Popular American video games including World of Warcraft and Overwatch are set to go offline in China in the coming months, hitting revenues for their creator Activision Blizzard as it seeks to complete a $75bn sale to Microsoft.China is the world’s largest gaming market, but foreign developers need a local partner to distribute their games in the country. Beijing also heavily censors gaming content and controls the number of new releases through a licensing system.
Activision Blizzard said on Thursday that it was unable to reach a deal to renew a licensing agreement with NetEase, one of China’s largest game developers and publishers, which has distributed the games in the country for years.
The California-based company said last week that the NetEase agreement in dispute accounted for about 3 per cent of its net revenues last year, translating to roughly $264mn in sales.