It’s Tencent (NetEase’s biggest competitor in China) who sent a corporate spy to post that message on DI’s weibo which leads to the Chinese government taking down NetEase.
New speculations surfaced that because of this, NetEase won’t be able to release any games in China for the next three years.
Then naturally, all the Blizzard games will have to find another company in China to release it (Overwatch 2, WoW dragonflight, D4…), and the only other choice would be to go to Tencent.
I heard Tencent and NetEase hate each other so much. It goes way back. Tencent bought PUBG and just when they were prepping it for launch, NetEase made their copycat version which got a lot more popular than Tencent’s PUBG. The CEO of Tencent was saying he wanted to kill that game.
Even if Tencent somehow hacked their social media accounts, their government would still have been responsible for being extremely overly sensitive and unreasonable.
I don’t know much about this source, but according to this article: https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/06/24/3-red-flags-for-netease-future/
Neither NetEase nor Tencent has had a single new game approved in China since last July, which strongly suggests the government is intentionally handing out more licenses to their smaller domestic rivals to promote fresh competition.
This section was specifically about Diablo Immortal:
It just delayed one of its biggest games
NetEase recently postponed the launch of Diablo Immortal, the eagerly anticipated mobile game it co-developed with Activision Blizzard, from June 23 to July 8 for the Asia-Pacific region. That unexpected delay came after a few screenshots of Diablo Immortal’s social media account on Weibo were circulated online. A post from late May reportedly asked, “Why hasn’t the bear stepped down?” in an apparent jab at President Xi Jinping.
President Xi had been repeatedly mocked as “Winnie the Pooh” after meeting with President Barack Obama in 2013. Those comparisons eventually drove the Chinese government to ban all references to Winnie the Pooh in 2018, turning the cartoon bear into an unlikely symbol of defiance.
NetEase’s announcement also sparked controversy by referring to Diablo Immortal’s new release date in Asia as “July 8, Taiwan time.” That added detail was odd since the Chinese government explicitly forbids companies from referring to Taiwan as a separate country. So, it certainly suggests that someone inside the company is trying to sabotage the game’s release.
Unfortunately for NetEase, China’s censors quickly spotted those posts. Diablo Immortal’s Weibo account was barred from posting any new content, and any references to the bear post were scrubbed from the internet. The game’s launch in China now seems to have been postponed indefinitely, even though it had been approved before the process stalled out last year.
During NetEase’s most recent conference call in late May, it said more than 15 million gamers in China had already preregistered for the game. CFO Charles Yang also expected the launch of Diablo Immortal to be a "huge opportunity to showcase “NetEase’s strong R&D capability” to Western gamers and the world.
Shouldn’t you be providing evidence for your claims? Or are you going with the personal incredulity fallacy thing again, i.e. because you can’t imagine that it wasn’t TenCent then it just had to be TenCent?
Even if they do, they are playing a dangerous game. What if the “spy” revealed everything when they got caught by the government? Instead of punishing Netease, Tencent will be the one that gets punished instead. In China, no matter how powerful and big the corporate is, they can be easily taken down by China government.
The last time I read, when it comes to investigation, they really leave no stone unturned. Won’t be surprised that now every staff (and their relatives) in Netease had been interrogated for that remark.
Even Mihoyo, Genshin Impact company, went extreme to find the “leaker” of their stuff and they did it in a very short time. I heard that they basically checking and screening every beta tester playthrough from the past-present to find the culprit.
Don’t know if Tencent is the only one left to go with. They might get another partner that is not as well known as NetEase. Or it might even blow over after an apology from Activision/Blizz. Then the person making the remark will likely disappear or be killed that is if China knows who done it.
I need more proof in my court before rendering such a verdict. Not saying it isn’t true but more proof would be needed.
Why don’t you go out to police station and tell the detectives they are all “conspiracy theorists” for working on a criminal case because they haven’t found evidence?
Maybe I shouldn’t call you a kid. You sound more like a troll.
You telling everyone Immortal is fun says just about enough about you. I called you out and now you’re nit-picking on every one of my post. You are a troll. That’s what you are.
You must love Wyatt Cheng’s April Fool’s joke so much you just troll everyone who doesn’t agree with you.
