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. China’s top cities vow support for esports as gaming crackdown eases 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. In a separate statement, the Asian Electronic Sports Federation, the governing body of esports in Asia, said it jointly proposed the removal with the Hangzhou Asian Games Organising Committee after “efforts were made to resolve the issue”. Hearthstone , a strategy card game set in the Warcraft universe, became a popular global esports title after its release in 2014. Hearthstone had over 276,000 peak viewers in 2019 at its World Championship, although viewing figures declined in following years, according to data from Esports Charts. The Hangzhou Asian Games lists esports as one of 42 sports to be played at the event, marking the first time in history that esports has been featured as an official medal event. Previously, esports was featured as a demonstration sport during the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta. Hearthstone’s removal has reduced the total number of esports medal events at the Asian Games to seven. Other titles include Arena of Valor and PUBG Mobile by Tencent Holdings , Dream Three Kingdoms 2 by Hangzhou Electronic Soul Network Technology Co, Street Fighter V from Japanese publisher Capcom, Riot Games’ League of Legends , Dota 2 from Valve Corp, and Electronic Arts’ FIFA 23 . Chinese players, many of whom were upset by the ending of Blizzard’s partnership with NetEase, said they were not surprised by the removal. “It is the ‘end of a story’ that everyone had already guessed,” IslandCat, a former professional player of the game, posted on Weibo on Thursday. “But I still had a sense of loss the moment the final conclusion was reached.”