed from the list of titles set to debut as an esports medal event at this year’s Asian Games in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, organisers announced on Thursday.
The decision comes four months after the US video games publisher announced an end to its 14-year licensing agreement with NetEase, China’s second-largest video gaming company. The move has led to the closure of servers for seven Blizzard titles – including World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, StarCraft II, Overwatch and Diablo III – in mainland China.
Hearthstone’s removal was announced by the Olympic Council of Asia, organiser of the Asian Games, via the event’s social media accounts in China and overseas. The Games, originally scheduled for 2022, were postponed to this September due to China’s rigid Covid-19 controls.
“Because of the expiration of the business cooperation between the two parties … the operations team and servers for the game have been terminated [in mainland China], which no longer meets the preconditions for inclusion in the esports programme of the Hangzhou Asian Games,” according to the statement.
The collapse of the partnership came after commercial disagreements between Blizzard and NetEase about future cooperation. It also came against a backdrop of much tougher regulation of video gaming in China in recent years, with foreign titles unable to be officially published without a Chinese distributor and much tougher scrutiny of gaming content prior to licence approvals.
